DIY Granola: It's Easy!

Granola's hot! And you don't have to break the bank to buy it and worry that it's filled with everything you're trying to avoid--like too much fat, sugar, salt and gluten. The solution? Make it yourself. It's really easy. But first a little history. I find it fascinating, but if you don't, skip to the recipe at the end!

Once maligned as sixties hippy food for "crunchy" liberal types, granola, according to FoodReference.com, traces its lineage back to one health-conscious doctor/nutritionist/would-be Presbyterian minister called Sylvester Graham, an early 19th century evangelist for vegetarianism and inventor of the graham cracker.
Later that century, another health-conscious doctor used graham flour to create twice-baked "health" food he called "granula," which John Harvey Kellogg of Corn Flakes fame, a Seventh Day Adventist who ran a sanitarium in Battle Creek, Mich., turned into a baked, ground whole grain product renamed "granola."

Fast forward to the 1960s when granola as we know it came to be. Some link that resurgence to the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Festival, which drew 400,000 people to a farm in upstate New York--and where massive amounts of granola were served. Out of this watershed rock 'n' roll moment emerged a recipe for Sunshine Happy Hippy Granola, which isn't all that much different than the recipe below.

Okay. Enough time travel. Back to 2015. Granola seems to have shed its hippy image and simply become hip--and expensive. I've seen prices ranging from $3.99 a pound for bulk granola to $12.99 a pound for a "gourmet" version.

At the top of the price pyramid are gluten-free, non-GMO, organic and/or locally sourced varieties with a range of fancy-sounding names that sound like cookies, cakes or hot drinks and display a knack for creative marketing and packaging ideas. But you can easily make something similar--maybe even better--for less money with less sugar and more of the ingredients that appeal to you and none of the ones that don't. I can't promise that this granola is low in calories--it's not, so watch your portions. And it does include some sweeteners and oil (and you can experiment with adding even less). But it's full of healthy protein, fiber, omega-3, cholesterol-fighting oats and a variety of vitamins and minerals.

My recipe is basically a blank canvas that you can paint to suit your own tastes. Use one kind of nut or several--or none. Use any seeds you prefer--or none. Use agave instead of honey and maple syrup, coconut oil in place of olive. Leave out some oil or the egg white and stir in a tablespoon of pureed pumpkin or peanut butter instead. It's gluten-free if you use the right kind of oats and vegan if you omit the egg white.

After the granola is baked to a golden crisp, I add about a cup of dried fruit and other mix-ins. The range of choices is broad. I usually add currants or raisins, mini chocolate chips and sour cherries or cranberries. Sometimes I mix in dried blueberries or Trader Joe's Golden Berry Blend. But you can go tropical with candied pineapple or dried mango--or try candied ginger and banana chips. The possibilities are infinite--or you can just leave out the fruit and chips and cut some of the calories.

Granola Breakfast Cookies, inspired by a recipe from The Two Bite Club,
using homemade granola in place of store-bought.

Recipes from two food blogs, Food52 and Bon Appetit, served as my inspiration. I wanted to reduce the fat and sugar while retaining the fresh, crunchy sweetness that makes granola so appealing when mixed with milk or yogurt, sprinkled over ice cream or an apple crisp, or used as a muffin topper or a cookie or energy bar ingredient. The  recipe calls for one egg white, though I have used two when the oats and nuts seemed in need of more liquid. I usually mix the egg white in with the other liquid ingredients. This allows me to use less oil. In theory, it also helps the mixture to "clump" a little more than usual when it bakes in the oven, attaining the clusters so prized by granola lovers. Unfortunately, this hasn't worked for me, probably because I stir the granola every 10 minutes or so to attain even browning. Another method I read about for "clumpifying" is to stir in the beaten egg white right before putting the mixture in the oven, then refraining from stirring. I'm afraid this would lead to burnt granola in my oven. However, every oven is different, so do experiment. After all, that's the fun of making granola--and cooking in general!

Fresh batch of granola--not much clumping, but lots of crunch!

