The finished granola

Once I figured that part out, then I experimented, and have now come up with a variation on the recipe.

1 cup of honey, heated so it is easy to pour, like the earlier recipe.

1/2 cup of olive oil

2 cups of rolled oats

1 cup of chopped raw almonds

1 cup of chopped pecans

1/2 cup of sunflower seeds

1/2 cup of shredded coconut

1/2 of sesame seeds

and a handful of raisins added in the last ten minutes of cooking.

Mix it all together, bake it on a cookie pan, so it is not too deep and can brown evenly.

Serve it up with milk or home-made yogurt, and you’ll be fine.

Now, we go through this about once every week or so. It is good to munch on, which is one of the other issues I have had to deal with, with not buying preprocessed food. What to keep in the house to munch on. (which I will write about soon, in how we made our own energy bars, twice, and still haven’t eaten them all. )

And I’ll write soon about my yogurt making, which, actually has gone rather well, so far.

Let me back up. I have made things before, I have cooked all my life. When my mother worked during our summer break, my brothers and sister used to bake things, just to see how they worked. One time we tried to make Baked Alaska, which is hare to do, let me tell you.

But, but, I hadn’t made anything that was easy to buy in the store. And granola was the first thing I thought about. I hated what was in cereal, and hated that I had to keep buying it, no matter how good it was. I started reading what was in it, and felt that even more strongly. I started asking about to see if anyone had made granola before, and my book-keeper had, so I got her recipe.

She gave me a photocopy of a recipe she had used, and she had written things in the corner, such as use 1/2 cup of chopped ginger, and 1/2 cup of pumpkin seeds.  I didn’t have enough rolled oats, because I hadn’t realized I would need 4 cups worth, so used oatmeal to make up the difference. I used sunflower seeds whole, and threw the raisins in with the mix. The recipe called for heating 1/2 cup of honey and 1/2 cup of oil together. I wasn’t sure what this was for, so did it, and then poured it into the mix.

The oven was supposed to be 275 for 15 minutes, which turned out didn’t do much.

I didn’t know what it was supposed to look like when it was done. It came out very white and under toasted, and rather bland, but on the whole a whole lot better than anything I had tasted. I thought I had solved the problem.

True, it was under cooked, and only some of the stuff had gotten any of the honey, but it did taste better than what we had been eating before.  Cartoonist, however, said it looked like what we fed the birds. She drew a picture of it below.

I made it once more, before showing it off  to my sweetie, who said, no, that isn’t how it is done, and gave me a better recipe.

What happened to the granola