Health Nuts

During some sort of conversation about food, my extremely active health conscious boss noted something about how much she hates cereal.  And since I work in her home--and a stones throw from the kitchen--it is true, I have noticed that no one in her family eats cereal and that I have never seen a box of it lying around.

As someone who is a lover of cereal, this disturbs me greatly.  Not because I find it odd that they don't eat cereal, but because now I have become extremely self-conscious of my cereal eating.  I have replaced it as a breakfast food with oatmeal and bagels and now keep a single box in my house for a snack. 

I've pondered this with my boyfriend several times and the more we note it the more I become self-conscious.  I mean, cereal is like human dog food.  It's just fortified dried crap with crappy ingredients like tons of sugar or tons of salt to cover it up.  Kind of freaky, ya know?  I'm further saddened by this because my dearest father is a self-proclaimed lover of cereal, almost to the point of addiction.  (No kidding, though, he eats it every day...even if there are pancakes on the table).  Like a drug smuggler on his way from Mexico to impart his cereal habit unto America, he has even gone so far as to drive around with 10 boxes of raisin bran in the trunk of his car, because, you know, buy 10 get 1 free.  And, according to my unaccommodating mother, there is just no room in the house for 11 boxes.

 Either way, I had noticed that it was really the only non-real food in my house that was regularly eaten--whatever that means.  

So, now I've made it a point to try and purge the guilt out of my life and try something else and in doing so, I discovered--at my boyfriend's request--making homemade granola.  Not anything fancy, but it's quick and you can be very creative depending on how horribly bad or well you would like to eat.  Oh, you miss your old lucky charms?  How about some sugar and chocolate?  Grape nuts, maybe?  Sunflower seeds and wheat germ will quench your organic loving appetite!  

Here's a very quick one, which is a good base for an understanding how to make your own granola. 

CINNAMON RAISIN GRANOLA

Party shot, first:

2 cups rolled oats

1/8 cup oil

1/4-1/2 cup honey
1 Tbsp. cinnamon

1/4 cup raisins

1/4 cup chopped pecans/walnuts (optional)

NOW...just mix that all together and throw it on a pan and toss it in an over at 350 degrees.  The 1/4-1/2 cup honey is for your liking, depending on how clumpy you want it.  You can try the 1/4 cup and throw it in the over and if you find it not to your liking, you can always drizzle more honey on top and stir the oats around.  

After about 10  minutes in the oven, make sure you mix up the granola so it doesn't burn.  You can do this a couple times more between 10 and 20 minutes.  When it's all cooked up, take the granola out and let it cool.  Then just throw it in an airtight container and BAM! 

If you want to try different things, it's easy to tweak granola.  You can double this recipe and do something like this:

2 cups oats

1 cup sunflower seeds

1 cup chopped walnuts

1/2 cup honey

1 tsp vanilla

1/8 cup oil

You can replace anything you want for a cup of oats and you can replace the sweeteners.  You can throw in some honey, or some maple syrup, or agave or raw sugar....whatever tickles your fancy.  

Either way, you can make yourself a nutritious breakfast cereal or snack and on the cheap, too.  And though my dad loves a good cereal sale, I think the phrase "on the cheap" might even convince him.