Honey Maple Granola

(Makes 7-8 cups)

Ingredients:

3 cups rolled oats*

1 1/2 cups nuts (I used 1/2 each of walnuts, pecans and sliced almonds)

1 cup unsweetened flaked coconut

1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds

1/2 cup raw pumpkin seeds

1/4 cup sesame seeds 

2 tablespoons chia or hemp seeds--or a combination (optional)

1/4 cup olive oil (or canola or liquid coconut oil)

1/4 cup maple syrup

1/4 cup honey

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 egg white (large egg)

1 teaspoon vanilla

3/4 teaspoon kosher or sea salt

1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon*

3/4 cup-1 cup dried fruit (optional)

1/4 cup-1/2 cup mini chocolate chips (optional)

*Use certified gluten-free oats if you're gluten-sensitive. (Trader Joe's and Bob's Red Mill are two brands I like.)
**Feel free to substitute or add other spices, such as ginger, nutmeg or cardamom, depending on your taste and mix-ins.

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Grease or spread parchment on a rimmed cookie sheet (12-by-17-inch pan works well).

2. Mix oats, nuts, coconut and seeds together in a large bowl.

3. In a small bowl, stir together oil, maple syrup, honey, brown sugar, egg white and vanilla. Add to the oats mixture and stir until the liquid is well mixed in.

4. Stir in salt and cinnamon or other spices.

5. Spread the granola evenly in the pan, patting it down with a rubber spatula to make sure the thickness is fairly uniform. If you prefer, you can divide the mixture between two cookie sheets, making a thinner layer of granola. If you do it this way, you will need to check it more often in the oven, as it will bake more quickly and could easily burn.

6. Check the granola every 10 or 15 minutes, turning it carefully with a metal spatula to make sure that it's browning evenly. Flip the pan back to front halfway through. When it's done, in about 50 minutes to an hour, it will be golden brown.

7. Cool for a few minutes in the pan on a wire rack. Then add dried fruit and/or chips. Granola keeps in an airtight container for about two weeks or in the freezer for up to three months. If you freeze it, leave out the dried fruit and add it later.

Crazy About Oats

I've been having fun with oats this week--making hot oatmeal with both rolled and steel-cut varieties; putting together overnight concoctions with raw ingredients in Mason jars; mixing up batches of granola and muesli; and finally making a couple of loaves of oatmeal bread with some leftover cooked oats. I'm still jazzed about this once humble grain that seems to have metamorphosed into a new superfood.

I started on this project courtesy of my friend Cherry, who shared a recipe for an overnight oatmeal that she said had helped reduce her levels of unhealthy cholesterol. Then another friend sent me her recipe for oatmeal with almond butter, nonfat yogurt and fresh fruit. My little (new and improved!) brain started to tick.

My ties to oatmeal go way back. One of my early food memories is of my mother stirring a pot of the thick, beige stuff with a wooden spoon. She used old-fashioned Quaker Oats from the trademark red and blue canister with the smiling, black-hatted, white-haired gent on the front. A native of Glasgow, Scotland, Mom often served oatmeal, which she called porridge, with a little milk and sugar, plus raisins if we wanted (I wanted!). I still eat it that way, though sometimes I add other dried fruits, a few roasted nuts and some maple syrup.

These days Quaker has lots of competition. Oats--particularly the steel-cut variety and those labeled gluten-free and/or organic--continue to grow in popularity, with their health benefits topping the list of why many people choose to include them in their diets, especially for breakfast. An article in Medical News Today notes that oats are particularly rich in a type of fiber known to help lower the levels of LDL cholesterol, the so-called "bad cholesterol" that collects in our arteries and leads to strokes and heart attacks. Other studies have shown that adding whole-grain foods such as oats to our diets may reduce the risks of colorectal cancer. One benefit I've found is that oats are so filling (must be all that fiber!) that I don't really get hungry again for hours after consuming a bowl of oatmeal.

