Peanutty Granola

Welcome! Here is my new blog that is just about food! It is not public and by invitation only for now, but anyone who wants to read I will be willing to invite. Here I will share my food creations. Sometimes they will be inspired by recipes I have found while prowling the food blogs, but often they will just be something I put together myself. The food we consume has a large impact on our bodies, whether we can feel it or not. Using whole unprocessed foods will do the body good. I will try and keep the science and dietetics to a minimum but sometimes I will just not be able to help it.

Granola is such an easy thing to make. A couple weeks ago I made my first attempt, and I realized that no matter what you add, as long as you like those ingredients, you will like the taste of the granola. It may not have the perfect texture or visual appeal on your first try, but it will do the job.

I started off my going to Bulk Barn and getting some ingredients, I chose oats, sliced almonds, chopped walnuts, and shredded unsweetened coconut. Coconut is fairly high in saturated fat, but it has medium-lengthen fatty acid chains, which are digested and used by the liver more readily. There is a lot of debate on the benefits of this type of saturated fat. I mixed 1 cup of the oats and 1/2 cup each of the other stuff. You could substituted any of these things to suit your taste, and even add more of a variety. If using even more nuts, I recommend increasing the oats to 2 cups.

A coagulant is necessary to get the crunchy granola texture as well as to add more flavour. I kinda winged this part. I wanted to avoid large amounts of oil and sugar that are in commercial granola's and most other recipes I found. I melted a couple of tablespoons of peanut butter, 3 tablespoons of maple syrup (the real stuff). I watered it down with a bit of water to make it a bit more liquidy. I then mixed it all in with the nut mixture until it was evenly coated and then spread evenly on a baking sheet. I baked it at 300 for about 30 minutes, stirring halfway through. I probably could have done with only 25 minutes.


Once it cooled a bit, I added some flax seed for fiber and omega-3s! These seeds shouldn't be heated because this destroys all those beneficial fats. The granola had a good crunch and had a real nutty flavour from using peanut butter as the fat component.

I would make some adjustments the next time, maybe use more oats and no coconut. This is a fun recipe to play around with. Judging by my lack of measurements, you can’t really screw up a granola, but it will take some time to get that perfect batch that satisfies all your needs.

I topped some yogurt with strawberries, a cut up banana and some of this granola for a light lunch!