Apple Granola
January is the month of resolutions, and in our urban homes, the realities of daily living on two sides of the continent mean that our resolutions revolve around discipline. As befits the Los Angeles body cult, John has vowed to avail himself of healthy California cooking, but we have both committed to get back to an exercise regimen. While I jog on mornings warm enough to through the chilly hillocks of Astoria Park, John will take his exercise on the sunnier slopes of Runyon Canyon, braving the appraising gaze of its regulars to do so. We both committed to starting the day with a good breakfast. This is a serious obligation for me, as I’m used to torpedoing directly from bed to shower while taking only the briefest stop to fill my coffee cup before heading out the door.
I have never been much of a breakfast person, but then anyone who knows me knows that I’m not much of a morning person. This is somewhat out of character for the product of Oklahoma farmsteaders. By the time I came along, my grandmother had long since left the farmstead for a home “in town,” but she never lost that homesteader’s discipline. To my grandmother, sleeping late meant six a.m., and was a character flaw. I’ve no idea what time she actually rose – I wouldn’t swear she even slept, though she must have – but her favorite time of day was the earliest morning hours. The only times I ever remember her being short tempered with me were in response to how slow I was of a morning. Having ascertained that I was susceptible to such stories, sometimes she told me of mornings on the farmstead with the intention, usually thwarted, of jump-starting my own battery.
I came away with an imagined sound collage that began with the blips of the cream Bakelite Philco breaking through dawn stillness as the tubes warmed up, scanning the airwaves for the right frequency. The feed and grain report began at 4 am, and along with the all-important weather forecast, the disc jockey (in those days, often known as an “announcer”) shared news great and small. People sometimes wonder – perhaps even worse, often don’t think about – how communities stayed connected in the days before personal communications, and this was one of the ways. Between community events from church to town square, important news from births to deaths, from local damage to damage avoided, from home town folk returning from travels or missing from war, was shared by the local disc jockey. During those broadcasts, every home was linked just as surely as we are today via these fundamental social networks.
Deejay patter led to every style of broadcast chatter from anchor person happy talk to blogs. The deejay’s role in the community was pivotal. Radio provided linkage across the distances of time and space. But entertainment itself was no small contribution. Whether your homestead was in town or at the edges of the county, hard work was serious, expected, and ongoing. How it must have brightened those kitchens and parlors to hear a spin of a favorite record. Everyone loved The Dustbowl Troubadour but in that time and place, family groups would travel from church to radio station to sing sacred music. If they were lucky, the broadcast would reach the ears of someone who could press a recording, and that begat its own series of journeys. In our homestead, I knew all was right in the world when I heard my grandmother in the early morning kitchen, singing along with her favorite hymns.
In that earlier time and place, men- and womenfolk were frequently warehoused separately. By the time the menfolk clomped in, having fed the morning’s ration of oats and hay to the livestock before having washed themselves to presentability, the womenfolk had long been to work over breakfast. The kitchen dispensed platters of crispy bacon or fragrant hand-cranked sausage from the smokehouse, stacks of wheatcakes barely kissed with rationed pats of butter, downy piles of scrambled eggs from the morning’s lay, skillet-crisp coins of potatoes fried in bacon fat, and biscuits, always biscuits, passed with jam from last summer’s canning.
By the time I came along, those times and many of the people from them had passed into the same ethers as those phantom radio broadcasts. I suspect that my grandmother took it as a personal affront that she was never able to turn me into a morning person, but I responded to all of her other lessons, so I also know she forgave me. But that doesn’t mean she stopped trying. She repeatedly tried the time-honored tactic of reward, plying me with offers of pancakes or waffles or eggs and bacon before resorting to threats of oatmeal. But I wasn’t a morning person and I’m still not, and the only time I really like breakfast is for dinner.
But we both discovered that there was one thing I always found room for, even during the most ungodly mornings: a bowl of granola. I’m not sure how it happened that my grandmother knew how to make granola, but she did. I still remember it emerging from the oven in fragrant clumps on a baking sheet as shiny as a surgeon's tray from years of scrubbing after service. To this day I do not feel my pantry is adequately stocked without a large container of granola on the shelves. It surprises me how few people make granola, and at Urban Home Blog we mean to start the new year right by correcting that.
Yes, you can get good granola at the store. But farmers, who trace their history not just to those dawn kitchens of days past but the dawn of agriculture itself, are the reason we have cultivated cereal grains, and the cooks in those kitchens are the reason we eat cereal grains for breakfast. Those cooks were feeding workers who would benefit from the sustained energy of the slowly digested proteins that come from whole grains, and they were kind enough to find ways to make the cereal crunchy, sweet and fulfilling. Granola is about taking care of yourself from the inside out, so why not honor yourself and your morning with a bowlful you built yourself. Granola won’t make you a morning person if you’re not, but it has a long, honorable history of starting mornings aright.