For Cherry, it's oatmeal's cholesterol-fighting properties that are the attraction. She's been dealing with high cholesterol numbers for several years. Slender, fit and a longtime vegetarian, she says the issue is primarily genetic. Her father died at 57 after suffering a stroke, and her older brother contends with life-threatening cardiovascular disease.  "My life's at stake," she told me.

My friend is experiencing some success in fighting genetics and high cholesterol by changing her diet. "My labs went up and down through the years, so it isn't just oatmeal that helped," she explained in an email. "It was the combination of decreasing my intake of fried foods, desserts, and increasing my exercise routine, plus more water." Cherry, a former nurse, said her levels of the "bad" LDL cholesterol dipped from 115 in 2013 to 75 in 2015. An LDL level below 100 is desirable, she said.

One of Cherry's friends attended a cooking class at Whole Foods and gave her a recipe for an oatmeal, fruit and nut concoction that sits in a jar overnight and is ready to eat in the morning. No cooking required. Apparently overnight oatmeal is all the rage right now. I found pages and pages of recipes when I did a search on Pinterest.

Cherry's recipe requires a bit of work--and expense--to gather the ingredients. But if you shop the bulk bins, you can buy just the amount you need and cut the costs way down. I recently bought organic rolled oats at Whole Foods for $1.69 a pound (the steel-cut variety was $1.79 a pound), far less than comparable packaged products. Dried fruit and nuts can also be purchased in small quantities from the same bulk bins. The spices really add a lot of flavor to the recipe and have many reported health benefits. For instance, antioxidants in cinnamon have been linked to lower inflammation. Chia seeds, another popular superfood known for its omega-3 fats and fiber, is an optional ingredient in this recipe.

Ingredients for overnight oatmeal.

The recipe is also gluten-free (assuming you buy gluten-free oats)* and vegan--and quite delicious, especially with some added fresh fruit. Enjoy!

Overnight Oatmeal

Ingredients: 

  

1/2 cup raw oatmeal (rolled or quick variety)

1 tablespoon seeds, such as chia, pumpkin or hemp

1 tablespoon unsweetened, shredded coconut

1 tablespoon sliced almonds, chopped

1 tablespoon walnuts, chopped

1 tablespoon pistachio nuts, chopped

2 tablespoons dried Calimyrna figs or dates, chopped*

2 tablespoons raisins

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

1 cup non-dairy milk (preferably almond milk)

1 teaspoon honey or agave syrup

Notes:

*Oats are naturally gluten-free but cross-contamination

 from other grains can occur, so if you have celiac

disease or are otherwise gluten-intolerant, it's better

to buy oats that are certified gluten-free.

**You can use a combination or another dried fruit.

Directions:

1. Mix oatmeal, nuts, dried fruit and spices in a Mason jar or other container with a secure lid.  You can make 2 or more jars at a time.

2. Add almond milk and honey or agave to the jar and shake it vigorously. Put the jar in the refrigerator overnight.

3. The next day add a little more milk, as the mixture may be quite thick. 

4.  Options: If you're like me and prefer your morning cereal warmed up, you can zap the mixture briefly in a microwave or take the chill off it in a saucepan. You can also add fresh fruit or more nuts if you like to the finished product to perk up the flavor. I threw in a few fresh blueberries and a chopped, roasted almonds.

Skillet Cornbread

There's something about cooking in a skillet that makes me think of miners kicking back at the end of a long day while supper sizzles in a cast-iron pot over an open fire. Living in the middle of a large metropolis, I don't do much panning for gold or any other precious metal, but I can always dream while stir-frying veggies or flipping turkey burgers in one of my well-seasoned skillets. They're solid and heavy (sometimes, when filled with hot stew, perhaps a little too heavy) and seemly indestructible, though their enemy is rust, which does happen when the pans sit in water for any length of time.

