Granola goes way back. It makes you think of the birkenstock people, the hippies, the natural world embracing types. Granola is not only their food of choice but a fitting adjective: Madison’s grandmother smuggled weed in her bra to Woodstock back in the day, how granola!

The granola set wisely held tight to unprocessed, natural foods during the latter half of the twentieth century while the rest of us were eating Wonder bread. The virtue of the whole grain has since fallen back into the favor of nutritional scientists. Grain is refined by the removal of two outer layers. Because these layers contain fiber, phytochemicals, and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals), processing a whole grain into a refined grain renders it less nutritionally useful.

Whole grains, particularly oats, have been touted as a cholesterol lowering food. It’s with that in mind that I embraced granola, in a desperate ploy to keep the statins at bay. Supermarket granola left a lot to be desired. The cereal aisle granola, if you can find it, in the wry irony of modern food is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. And the natural foods section offers ridiculously overpriced options that are quite often stale. So I delightfully joined the granola set and learned to make my own!

Granola is easy and very cheap to make. Rolled oats can be found for two dollars a pound but the bulk section of your supermarket will have it for less. If you like to customize your food you will love granola because the variety of ingredients you can come up with is infinite.

Whole grain goodness!

Here is the template of granola: grains, nuts, dried fruit, sweetener, and optionally a source of fat. I like to use rolled oats and puffed rice, but also consider puffed corn, rolled barley, kashi, puffed wheat. Pretty much any nut will do. Dried fruit is the most expressive part of granola and often the most expensive. You can omit the fruit if you’re on a budget but raisins are always an inexpensive option. Fancier granola may include dried blueberries, cranberries, cherries, apricots. I’ve found honey to be the best sweetener because of its consistency but you can use maple syrup, fruit juice, or brown sugar. Some recommend using vegetable oil as the fat but I don’t; nut butter is much tastier and if you add enough it will help the granola form in satisfying clumps (if you wish.)

Dried cherries.

So, go granola with me! Below is my favorite recipe with my favorite proportions but by all means, experiment!

6 cups grain — three cups rolled oats, 1 cup quick barley (not technically a whole grain but I like it), 2 cups puffed brown rice

1 cup nuts — chopped pecans

1/2 cup flaxseed (optional)

1 cup dried fruit — dried cherries

1/3 cup sweetener — honey

1/3 cup fat — cashew butter

pinch of salt

1. Preheat oven to 300 degree fahrenheit. In a large bowl, stir together the grains and nuts. Spread the mixture out on two cookie sheets and bake in the oven for 15 minutes. Remove and cool.

2. Put the mixture back in the bowl and stir in the dried fruit and pinch of salt.

3. Slowly drizzle on honey and nut butter. It helps a lot if you spray your measuring cup with nonstick spray first, and heating both the honey and nut butter helps them drizzle. Stir liberally with a wooden spoon until the grains are completely coated.

4. Try not to eat all of it at once!

This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 7:01 am and is filed under Vegetarian, Grains. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.