Granola

Quite a few of my friends have had the wonderful luxury of sampling my delicious granola. Today I'm making, yet another batch, to bring and share with granola-less friends.

Sadly, this isn't "my" recipe, as most recipes I make aren't. It's really Alton Browns on foodnetwork.com, which my mother graciously shared with a me a few years back when I was in need of a simple granola recipe.

But I have altered it slightly, thus making it my own.

The wonderful thing about granola is it's versatility, adding a little of this and a little of that. Over the years I've made it with all kinds of nuts, dried fruits and various sweeteners. A few examples are Almonds, walnuts, cashews, peanuts, pecans, flax seed, dried mango, dried pineapple, raisins, cranberries, strawberries, blueberries, sweetened and unsweetened coconut, maple syrup, honey, sugar, brown sugar and my current favorite, sucanat. As for my oil choices I've stuck with canola but olive oil has also been used and I honestly can't tell much of a difference.

My basic recipe is:
3 cups rolled oats
1 cup sliced almonds
1 cup walnuts
1 cup crasians (to be added at the end)
1 cup organic shredded, unsweetened coconut
1/4 cup sucanat
1/3 cup oil (canola or olive, depending on what I have on hand)
1/4 cup plus a bit extra Maple syrup
1 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven 250

Mix dry ingrediants together. Mix wet ingrediants. Combine the two until dry ingrediants are well coated. Pour into a large cookie sheet and spread out evenly. Cook for 1hr. Remove and turn granola, cook an additional 15min. Cool completely, add dried fruit and store in an air tight container.

My family and I usually eat our granola with a milk, but we also enjoy it over plain greek yogurt and as a crunchy topping over ice-cream. These also make delicious granola bars!! (but here is a really good step by step granola bar recipe!)

Update

I don't think I'm coming back to regular posting. But regardless of how Facebook has overtaken any time that I would normally spend blogging...I just felt sad that there were no current pictures on my blog. Even though myself, nor others I assume, read my blog any more. LOL

Oh well, so here is my big Jade-y girl. At 5yrs 6mons she's finished Kindergarten and has her very first loose tooth! This summer she's continuing with gymnastics and spends a lot of time helping me and playing with friends.

 Cutter is 2yrs 3mons and I think I'm confident enough now to say he is potty trained! I bought him some boxer briefs to celebrate and he happily parade's around the house in his little man underwear forcing me to give his little tushie plenty of pinches throughout the day. He's starting to talk, though I'd say his favorite words are still "run, jump and "help-a me mommy"

 Here are my 20mon pics of me and baby Bechtle. I'm at 21 weeks now (oooo *wink*) but I look exactly the same. haha! Jade was gracious enough to be my photographer for these.

 My baby guess is it's a girl. JB is fairly confident it's a boy.

 We won't find out until d-day though, so we all get to be caught up in the suspense!

I still enjoy cooking and I'm finding Pinterest to be my best friend in finding new recipes and inspiration. One day I hope to turn this family blog into "What Missi's cooking for dinner" blog. But I have yet to master the art of "pretty food pics". Sadly most of the food pics I taste do not do my delicious food justice and it's just not fun taking pics of food that aren't appealing. One day blog world, one day!