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.