APPLE GRANOLA
Rolled oats are those that are processed slightly longer than groats so that they are easier to eat. They are widely available in grocery stores; just be sure the canister is so labeled. Do not use instant or steel-cut oats for this recipe. Dried fruit is available in bulk in many grocery and health food stores; here is a good online source for the diced dried fruit called for in this recipe. If you do not have hazel- or walnut oil, use sunflower or vegetable oil.
3 cups rolled oats
1 cup slivered almonds
1 cup crushed walnuts
1 cup diced dried apple
½ cup diced dried pear
¼ cup husked sunflower seeds
¾ cup tightly packed light brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground allspice
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¼ teaspoon table salt
¼ cup hazelnut or walnut oil
Non-stick cooking spray
1. Preheat oven to 275 degrees F.
2. Line two 11 x 17 rimmed baking sheets with a layer of aluminum foil, shiny side up. Spray the foil with non-stick cooking spray.
3. Measure the brown sugar into a small bowl. Use a fork to break up the sugar. Add the cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and salt to the sugar; use the fork to mix together.
4. Measure the oats, almonds, walnuts and sunflower seeds into a large mixing bowl. Use your hands to lightly mix them together.
5. Sprinkle the cereal mixture with the spiced sugar mixture. Use your hands to mix them together.
6. Use one hand to continue hand-mixing the cereal and the spiced sugar while using the other hand to drizzle the mixture with the oil. As you work, the mixture should start to form clumps.
7. Divide the mixture in an even layer between the two baking pans. Some liquid should remain in the bottom of the bowl; that is okay.
8. Transfer the two baking sheets to the oven. Bake 30 minutes.
9. While the granola is baking, add the dried apples and pears to the mixing bowl. Use a silicon spatula to lightly toss the dried fruit with the liquid left in the bottom of the bowl.
10. After the mixture has baked 30 minutes, remove the pans from the oven. Use a heatproof spatula to move the granola around on the pans.
11. Return the pans to the oven and bake an additional 30 minutes. The granola is done when it is fragrant and toasty.
12. Once the granola is done, remove the pans from the oven. Transfer the warm granola to the bowl containing the spiced dried fruit mixture.
13. Use the silicon spatula to mix the warm granola and the spiced dried fruit mixture together. Cover the bowl loosely with a clean tea towel and set aside to cool.
14. Once the granola is cooled, transfer it to an airtight container.
I have never been much of a breakfast person, but then anyone who knows me knows that I’m not much of a morning person. This is somewhat out of character for the product of Oklahoma farmsteaders. By the time I came along, my grandmother had long since left the farmstead for a home “in town,” but she never lost that homesteader’s discipline. To my grandmother, sleeping late meant six a.m., and was a character flaw. I’ve no idea what time she actually rose – I wouldn’t swear she even slept, though she must have – but her favorite time of day was the earliest morning hours. The only times I ever remember her being short tempered with me were in response to how slow I was of a morning. Having ascertained that I was susceptible to such stories, sometimes she told me of mornings on the farmstead with the intention, usually thwarted, of jump-starting my own battery.
I came away with an imagined sound collage that began with the blips of the cream Bakelite Philco breaking through dawn stillness as the tubes warmed up, scanning the airwaves for the right frequency. The feed and grain report began at 4 am, and along with the all-important weather forecast, the disc jockey (in those days, often known as an “announcer”) shared news great and small. People sometimes wonder – perhaps even worse, often don’t think about – how communities stayed connected in the days before personal communications, and this was one of the ways. Between community events from church to town square, important news from births to deaths, from local damage to damage avoided, from home town folk returning from travels or missing from war, was shared by the local disc jockey. During those broadcasts, every home was linked just as surely as we are today via these fundamental social networks.
Deejay patter led to every style of broadcast chatter from anchor person happy talk to blogs. The deejay’s role in the community was pivotal. Radio provided linkage across the distances of time and space. But entertainment itself was no small contribution. Whether your homestead was in town or at the edges of the county, hard work was serious, expected, and ongoing. How it must have brightened those kitchens and parlors to hear a spin of a favorite record. Everyone loved The Dustbowl Troubadour but in that time and place, family groups would travel from church to radio station to sing sacred music. If they were lucky, the broadcast would reach the ears of someone who could press a recording, and that begat its own series of journeys. In our homestead, I knew all was right in the world when I heard my grandmother in the early morning kitchen, singing along with her favorite hymns.
