I’ve blogged about this several times before, but I love making my own granola.  It’s so so much cheaper than store-bought, and is much lower in sugar and added fat.  The amount of oil and butter in those packages can be astounding, for something that is supposed to be healthy.

My basic recipe for granola is here.

You’ll notice that it isn’t so much a recipe, but more of a method.  There are 4parts to the method.

Step 1:  The Glaze*

Mix together brown sugar, peanut butter, maple syrup (or other liquid sweetener), vanilla extract and a splash of non-dairy milk.  Microwave it for about 30 seconds, so the sugar dissolves. Then mix in spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, whatever you like.  A dash of salt really brings out the flavors.  You should have a pourable mixture that is neither runny nor clumpy.  The consistency of honey is what you’re going for.  (Sorry, can’t think of a vegan comparison here!)

Step 2: The Oats

Add rolled oats to the glaze mixture.  Just grab a 1/4 cup measure and stir after each addition.  You want the oats to be nicely coated with the glaze mixture, but not soaked.  If you’d like to toast any nuts or coconut you are adding to the granola, add that in now.  I also like to add some ground flax seeds at this point.

Step 3:  Baking

Preheat your oven to 350 and bake for about 20 minutes or so.  Stir every 5 minutes and keep a close eye on it, as it tends to go from golden brown to black in a relatively short period of time.

Once it is golden, take it out of the oven and let it cool.  At this point, I refrain from stirring it because I like the granola to be chunky, but if you like more individual pieces of oats in your granola, by all means stir away.

Step 4:  Mix-Ins

After the granola is cooled, add any dried fruits (raisins, cranberries, dates) or nuts (almonds, pecans, walnuts, hazelnuts) to the mix.

Done!

Eat it as cereal, sprinkle over vegan ice cream or yogurt, or eat it by the handful.  Throw in some pretzel sticks and chocolate chips and you have homemade trail mix for hikes.  It’s a very versatile recipe

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A note about the glaze: You’ll notice that I use nut butter in my granola recipes.  This is so that I can cut down on added fat in the granola.  Yes, nut butters are still high in fats, but I prefer them to oil or butter because they also add flavor to the granola.  If I’m going to be adding something high in fat, I want to be able to taste it and enjoy it at least.  I don’t get any flavor from oil or butter in granola.

Granola is so easy and cheap to make.  It costs a ton of money at the grocery store, which boggles my mind.  I’m sharing my “recipe” for granola in the style of my bruschetta recipe from this post.

Homemade Granola

Ingredients:

• Organic rolled oats
• Almond butter or peanut butter
• Maple Syrup
• Vanilla extract
• Soymilk
• Oil
• Cinnamon
• Sliced almonds
• Coconut
• Dried fruit (I like cranberries and raisins)

Directions:

Preheat toaster oven to 350.  Place a big scoop of almond or peanut butter in a large mixing bowl.  Add a few tablespoons of maple syrup, tiny bit of oil, a capful of vanilla extract, and a few drops of soymilk.  You’re making the glaze here, so it should be sort of thick, but not too thick that it won’t easily coat the oats.  Next add in 3-4 handfuls of rolled oats, a handful each of coconut and almonds.  Add a sprinkle of cinnamon.  Stir until all of the oats are coated with some of the glaze.  Add more oats if the glaze pools at the bottom of the bowl.

Before baking

Place in a baking dish, spreading as evenly as possible.  Bake for 20-25 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes.  Watch it like a hawk, as it tends to burn easily.  Once everything looks golden and it smells divine, remove to cool.  Stir in dried fruit.  Store in an airtight container.

Baked granola

Notes:

I have found that granola is more a method than a recipe.  Don’t stress about the amounts of ingredients.  As long as you don’t completely saturate the oat mixture (it should not resemble cooked oatmeal at any point in this process), it’s going to turn out fine.

Experiment with the wet to dry mixture ratio.  Some people like clumpy, sweet granola, some people like it more crispy and individual pieces.

Have fun playing around with different flavor combinations!

Oats are really cheap, so even if you burn it or it comes out weird, you’ve learned something from the experience and aren’t out much $!

Since I’m still new at this blogging thing, I thought I’d try a different approach to posting.   Here is a fairly random sampling of food that I’ve made and eaten over the past couple of weeks!

First up: A Green Smoothie

Green Smoothie

I bought a bunch of spinach at the farmers market (an entire plastic grocery bag full!) and decided to use some up in smoothies before it went bad.  Green smoothies are great, just add everything you usually like in a smoothie and chuck in a handful of spinach!  You can’t taste the spinach at all.  This one had banana, yogurt, soymilk, and some blueberries.

Next up is a typical breakfast.

Oatmeal with half a banana mashed in and homemade granola, yogurt, blueberries and flax seeds on top.  It’s getting a bit hot out for oatmeal these days though.  More recently I’ve been having cereal or yogurt.

Some weekends I really make an effort to make a bunch of food to take for lunches during the week.  Here’s photo documentation of it   First I made Spaghetti and Bean Balls from the vegan bible cookbook Veganomicon.

I topped the bean balls with some shredded vegan mozzarella cheese.  I’ve tried a bunch of vegan cheeses, and I have to say that I’d rather just go without rather than eat “fake” cheese.  The texture and the flavor are just not satisfying at all.  I thought I’d swoon over Teese and I was disappointed, and FYH was a little bit worse.  Bummer.

I’d show you the final product, but the pictures came out pretty bad.  Basically I cooked some whole wheat pasta, topped it with some of the red sauce, some of the bean balls, and a bit of sauteed zucchini.

I also took advantage of my oven space, since it was already on and made some Chickpea Cutlets, also from Veganomicon.

Chickpea Cutlets

These are awesome to make in advance, and are great on top of salads, pasta, or in sandwiches during the week.  My favorite way to have them is to reheat them in the toaster oven, slather them with Franks Red Hot, and chow down with some yogurty dipping sauce.  Who needs chicken wings??