Granola

By now I think everyone knows I'm moving.  One of the biggest hassles for me is trying to use up all the food I have in the house.  Yes, the movers will pack and take some, but we are only allowed a certain weight allowance and I would rather move fabric than canned goods!  I was trying to empty out my freezer and came across a lot of nuts.  I had walnuts, pecans, and almonds.  I went online to one of my favorite sites:  allrecipes.com and typed in the nuts I had in the search box.  They have a neat search where you can type in any ingredients you have and it will pop up recipes that use them.  My results included this granola recipe. 

I have never successfully made granola before.  I once tried making my own granola bars and they burned.  However, I read through the recipe and thought I could make it.  I did make some changes, though.  That is actually one of my pet peeves:  people who try a recipe but change it and then don't like the results.  You may have read some reviews (another great feature of allrecipes) like this "I made this and don't understand why it gets such good reviews.  I left out the sugar and used canola oil instead of butter and it just tastes terrible."  Ha ha.  My changes were made based on ingredient availablility.  I was making this to use up stuff, not buy more!

I saw that it called for 8 cups of rolled oats.  A scan of my pantry revealed "quick cooking oats" and there wasn't 8 cups--more like 5.  I put that in the bowl.  Next was the wheat germ.  I had a full jar of that!  It didn't call for a full jar, though.  Next was oat bran.  I didn't have that so I used all my wheat germ.  I needed 3 cups total of the germ and bran but there wasn't that much in the jar, maybe a little over 2 cups?  I also had sunflower nuts, a bit more than one cup but I was short on the other so I put them all in.  The rest of the dry ingredients were nuts so I got mine out and started chopping.  I had more than a cup of the almonds and walnuts but not a full cup of pecans.  I also had macadamia nuts (it is Hawaii after all) so I chopped some of them, too.  I was pretty generous with the nuts because I wanted to use them up and I was still short on volume.  I looked through my pantry again to see if I had anything else and discovered a full bag of shredded, unsweetened coconut.  I thought it would be perfect, so I poured the whole thing in.  By now I thought I had enough dry ingredients.  Onto the wet.

Half a cup of brown sugar was easy, as was the cup of oil.  I ran into another problem with the honey and maple syrup.  The recipe calls for 1/4 cup maple syrup and 3/4 cup honey.  (one cup total)  I ended up using about a third cup of honey and the rest in syrup (oh, I used real maple syrup, not the pancake stuff).  I followed the rest of the directions but I ended up doubling the oven time.  It didn't look "toasty" enough to me when I stirred at the required time.  I just stirred it every 7 minutes or so until it looked the right color to me.

The results were absoluely delicious!  It isn't "hard" like purchased granola, but plenty crunchy and crisp.  It wasn't too oily or sweet, either, and the amount of cinnamon was just right too--I don't care for it to be overwhelming.  I expect it is so good becasue I was very generous with the "good (expensive) stuff--the nuts) and stinted on the oat bran!  Anyway, we will have no problem eating it all and I was very pleased to use up so much stuff!

Mmm--so "ono" (the Hawaiian word for yummy!)

Aloha,
JoAnne