The granola incident

Some of you may have heard about my granola. I talked about it a lot there for awhile. More than is strictly necessary for granola. This is a post I wrote way back at the begining of the summer, but I didn't get the photo's uploaded until now.

See the thing is, I hate granola. No really, I really hate it. It is too sweet. It is too expensive. It hogs all the milk. It always has wheat in it. It's just gross.
Then we made a ginormous batch of the stuff for Firemaker this year. We spent hours filling bowls, mixing it with hands covered in honey and oil, baking it in huge ovens. It was a lot of fun.
But...I was still set against liking granola. You see, it's gross.
At Firemaker, that first day, I felt like I should at least give our granola the benefit of the doubt (I helped make it after all). I'll just have a little bit.
Hey...this is kinda yummy. I'll have granola again today. And today. Mmmm, yogurt. Extra sesame seeds. Ok. I like THIS granola.
The second day after I got back from Firemaker I made myself a small batch. Good. I eat it every single morning, with yogurt and milk. Chris inevitable becomes jealous of the lazy morning food that I have and asks me if he can get in on the next batch.
Ok. We'll make a double batch I say.
The shopping for the granola is epic. It takes us all day long to procure all the ingredients. This is because I want this to be worth it financially, so we go to a million stores. I go across town to buy coconut oil. I buy almonds here but raisins there. I not sure Chris thinks it is worth it.

I mix it all up (a quadruple batch)...




I sit for hour upon hour in front of the hot stove on a hot day, turning batch after batch of granola every five minutes (while reading a historical novel about the search for Vlad the Impaler, the originator of the Dracula legend).



Finally, it is all mixed, baked, cooled, and jarred.
Chris wanta me to write that his had arsenic in it instead of raisins. I don't know why.
It's a fuck of a lot of granola. And it is fabulous!!


The Granola

6 cups rolled oats
1 cup almonds
1 cup flax
1 cup sesame seeds
1/2 sunflower seeds
1 cup honey
1 cup coconut oil (extra virgin)
1 cup raisins

Mix first 5 ingredients together. Add honey and oil and mix in through with hands until all ingredients are covered. Bake in a 300 degree oven for 15-30 minutes, turning the granola with a spatula every 5 minutes until golden brown. Don't burn it (it is easy to do and tastes disgusting). Cool. Add raisins. Jar. Enjoy.
I like mine with plain yogurt and milk. Either bites of yogurt with every spoonful, or a granola soup (depends on how my day is going).



Postscript; several days later Chris cleans the entire kitchen. He tells me later that any time he started to feel resentful at doing all those dishes he would get this image in his head of me sitting in front of the hot oven for a whole day, making him granola...