My love affair with the skillet awakened a fondness for a particular recipe for skillet cornbread from one of my go-to cookbooks, Ruth Reichl's 2004 The Gourmet Cookbook. It's simple, relatively quick--less than an hour from mixing ingredients to finished product--and the bonus for those who aiming to reduce the gluten in their diet is that, unlike most cornbread, this one doesn't contain any flour at all. I like to serve it with one of those other things I enjoy making in a skillet--stews and chili. It's also perfect with a bowl of soup (isn't everything?) or with a drizzle of honey or maple syrup for breakfast. The buttermilk keeps the bread moist and even a little bit creamy in the center. I upped the sugar from 1 tablespoon to 2 (I've even been known to increase it to 3!), but that's the only change I made from the original recipe. Here it is:

Skillet Corn Bread

Serves 8

(from The Gourmet Cookbook)

1 1/2 cups yellow cornmeal, preferably stone-ground, medium-grind

2 tablespoons sugar

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

1 3/4 cups well-shaken buttermilk

1/2 stick (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened

Special Equipment: a well-seasoned 9- to 9 1/2-inch cast-iron skillet*

Mix until just combined before pouring into the skillet.

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Heat a skillet in the oven's center rack for 10 minutes.

2. Stir together dry ingredients: cornmeal, sugar, baking soda and salt in a small bowl.

3. Whisk together eggs and buttermilk in a medium bowl until blended.

4. Remove hot skillet from the oven and add the butter, swirling it gently with a fork until melted. Don't worry if the butter sizzles and browns a bit around the edges. Try to leave a slight coating of butter on the bottom and sides of the skillet so that the cornbread won't stick.

5. Whisk the butter into the egg and buttermilk mixture, and return the skillet to the oven. 

6. Stir cornmeal into the buttermilk mixture, combining until evenly moistened but still a bit lumpy.

7. Scrape batter into hot skillet and bake until golden--20 to 25 minutes. Let cornbread cool for a few minutes in the pan before turning upside down on a rack to cool completely. **

Lodge 9-inch skillet

*Reichl says that a regular pan will produce an "anemic-looking" cornbread. If you don't own a cast-iron skillet, you can buy one that's already seasoned and ready to use through Amazon or Lodge, one of the major manufacturers. They're also available at many cooking supply stores.


**I've found that the cornbread sometimes sticks a bit to the skillet if you try to take it out immediately after removing it from the oven. If you allow it to cool slightly, it tends to hold together better when you remove it to a plate. Another thought is to just serve it straight from the skillet.

Nutritional Info (1/8 recipe)

Calories: 165

Fat: 8 grams

Carbs: 45 grams

Fiber: 4 grams

Protein: 3 grams

Weight Watchers Points: 7

On the Side

Ruth Reichl includes a recipe for buckwheat honey butter to serve with the cornbread. Combine 1 stick of softened butter (8 tablespoons) with 2 tablespoons of honey. Mix well. It works just fine with other honeys or maple syrup.

Good Karmal: Not Your Grandma's Caramel

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

                                                      -- Eleanor Roosevelt
                               
 

Patty Triplett West 

Think Montana and what comes to mind? Mountains, bears, camping and perhaps a sizzling beefsteak? But caramels? Not so much. Yet a thriving caramel business is what my husband and I discovered during a recent visit to the pretty south Montana town of Bozeman, about 90 miles from Yellowstone. At the family-owned and operated Good Karmal, those cute little confections that used to turn up in your grandma's candy dish or in your Halloween goody bag have had a 21st century makeover. Instead of Kraft cubes, they now come in little cellophane-wrapped logs in flavors ranging from sea salt to caramel apple to chipotle--all wrapped up in inspirational quotes.

We stopped in to meet founder and CEO Patty Triplett West, who gave up a high-profile Hollywood PR gig to create her candy business, which also employs husband Ryan, brother Steve, a few local college students and graduates, and sometimes, during holiday rushes, fellow moms and even her two daughters, Jane and Ruby, ages 5 and 8, in a quilting-bee-style wrapping fest.

