When life seems to be handing you lemons, make granola

A little back story:
you can skip the next couple paragraphs if you don’t want “too much information”

Just over a year ago, I donated blood and was told that my blood pressure was a little high. I followed up with a visit to my doctor and she concurred and said “we should watch this”. I told her that I had been meaning to start exercising more and had already started to change my diet. She said to come back and see her a few months later. After a few months of watching my diet (which, to me, meant cutting out the fries and burgers for lunch and maybe my beer intake after work) and starting to exercise by running at the gym, I returned for the suggested visit and everything had returned to “normal”.

Given the professional uncertainty and overall funk I was developing from the economic situation, I realized that the gym was actually making me feel pretty good. I was getting a kind of high from the exercise and it was nice to find something in my life that I could take control of. Fast forward about six months and 20 pounds had been shed, I was running 3.5 miles a day on the treadmill, my pant size shrunk by 5 inches, and I was scouring the internet and magazines for healthy alternatives to the typically high-carb, high-fat food I like to cook and eat. I was enjoying this pseudo-“health-nut” thing.

The Recipe:
A main part of my diet is my morning breakfast. It consists of a ½ c of granola, ½ c of non-fat plain yogurt and 1c of fresh fruit. I eat it pretty much every day and love it. Last month, I was excited that the folks at Tiny Old House wrote about a granola recipe they found on a blog called Zen Foodism. I never tried making my own granola but this sounded great. It is expensive stuff (at least the stuff I like) and wouldn’t it be great to find an economical alternative. I tried out the recipe and loved it.

Being the consummate tinkerer that I am, I couldn’t stop there but had to play with the recipe a bit and develop something that I could call “my own”. I’m still playing with it but I think I’ve arrived at two recipes that are pretty good. Hopefully you guys will like it as much as I do.

I started with the original recipe on the blog and changed up a few ingredients. Instead of the water, I used vanilla soy milk. I added honey and reduced the amount of brown sugar, added some cinnamon, eliminated the fruit (since I eat it with fresh fruit), and also changed up the nut and oat mixture to come up with this recipe:

Tiny Bungalow Granola

Mix in a bowl:
3 c rolled oats
1/3 c oat bran
1/2 c brown sugar
1/3 c flax seeds (toasted)
1/3 c sunflower seeds (toasted)
1 c chopped walnuts
½ tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon

In a saucepan, over low heat, melt together:
1 c vanilla soy milk
1 tsp grape seed oil
1 tsp vanilla
1 c honey

Mix the above items together and spread evenly onto baking sheet covered with parchment. Bake in an oven at 325 degrees for about 35 minutes (until semi-dry to touch). Let cool on baking rack until almost completely dry and store in an air tight container.

The above recipe came out good. I thought the key was to get it very crunchy and it tasted best. If you leave it loose, while baking, it breaks up easily. You can also pat it down and it forms bigger chunks, similar to bars. As if this wasn’t enough, my friend Brian told me he put peanut butter in his granola. It sounded awesome to me though I was wondering whether some of the “healthy” aspects of it would be lost by adding it. I tried it anyway. Who cares about healthy because this stuff came out awesome and I highly recommend trying it out. The peanut butter recipe is as follows:

Tiny Bungalow Granola
(with suggestions from Brian’s New Hampshire Farmhouse)

Mix in a bowl:
3 c rolled oats
1/3 c oat bran
1/2 c brown sugar
1/3 c flax seeds (toasted)
1/3 c sunflower seeds (toasted)
1 c chopped walnuts
½ tsp salt

In a saucepan, over low heat, melt together:
1 c vanilla soy milk
1 c peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla
1 c honey

Follow the same prep as the initial granola. This one stayed slightly moist at the end but it doesn’t bother me. I love it with bananas and yogurt in the morning but it is actually more tempting to put it over ice cream. Heck, I may go all out and add mini chocolate chips to it in the next round.