Homemade granola

Meet my latest cooking kick: homemade granola.

Like so many other foods, once you've tasted the wonder of your own, personally customized, homemade granola, you'll find it hard to return to the boxed packages on the grocery shelf.

This isn't the first time I've had homemade granola, but it's my first attempt of making it myself. The process started in 2008 when Mom and I ventured to Colorado to visit Chase during his summer outside of Steamboat Springs. On our one full day with him, he took us to his favorite restaurant in Steamboat, Freshies, a place that offered house-made granola on the menu.

It was incredible. When we returned from that trip, Mom spent quite a bit of time researching recipes and tweaking multiple batches, trying to replicate the wonder of the Freshies granola. She's passed the recipe on to me, but this summer is the first time I've tried making it myself.

I honestly had forgotten that I already had the recipe in my possession, so I pored over several recipes before jumping in. One thing that makes Mom's granola unique is the fact that it's cooked in the crock pot. You'll find many recipes out there for crockpot granola, but it's more common to find recipes carried out in the oven.

But for as many recipes that there are, you'll find just as many stories of, "Woe is me, you won't believe how many batches of granola I've burned before finally figuring out how to do it in my own oven." I wanted to avoid this learning curve as much as I could, and having seen how easy it is to do in the crockpot (even though the whole process takes longer), that's what I wanted to do.

Alas, woe is me, it's still easy to burn granola in the crockpot.

Bummer.

If you search for crockpot granola recipes, you'll find widely varying temperature and cooking time recommendations (Some will tell you 5-7 hours on high. Huh?!). After having made about four complete batches in the last month (two in one weekend), I can tell you that when it comes to my crockpot, two hours on low is all it takes.

Once you know that, this is an incredibly easy thing to make, and the recipe is entirely flexible. Dump everything in, stir it up, cook it on low, and stir it every 30 minutes. That's it. The result is a looser granola than you might be used to; it's not clumpy, though there may be a way to do it. The flavor is great, though, so I don't really miss the clusters.

I made a batch this past weekend that has been my best yet. This version was loosely based on a recipe from Smitten Kitchen (great cooking blog, by the way), with some of Mom's tried-and-true flair thrown in. Here's my latest version:

Homemade Granola
Loosely based on Smitten Kitchen and Mom's Amazing Personal Recipe
Serving size: 1/2 cup

3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup flaked coconut (I used unsweetened)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
Approximately 1 cup of your choice mix of chopped nuts and seeds (this version used almonds, walnuts, pecans, and sunflower seeds)
1/4 cup maple syrup (or honey)
Pinch of cinnamon
Pinch of salt
1 Tablespoon frozen OJ concentrate

I sprayed the inside of my crockpot with cooking spray first, but I'm not sure that it really did anything.

Dump everything into your crockpot. Stir to mix well and distribute the wet ingredients.

Cover, placing a paper towel across the top between the crock and the lid to catch condensation and keep it from getting back into your granola. Cook on low for two hours or so, depending on your crockpot, stirring every 30 minutes.

It's done when the granola is fragrant and golden brown. After you've turned off the crock pot, it will continue to dry and crisp up, getting a little bit darker (so it's okay to think you may have slightly undercooked it). Let it cool, then store in an airtight container at room temperature for a couple weeks or in the freezer indefinitely.

As you can see from these photos, the pre-cooking and post-cooking visual difference isn't huge.

Many recipes call for adding dried fruit after the granola has cooled, but I haven't done that yet. It doesn't really need it, though I know it would be wonderful, and honestly, I find myself forgetting to add it!

I love having this for breakfast with Greek yogurt and fresh fruit. We've had some unseasonably hot weather recently, so I've been enjoying more cold smoothies for breakfast -- and I've found that pouring the smoothie into a bowl (a very basic, bare-bones fruit smoothie), topping it with granola and eating it with a spoon is wonderful. You can also eat it like cold cereal with your favorite milk, or add some milk and warm it up in the microwave.

Now I just have to eat through this batch so I can start making some more...

143/365 Breakfast: snack to follow it

We made it through the ice storm much more easily than predicted (thank goodness), and I didn't need to tap into any of my gallons of water I'd prepared. So, let's finish up this breakfast theme so we can move to something new!

