My First Batch of Granola

One thing I'm really trying to incorporate in my/our lives is making more of our own food -- primarily the staples. You know, like bread, jam, yogurt (non-frozen). One staple in my diet is granola. Mmmmmm... yummy, crunchy granola. *slurp* Trouble is I can go through a box every two weeks or less and the cost of granola is not cheap. So today was the day I was going to make my own.

After doing some research on-line for the perfect granola recipe, I came across one that fell into my realm of doable: doable meaning simple. In case you don't know about my history regarding cooking, I don't really enjoy it. I do enjoy baking, but baking = sweets = me eating the entire baked good in 2 days = more time at the gym to fight the fat accumulation ... and that's expending way more energy than the original baked good is worth.

The recipe I followed comes from another Blogger Orangette. She had apparently modified it from one she found in a book called Feast by Nigella Lawson. I'll look into Nigella's version maybe the next round, but for now all I can say is this batch was totally worth the energy and it came out OH. SO. GOOD.

What I dig about this recipe is that it isn't too sweet. That's something I have issues with -- so much sweetener added to the store-bought boxes of granola that it sends me (and baby-girl) into shock when I have it with my yogurt. There was a slight modification I had made to the recipe: rather than using brown rice syrup (or the original grape molasses) I just used regular molasses. That's because we shop conveniently at Giant and I didn't feel like running all over town looking for a shop that would have what the recipe called for. Perhaps next time?

Anyway, I'm quite pleased with myself and now I have enough granola to last me for over a month. YAY!! Doing so well, I am now going to purchase my yogurt making machine so I can begin making yogurt and save money there too. Need to try and get it done before baby comes so I'll have something to nibble on since I know I'll be eating like a squirrel.