Basic Granola Recipe

Basic Granola Recipe

Use the ingredients as a guideline, choosing the kind of nuts, spices, sweeteners and dried fruits that make you happy.

Ingredients

o    5 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

o    1 3/4 cups raw nuts or seeds, chopped into small pieces (pecans, walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, hemp seeds etc)

o    3/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut 

o  1 1/2 txp ground ginger

o   1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

o    1/2 teaspoon sea salt

o    ¾ cup combined of liquid sweeteners (honey, maple syrup, agave syrup, molasses)

o    ¼ cup melted coconut oil 

o    1/4 cup finely chopped candied ginger

o   2/3 dried fruit (cranberries, raisoin, apple etc) (optional)

Directions

Preheat oven to 300F. Combine dry ingredients in a medium-sized bowl and mix thoroughly. In a separate bowl, combine melted coconut oil and syrups and microwave until warm, about 45 seconds. Whisk quickly to mix the oil and syrups and then pour into bowl of dry ingredients.  Mix with a wooden spoon until oats are evenly coated. 

Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper and spread out the granola over both sheets with a spatula. Bake for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 to ensure even baking. When done, stir once while granola cools on the cookie sheets and add in dried fruit and candied ginger. When completely cool, store in an airtight container.

Split Black Matpe Beans

I was out exploring the ethnic food aisles and came across a bag of split black matpe beans.  These are new to me and look quite a bit like lentils but what really piqued my interest was the nutrition label on the back. Take a gander:

That 52 grams of protein, 28% of daily calcium and 87% of iron seems pretty incredible, and although I can't imagine sitting and eating the cooked equivalent of  1 cup of dried beans all in one sitting, with numbers like that it's worth trying to put these beans to use.  Unfortunately, the internet seems woefully unacknowledging of this little bean. So it's time to experiment.

I've started with 3 cups of the dried beans and soaked overnight.  The beans are white with a greenish-black husk.  In the morning I rinsed these through a wire mesh.  The beans are small and took quite a bit of rinsing. I added them to a pot and covered them with a couple of inches of water an set to boil.  Boiled for 10 minutes and simmered for another 50 before I was sure the beans were cooked enough.  Finally, I thoroughly rinsed the beans with cold water and measured.  The three cups of dried beans yielded eight cups of cooked beans.  Well, that's a lot more than I expected.    So I took two cups out and pureed them in blender.  The rest went in the fridge for later experiments.

Next up, experimenting with turning these beans into cookies.

Wholewheat Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

I’ve been on a quest to find a home made equivalent to chewy granola bars. Something to go in the kid’s lunches to provide some extra energy for the afternoon and hopefully they won’t notice some whole grains or miss the marshmallows. I like the way these cookies turned out. High in fibre (for a cookie), chewy and a bit of a nutty flavour.

Mix together in a small bowl:

3/4 cup ground oatmeal
1 cup wholewheat flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt


In another bowl, beat together:
1 egg
4 Tablespoons soft butter
4 Tablespoons canola oil
1/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla


Add the dry ingredients and beat just until combined.  Then mix in

 1 cup Chocolate Chips.

Drop by rounded teaspoons onto a parchment lined cookie sheet and bake at 350 F for 12 minutes.  Cool on a wire rack.  Makes about 28 cookies.

To make the ground oatmeal, I just whirred some regular oatmeal in my miniblender.