My New Breakfast Cereal

A couple weeks ago, hubby came home with a cereal that he bought on sale. It tasted like a cross between horse food and cardboard, and has sat in our cabinet untouched until now. I finally decided to throw it away, since he obviously wasn’t eating it, and try my hand at homemade cereal.

I have avoided making granola because my aunt makes a fantastic recipe from a Barefoot Constessa cookbook for special occasions. I once took a look at the recipe, and it was a heart and diabetic attack in the making, not to mention it used a ton of very expensive ingredients. So I decided, falsely, that homemade granola wasn’t for me.

I now take back that assertion. It took a bit of sifting through online recipes to find a moderately lower-fat and lower-sugar recipe that wouldn’t cost $20 a pound, and I finally found one. It tastes great, is very easy to make, and you get all the healthy goodness of oatmeal.

Fruit and Honey Granola (slightly adapted from this recipe)

Makes approximately 5 servings, can easily be doubled

• 4 Tbs butter
• 1/2 C honey
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3 1/2 C uncooked oatmeal
• 1/3 C coarsely chopped nuts
• 2/3 C dried fruit, or you can omit this and use fresh fruit when serving (I used my dried apples from last fall, but I think especially during the summer that fresh is best)

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350 F
• Melt butter and mix in a large bowl with the honey, vanilla, cinnamon, and salt
• Add the oatmeal and nuts, mix until well combined
• Spread out on cookie sheet that has a rim
• Cook for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes and adding the dried fruit on the last stir
• Let cool
• Enjoy!

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More about my apple drying adventures here:

• Dried Apples
• Apple Drying – The Saga Continues

Try my new and improved granola recipe:

• Everything’s Better With Chocolate