Homemade Granola.

A long time ago, in a far away land, I made my own granola and absolutely loved it. Through the years I lost the recipe I'd used. I think it was last year that I tried making granola again, using a recipe I'd found that seemed close to what I remembered. The recipe was one that required the ingredients be laid out on pans in the oven, timed, stirred, and baked again. Not realizing that I'd not set the timer, the granola burned and I lost interest in trying again.

I recently came across a post at Fake Plastic Fish wherein Beth explained how she'd gotten a new-to-her crockpot wondering what she might make in it. Calimama from Compact By Design offered a recipe for granola that could be made in the slow cooker. It wasn't exactly what I wanted in a granola recipe, but a great base from which to start, and I wouldn't need to worry about burning it in the oven.

So, I took 4 cups of rolled oats (all I had and even at that some of the oats were from barley) and added stuff I liked and stuff I wanted to include for health reasons. I cooked 1/2 cup of quinoa, for instance, and added it as well as a half handful of flax seeds, a half handful of sesame seeds, a half handful of sunflower seeds, a T of amaranth seeds, sweetened coconut flakes, smashed almonds, dried bananas, apples, cherries, raisins. I let it all cook on low in the crockpot for 4 hours and the house smelled wonderful the entire time.


While it cooked, I started to grow concerned about the moisture content and whether perhaps adding the cooked quinoa was a good idea. I don't remember storing granola in the refrigerator before (which doesn't mean that I didn't; only means I don't remember). This batch will definitely be stored in the frig, but not until after it cools sufficiently.


A batch of almost 4 cups of oats with all the rest fit perfectly into the empty container I'd reserved for it, and into the frig it went.

We're leaving in the morning to game in Oklahoma, so I snapped a photo of our food/compostable waste.


Under that shredded brown paper (a paper lunch bag that once held dried apple from Whole Food's bulk aisle) is almost an entire potato mashed from last night's dinner. I've been nursing what appears to be a cold virus for the past few days, so Em's done the cooking/kitchen cleanup and he didn't think we'd use it before it went bad in the frig. That mashed potato could have made potato bread or been added to fried mackerel patties ... but we already have pumpernickel and we're out of mackerel, so he probably made the right decision slapping it on the compost pile.