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Monday, February 02, 2015

Cinnamon Chia Seed Granola

I'm back on my yogurt and granola for breakfast kick. I have very specific preferences when it comes to this daily meal. I use one kind of yogurt (and when the grocery store is out of it on our weekly shopping trip, I get GRUMPY) and one kind of granola. The granola is expensive though, so I am constantly thinking I should make some at home that would be ideally cheaper and lower in calories. My preferred brand is pretty calorie-rich (perhaps why it is so darn tasty).

I had oats and chia seeds in the house, so I googled to find a simple recipe that didn't call for fruits or nuts (a big granola no-no, in my opinion). I found this one and decided to whip up a batch. After all, it was categorized as "quick and easy." I like both of those words.

I measured out the dry ingredients as per the recipe and added a pinch of salt (because, well, I like salt). When it came to the wet ingredients, things got a bit rocky. I misread the recipe and put in double the oil. Oops. Although I used half vegetable oil and half olive oil, so I don't feel bad about it. I'm a firm believer in the goodness of olive oil. Then when I pulled the honey out of the cupboard I discovered it was solid and no amount of running it under hot water was changing that. So I abandoned the un-squeezable honey and went for the organic white Hawaiian honey, which exists in a lovely creamy solid state naturally. I figured if I had to deal with solid honey, I might as well use the good stuff. Of course, this made mixing it a real pain in the butt. After it'd been baking about 6 minutes and the honey was thoroughly melted I gave it another good stir. Problem solved.





As you can see from the third picture, the recipe doesn't produce a ton of granola. And in this case, that's probably just as well. Because it's just not as good as the stuff I buy at the store. I will eat it as a snack, but I can't see substituting it for my regular, much-loved granola. For one thing, I don't think I'm really a nutmeg person. So if I made it again, I'd definitely try leaving that out. Also, the brand I buy doesn't have ANY seasonings, so I probably should have predicted that would be a problem. However, this granola is tasty. Just not tasty enough, I guess.

3 comments:

Smellyann said...

It SOUNDS good, and the pictures look appetizing, but if you don't like it, then boo. What's wrong with fruits and nuts in granola? How do you feel about chocolate chips? ;)

a/k/a Nadine said...

I think I prefer my tastes separate. I like dried fruits and I love chocolate chips, but I don't want them all mixed together.

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

MMMmmm, sounds yummmmmmy! I had a lot of granola while camping--sprinkled it on top of my regular cereal at breakfast. Tried a bunch of no gluten kinds.