CRUNCHY GRANOLA RECIPE AND WRITING BOOKS

       I’m sitting here eating crunchy granola, really, and thinking about my writing life. Over the years, I’ve written news articles, grant proposals, lots of letters. During our early days I wrote articles for education magazines and city newspapers – how to build a nature trail, country advice on how to get rid of warts (!). The writing, though, that makes me feel like a real writer has been fiction.

       Mmm this stuff is good, easy to make and tasty even after all these years of using that recipe (see below). As for books,  I had a lot of fun writing the little memoir of our early days living in the country described in A Homestead Decade, HowCrunchy Granola Changed My Life, (I hope you enjoyed it, Amazon, cheap, $2.99).

       Those sweet homestead years were one small moment in a lush life. I also had the honor to work some very interesting and meaningful jobs – child abuse prevention, kinship care, and coordinating collaboration projects with community human service agencies. Some of the haunting experiences from those jobs have dragged the mind of this writer through a maze of characters and events. As a result I wrote a softcover book, A Kinship Guide to Rescuing Children for Grandparents and Other Relatives As Parents.

       After leaving community services to enter the next great adventure of this life, I found a pressing desire to go back to the satisfaction of writing fiction (not the vampire kind). First up - another book, a short fiction, just published on Amazon’s Kindle: …NOW AM FOUND, a road trip of sorts about a woman and a boy surviving the first weeks after a murder/suicide in the family. The story is not morose. Instead a bond of love and humor thread through the characters until the epiphany that life does go on for survivors even after tragedy.

       If you decide to read … NOW AM FOUND, I greatly appreciate any comments or review you may have on Amazon (particularly if you like it – I have a fragile ego).  You might even enjoy a bowl of your freshly made Crunchy Granola while you are reading. How’s that for a perk? Here’s the recipe from A Homestead Decade, How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life. Enjoy!!

Helene’s Crunchy Granola

       In a big bowl mix 8 cups of quick rolled oats with a few tablespoons of other healthy grains – wheat bran, ground flax seeds, wheat germ. These add a nice protein boost. Never add bulgur, it turns into iron stones during the baking. You may want to add shelled sunflower seeds or other chopped nuts to your liking. I like quick oats because it crisps up nicely and soaks up milk easily. Set the bowl aside.

       Get a suitable baking pan. These days I use my old cast iron fryer. We used to use a blue enameled roaster when we had the children home. Increase proportions of ingredients to fit your pan size.
Get the oven ready at 250 degrees. Crunchy Granola is more toasted than baked.

       Lightly heat the pan over a burner then pour enough oil to cover ¼ inch deep on the surface. I use olive oil (for almost everything), other oils, I hear, make a nice crispy coat on the grains.

       Add about 3 tablespoons of honey, a tablespoon of black molasses, a teaspoon of vanilla. You can add or substitute other sweeteners at this point, such as maple syrup.

       As the oil mixture heats and starts to bubble, stir the wet ingredients, then slowly add the dry ingredients stirring to coat all the grains. Turn off the heat and continue to stir until the grains are coated with the sweetened oil.

       Put the pan in the low heat oven to toast the granola for about 30 minutes. Carefully stir the mixture a couple of times during the toasting process.

Let cool. And enjoy! Store the granola in glass jars.

Thanks for stopping by.

Helene (author of above linked books)