Will's blog

My mother made great granola growing up. I think she got the recipe from her mother. I know my sister makes it, too--it's good stuff.

I keep losing the recipe, though, so I figured I'd post it in my blog. I'm not an aspiring chef, this isn't my hobby, and I don't watch the Food Channel. So... this is probably a once-only recipe blogging experience.

• 4 cups - rolled oats
• 1 1/2 cups - shredded unsweetened coconut ¹
• 1 cup - wheat germ
• 1 cup - chopped nuts ²
• 1 cup - unsalted hulled sunflower seeds
• 1/2 cup - sesame seeds

• 1 cup - honey
• 1 cup - oil ³
• 1 teaspoon - vanilla extract

[1] - I find it difficult to find shredded unsweetened coconut in the grocery store, but I can usually find it at a gormet, organic, or health food store pretty easily. On the flip side, I don't get around to frequenting those kinds of stores often, so I just go with the shredded sweetened coconut. YMMV.

[2] - Walnuts, pecans, and almonds are fine. I haven't tried other kinds of nuts, but I think most nuts will do.

[3] - Vegetable oil is good. I think it'd probably be fine with sesame seed oil and some of the other oils. Olive oil is probably a bad choice since it's got a pretty distinct non-granola flavour.

1. Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees. I don't follow this step... I heat the oven to 300 degrees. However, when I moved in my oven had no markings on the dial so I wrote them in with a Sharpie and it's not clear to me that my markings match up with reality. YMMV, but the key is not to burn your granola.
2. Mix all the dry ingredients in a big bowl. Sometimes I throw other stuff in, too--whatever I have lying around: flax seeds, wire-cut oats, extra sesame seeds, ...
3. Heat the honey in a small pot and mix in the oil and the vanilla. You just have to heat it enough such that the honey and oil mix.
4. Mix it all in the big bowl.
5. Spoon the granola onto a couple of baking pans that are 1 inch deep and like 9x13. If they're cookie sheets you're going to have a hell of a time stirring the granola--it'll get everywhere.
6. Spread the granola out so that it's not too thick anywhere.
7. Put the pans in the oven.
8. Every 5 to 10 minutes, take the pans out of the oven, stir the granola around and then put them back in. I swap which pan is on top and which is on bottom because my oven is hotten on the bottom than the top. Bake for no more than 30 minutes total.
9. Your granola is done when it's toasty brown. Your granola is overdone if it's dark brown and/or black.
10. I take it out, leave the pans on the stove to cool, and do some other stuff for 45 minutes. Then I take a spatula, break up the granola, and in the messiest possible way pour it into large yogurt containers.

Sometimes I throw in dried fruit like raisens in.

That's it!

Back in the day I used to buy my lunch from one of the surrounding sub shops. That worked pretty well--it was \$5.00 a day or so and it guaranteed me a meal that sufficed to get me through the day.

Recently, I started to think about the economics involved:

     5      dollars a day
  *  5      days a week
  * 50      weeks a year (roughly factors in holidays and vacations)
 -----
 1,250

I figure that I can make my own sandwiches and cut that cost at least in half. Thus I started to bring my own lunch most of the time.

The other day I bought Pepperidge Farms Sweet Buttermilk bread since it looked pretty substantial. However, I discovered a sandwich made using this bread is not unlike eating two spoonfuls of peanut butter and two spoonfuls of jelly. A sandwich is not a sandwich when the bread part of the sandwich is rather insubstantial.