I give myself a lot of time to wake up, eat breakfast, clean up and get dressed, finish gathering my lunch items, and get out the door for work every morning. I could do it faster, but I like the more laid-back pace of the morning; when I wake up and have to start rushing, I feel like it gets my day started on the wrong note.

Since I do get up so early (before 6:00 a.m.), that means lunch at noon is a long time away. Even with a good-sized breakfast with plenty of protein and fiber content, I'm hungry by 10:00. And trying to concentrate with a growling stomach for another two hours is torture. Pure agony.

Enter: the mid-morning snack.

I take an orange, an apple, a banana -- whatever fresh fruit I have on hand -- with me to work every day to curb that starvation and hold me over until lunch. It makes a huge difference (and it doesn't take much convincing to get me to eat fruit...yum!). Citrus is plentiful right now, so my desk has been seeing many oranges recently.

What's your favorite mid-morning snack?

Camera: Canon 40D, 1/60s, f/4.5 at ISO 1000 under fluorescent lighting

141/365 Breakfast: morning oatmeal

Remember that overnight oatmeal I mentioned a couple posts ago? One of the things I love about it is how well it keeps in the refrigerator. It makes breakfast in the morning very easy for the rest of the week!

When I first started at my current job a couple years ago, one of the first things each of my new coworkers (independently) mentioned was how much they love the office's Friday-morning routine. Everyone in the company shares responsibility for cleaning the kitchen by rotating a week of cleanup duty. When it's your week to clean the kitchen, you bring in breakfast for everyone on Friday morning.

The usual fare includes bagels, fruit, and doughnuts. But every once in a while someone gets creative and motivated and actually cooks something. This week, I applauded the guy who did just that -- and he took it to the next level by actually cooking something on the stove at work (as opposed to a casserole made at home and brought in).

He made Pumpkin Oatmeal, a recipe you can get on the Food Network's site. It was great! And that got me thinking: How might I be able to replicate this in a single serving?

Wouldn't you know it, but one of my favorite sites, Fit Sugar, has just that! A recipe for a single bowl of pumpkin oatmeal. I have pumpkin puree in my freezer left over from when I baked a pumpkin last fall, and that's exactly what I'm going to use. I think it's going to be wonderful. What a great way to jazz up a bowl of oatmeal -- and clear out the freezer at the same time.


Camera: Canon 40D with 60mm macro lens and 430EX Speedlite, 1/125s, f/4 at ISO 640

140/365 Breakfast: Green smoothie

Do not be afraid.

You're only seeing this through your computer screen, so it can't get you.

I mentioned that I've been working with a nutritionist recently. Well, one of her first recommendations for me was that I should try to eat a serving of greens at every meal. I like green vegetables -- spinach, broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, lettuce, kale -- so it sounded like a task I could easily take on.

But then, in practice, I struggled with one meal: breakfast. Beyond adding spinach to my eggs, I had a hard time coming up with other ideas. The thought of having a salad for breakfast doesn't exactly make me want to jump out of bed in the morning.

Thankfully, there are some really tasty green juices on the market. Then I started thinking, what if I made my own? That's got to be better, right? I don't own a juicer (and don't plan to buy one any time soon), so that brings me to smoothies instead.

Time to experiment.

I've put my blender through its paces, trying multiple combinations of ingredients on my own, but they all fell a little short. While drinkable, they weren't yummy. And forgive me, but I want my breakfast to be yummy.

Google "green smoothie" and you'll get hundreds of recipes. Since my personal experiments weren't measuring up, I decided to pick one and give it a try. I landed on the "Classic Green Monster" from Oh She Glows. Short list of ingredients, easy to adapt. Cross your fingers...

It's great! And worth repeating! Woohoo!

My version uses So Delicious Coconut Milk, one frozen banana, two handfuls baby spinach, ground flax seeds, and my new favorite Alton Brown cashew butter. Blend it up, and voila! You get a bright green smoothie that is really tasty. And trust me, the banana and cashew butter are the dominant flavors. The spinach mainly adds color and nutrients.

While it may remind you of the clip below, I encourage you to be brave, find the fun of your inner child who likes the idea of drinking bright green smoothies, and give it a whirl!



Camera: Canon 40D with 60mm macro lens and 430EX Speedlite, 1/125s, f/4 at ISO 640