At the local caramel factory that makes the kosher dairy, gluten-free treats to Patty's specifications--mixing brown and white sugars, cream, butter, tapioca starch, vanilla and salt, plus various natural flavorings--long sheets of caramel are sliced and diced, spun in metal cylinders, wrapped and boxed, awaiting the final human touch--quotes on small colored slips of paper that enclose the candy. That process takes place in the Good Karmal offices inside a building that backs onto rolling open fields and is adjacent to the sprawling Montana State University campus.

The view from Good Karmal

I sat down with Patty to talk about the high points of caramels vs. other treats and what it takes to create the highest-quality caramel--and how someone who made her name in Hollywood PR working for the likes of actress Sarah Michelle Gellar and film and TV producer J. J. Abrams became the CEO of a caramel company.

"I've always loved caramels," she said. "So when I found out you could make them on your stove top without any fancy equipment, I had to try it, even though I'm not a great baker or chef at all. They turned out great."

In 2002, while working at Warner Bros., Patty began giving out holiday gifts of the caramels wrapped in some of her favorite quotes. "Most of the people I gave these gifts to were sort of important people--celebrities, journalists, producers--and I got a really great response right away."

Shortly after it started, the company got a big boost after Oprah Winfrey picked the candy as one of her "favorite things" on her holiday show.

Caramels, hot off the presses

But success brought new challenges. Patty quit her job and moved with her husband to Santa Cruz to work on the business full time, but they were still making every piece of caramel by hand. When they discovered a local candy manufacturer in Bozeman willing to do it for them, they decided to move again.

Why caramels?

"It's a light treat. It doesn't sit in your stomach all day like a fudge would," she said. "I really see this as a spiritual gift, a quote wrapped around the caramel to make you think. And the sugar makes you more happy about it."

Good Karmal comes in six flavors--vanilla, sea salt, chocolate sea salt, cafe caramel, caramel apple and chipotle. Two caramels have 120 calories, 5 grams of fat, and 3 Weight Watchers Plus points.

"Our most popular flavor is definitely the sea salt," she said. "It's an old-fashioned vanilla flavor with the sprinkling of a nice crunchy sea salt on the outside--and it's delicious."

I'll vouch for that, although I'm rather partial to the chipotle, which has a hint of peppery spice, giving the candy a bit of an edge. The candies are much softer than the Kraft version, and the sea salt variety really do crunch slightly when you take a bite. Patty said the company is always considering new flavors. A caramel slab for those who would like to bake with Good Karmal is one possibility. Yes, please!

As for the quotes, they're really the piece that sets the candy apart. They're less like fortune cookie messages and more positive sayings you might paste on your computer or send to a friend--bits of good karma(l), so to speak.

"I've always been a passionate collector of quotes. I feel like the right quote always finds me at a certain point in my life as a message that makes me really shift my thinking," Patty said. Mixing the love of candy and the love of quotes "made perfect sense for who I am, because I loved candy, but I was always looking for more meaning in my life and thought that other people might be too."

One of her favorite quotes is from Gandhi:

"We must be the change we wish to see in the world."

Good Karmal basket

"I love that quote because even the littlest things--letting someone in in traffic, smiling at the checkout person who's having a bad day--I think that's who I want to be--and that's the change I want to see."

Her brother Steve says his favorite quote is from Jimi Hendrix:

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

Patty avoids overtly religious sayings that might offend someone or be preachy.

"I consider myself a kindist. I think we should all be nice to each other and nice to the Earth." The quotes reflect this philosophy--with some of the profits benefiting environmental causes.

Baskets and favors tailored for weddings, baby showers, sports events, grand openings, hospitals, charities--all of these are keeping the factory humming, Patty said. Perhaps it would be nice to go beyond her web-based model and sell her caramels in a few upscale retail outlets in Los Angeles and New York, she muses. But she doesn't want to grow so big she won't have time to pick up her daughters from school and enjoy the great life she and her husband have found in Bozeman.

"I'm all for slow, smart growth."

Sounds like a quote worth wrapping round a caramel.


Here's a video of Patty Triplett West talking about Good Karmal. It was produced by my husband, Jefferson Graham.