You guessed it! Granola that is worth selling family heirlooms for! Who knew ho-hum junk in the fridge/pantry could be turned into spectacular junk in the fridge? I have not made home made granola in about 6 years. I OD’d on it during the pregnancy/infant years and was happy to never see another bowl again in my life…until well just now. Funny how things hit you. I still am not over the puking Ezekiel bread, so I am not sure I will go back to that, but I am toying with making my own bread. I will keep you posted.
Andy’s Fairfield Granola
From Feast, by Nigella Lawson
- 4 1/2 cups rolled oats (Yep got those in spades. One jar of quick oats and two jars of steel cut. We all like steel cut better so the quick oats are being repurposed)
- 1 cup sunflower seeds (don’t have them..oh well)
- 3/4 cup white sesame seeds ( yep need to use them or pitch em)
- 3/4 cup applesauce (the kids go in phases with this. They love it and then hate it…right now they hate it so we have got to use this up too)
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon ( almost gone, need to buy more of this)
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger ( don’t have the powder, but a few grates of fresh should do the trick)
- 1/3 cup brown rice syrup (I don’t have on hand, guess I will throw in the molasses, Mike keeps buying that junk for his homemade BBQ and I don’t have shelf space to store it so out it goes.)
- 4 tablespoons honey (check have 2 half used bottles..lets get one in the recycle bin – clearly we have issues with only half way using something before we buy another in this house.)
- 3/4 cups light brown sugar
- 2 cups raw almonds (have a half of bag that is opened and unused from a salad I make..lets get these rolling out of here too)
- 1 teaspoon Maldon salt (I don’t know what Maldon is….Kosher works right?!)
- 2 tablespoons sunflower oil ( don’t have…will have to use Canola)
- 2 cups of raisins (optional – I will leave them out and let the kids sprinkle them in later)
Preheat oven to 300-325 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix everything except the raisins together very well in a large mixing bowl. Use a couple of spatulas, the mixture is too sticky to use your hands. Spread the mixture out on two baking sheets (spray first with cooking spray) and bake in oven, turning over about halfway through baking and re-distributing the granola evenly during the baking process The goal is to get it evenly golden without toasting too much in any one place. This should take anywhere from 40 minutes to about an hour. When it is verging on a dark golden glow the granola is done. I went for an hour and once it was cool, it was still slightly moist. Maybe the Molasses. I have it stored in christmas cookie tins in the fridge. The kids will sure be ticked thrilled to see they are not filled with cookies.
Oh how I love kitchen cleaning. Let’s see what I can do next week. I think I am on a roll. And yes I am working on Central America Pictures….I am kind of overwhelmed with them to be honest and want to tackle the video side first, so hang in there with me. I think I am caught up with pics/video from before we left so I have a clean slate. Wow, for a micro blog this was a hell of a long blog. Sorry, I won’t let it happen again.
Pax Vobiscum,
