One of the things the Staddons have always done is make their own granola! It’s great as a topping, as a breakfast cereal, or even a special gift. Our method of making it has changed in small ways many times and we have tried many different varieties, some of them unforgettable! 🙂 At the present time we make a no-bake variety (technically called “muesli”) that will keep just fine for a week or more. We double the recipe below and it feeds seven of us for almost one week. The recipe can change depending on what ingredients are available, so we will include our recipe here and let you experiment and come up with your own favorite!

Combine dry ingredients and mix well:
6 cups rolled oats
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup sweetened or unsweetened coconut
1 cup slivered almonds
1/2 cup raw or roasted wheat germ
1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds or raw chopped walnuts
1/2 cup oat bran (optional)
1 Tbsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt

Add and stir in wet ingredients:
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup local raw honey
1 1/2 Tbsp molasses

We’ve never used a processor to mix the thick wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, so we get a healthy work-out doing it with a big wooden spatula. Try to chop up the clumps and mix in the loose powder from the corners of the bowl. If you would like to bake it, you can bake it in an ungreased casserole dish at 350 degrees until it reaches the desired doneness, perhaps 1/2 hour, but be sure to take it out of the oven and stir it once about every 10 minutes. When using it for breakfast cereal, we like to top it with fresh or dried fruit.

Other ingredients to try in place of or in addition to similar ingredients above include: dry milk, grape nuts cereal, chopped walnuts, peanuts, or other nuts, pumpkin seeds or other seeds, vanilla flavoring or other spices, flavorings, and extracts. It is fun to make “theme” granolas such as “pumpkin granola” using pumpkin seeds, pieces of pumpkin leather, and pumpkin pie spices like ginger and nutmeg.