In that earlier time and place, men- and womenfolk were frequently warehoused separately. By the time the menfolk clomped in, having fed the morning’s ration of oats and hay to the livestock before having washed themselves to presentability, the womenfolk had long been to work over breakfast. The kitchen dispensed platters of crispy bacon or fragrant hand-cranked sausage from the smokehouse, stacks of wheatcakes barely kissed with rationed pats of butter, downy piles of scrambled eggs from the morning’s lay, skillet-crisp coins of potatoes fried in bacon fat, and biscuits, always biscuits, passed with jam from last summer’s canning.
By the time I came along, those times and many of the people from them had passed into the same ethers as those phantom radio broadcasts. I suspect that my grandmother took it as a personal affront that she was never able to turn me into a morning person, but I responded to all of her other lessons, so I also know she forgave me. But that doesn’t mean she stopped trying. She repeatedly tried the time-honored tactic of reward, plying me with offers of pancakes or waffles or eggs and bacon before resorting to threats of oatmeal. But I wasn’t a morning person and I’m still not, and the only time I really like breakfast is for dinner.
But we both discovered that there was one thing I always found room for, even during the most ungodly mornings: a bowl of granola. I’m not sure how it happened that my grandmother knew how to make granola, but she did. I still remember it emerging from the oven in fragrant clumps on a baking sheet as shiny as a surgeon's tray from years of scrubbing after service. To this day I do not feel my pantry is adequately stocked without a large container of granola on the shelves. It surprises me how few people make granola, and at Urban Home Blog we mean to start the new year right by correcting that.
Yes, you can get good granola at the store. But farmers, who trace their history not just to those dawn kitchens of days past but the dawn of agriculture itself, are the reason we have cultivated cereal grains, and the cooks in those kitchens are the reason we eat cereal grains for breakfast. Those cooks were feeding workers who would benefit from the sustained energy of the slowly digested proteins that come from whole grains, and they were kind enough to find ways to make the cereal crunchy, sweet and fulfilling. Granola is about taking care of yourself from the inside out, so why not honor yourself and your morning with a bowlful you built yourself. Granola won’t make you a morning person if you’re not, but it has a long, honorable history of starting mornings aright.
APPLE GRANOLA
Rolled oats are those that are processed slightly longer than groats so that they are easier to eat. They are widely available in grocery stores; just be sure the canister is so labeled. Do not use instant or steel-cut oats for this recipe. Dried fruit is available in bulk in many grocery and health food stores; here is a good online source for the diced dried fruit called for in this recipe. If you do not have hazel- or walnut oil, use sunflower or vegetable oil.
3 cups rolled oats
1 cup slivered almonds
1 cup crushed walnuts
1 cup diced dried apple
½ cup diced dried pear
¼ cup husked sunflower seeds
¾ cup tightly packed light brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground allspice
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¼ teaspoon table salt
¼ cup hazelnut or walnut oil
Non-stick cooking spray
1. Preheat oven to 275 degrees F.
2. Line two 11 x 17 rimmed baking sheets with a layer of aluminum foil, shiny side up. Spray the foil with non-stick cooking spray.
3. Measure the brown sugar into a small bowl. Use a fork to break up the sugar. Add the cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and salt to the sugar; use the fork to mix together.
4. Measure the oats, almonds, walnuts and sunflower seeds into a large mixing bowl. Use your hands to lightly mix them together.
5. Sprinkle the cereal mixture with the spiced sugar mixture. Use your hands to mix them together.
6. Use one hand to continue hand-mixing the cereal and the spiced sugar while using the other hand to drizzle the mixture with the oil. As you work, the mixture should start to form clumps.
7. Divide the mixture in an even layer between the two baking pans. Some liquid should remain in the bottom of the bowl; that is okay.
8. Transfer the two baking sheets to the oven. Bake 30 minutes.
9. While the granola is baking, add the dried apples and pears to the mixing bowl. Use a silicon spatula to lightly toss the dried fruit with the liquid left in the bottom of the bowl.
10. After the mixture has baked 30 minutes, remove the pans from the oven. Use a heatproof spatula to move the granola around on the pans.
11. Return the pans to the oven and bake an additional 30 minutes. The granola is done when it is fragrant and toasty.
12. Once the granola is done, remove the pans from the oven. Transfer the warm granola to the bowl containing the spiced dried fruit mixture.
13. Use the silicon spatula to mix the warm granola and the spiced dried fruit mixture together. Cover the bowl loosely with a clean tea towel and set aside to cool.
14. Once the granola is cooled, transfer it to an airtight container.
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