Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Granola mama

I found this post about granola and remembered my mom making it when I was young.

I decided to give it a go, making a few adjustments to my liking. Here is what I came up with for our family. What's great is that you can add pretty much anything to it.

Granola
3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
2/3 cup sliced almonds
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup flax seed
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter
6 tablespoons honey

Preheat oven to 325°F.

In a large bowl stir together dry ingredients. In a small saucepan melt butter with honey over low heat, stirring. Pour butter mixture over oat mixture and stir until combined well.

In a large jelly-roll pan spread granola evenly and bake in middle of oven, stirring halfway through baking, until golden brown, about 15 minutes. Cool granola in pan on a rack and stir in dried fruits. Granola may be kept in an airtight container at cool room temperature 2 weeks.

*I cooked much longer than she suggested. 8-10 minutes, turn. 8-10 more minutes, turn. Then 5 more minutes and done. You will have to adjust based on your oven's temp.

I also decided to give her muffins a try. Coming from Barefoot Contessa, who could go wrong. It's been a while since I've used white flour and white sugar. Needless to say, they were delicious and not particularly good for the waistline.

The granola has given me some inspiration in the snack department too.
Plain Yogurt
Honey or Agave nectar
Granola
Blueberries (Lily's favorite, any berry will work)

Happy granola making!

4 comments:

Jenny said...

It is very yummy! I had some in some yogurt last week.

Thanks, Kate! ;o)

amanda said...

sounds yummy friend.

i have yogurt and granola every morning for breakfast - i guess i should learn how to make my own huh?

although the muffins are what i would like to eat every morning instead :)

Jen said...

Hi there! I am just a lurker, but I've been away from my computer for about a week, so I'm just getting caught up on your beautiful girls.

I have a (maybe) suggestion for Lily's medicines. I'm not a mom, but I have a little sister who was diagnosed with asthma at a very young age. She had to do a breathing machine with 3-5 treatments a day. This machine was loud, the mask was ugly, and the air in the mask smelled funny. That's all she knew about this stuff (about age 2), so mom had to make it about something different. She had to make it minimize the bad stuff. So, my sister got to do something every day during her breathing time that she didn't get to do the rest of the day. For a while, it was playdoh. That moved on to coloring with markers (sitting at the kitchen counter, this was safe!). Later came working on a special puzzle or reading a brand new book.

I don't know if Lily has to be on a machine or if it is just an inhaler right now. These are just things that worked for my sister, thought I'd pass them along.

PS: As the big sister, it was pretty fun to play along, color along, and practice my reading!

kate said...

Thanks for the suggestion Jen. I'm always up for more ideas. She is still on the just he inhaler, but we did have the machine for a while. (not much fun :() Thanks again.