Are you Granola enough?

Apparently, I am : according to Urban Dictionary : it means an urban hippy, but not like those terrible driftwood casualties of the 1960’s, but a nice mainstreamy one : shopping at farmer’s markets, eating healthfood , organic, outdoorsy, but not yet ready (or able) to turn their back on the whole nightmarish capitalist experiment.

I have decided today, while making some for myself, that everyone I know is getting granola for Christmas : and this is why :

1. I won’t have to go Christmas shopping : the soulless obligation of tramping round shops in despair of finding something nice, or failing that, appropriate. Ok, the health food shop : my favourite one  is called Mother Earth. And maybe the haberdashers!

2. As you get older, you supposedly earn more money, but feel less inclined to accumulate stuff. ( not in all cases, I grant you). The real gift is that the giftee doesn’t have to find a space in their life or house to put what they’ve just unwrapped : very easily enjoyed and recycled, is granola!

3. It’s really, really good for you. Maybe not the stuff you buy, which can have quite a lot of salt, and even corn syrup (ew!) in the ingredients, but the stuff you make : all the things western diets don’t have enough of are in here : fibre, both soluble and not, seed oils ( still in the seeds), fruits full of micronutrients, and cholesterol-lowering oats. All traditional seasonal ingredients from harvest stores btw.

4.Christmas, while being an appropriation of pagan midwinter feasts, is still a feast y’know! Apparently, we’ve been looking at Stonehenge the wrong way round all these years : instead of being built for the Great Hippy Tokefest of Summer Solstice, it was actually designed for a Hogroast and a Hoedown on the darkest day. In our modern times, a nice bag of goodness should hopefully go down better than  a freshly killed pig on Christmas morning, especially with all that nutrient-depleting alcohol we’re all forced to drink!

So far I have made it with almonds and cinnamon, then I ran out of almonds and today I have made a version with chocolate and hemp seeds.

The Recipe :

I haven’t gone into quantities, because what I actually did to make this was chuck in what looked like enough : and having just tasted it cooling on the hob : I’d say this worked fine.

Some jumbo oats

some honey

some coconut oil

some other nuts, seeds and fruit as available

Melt the honey and oil together, much like with flapjacks

Mix in dry ingredients

Spread on a baking tray and bake in a medium oven

For about half an hour,

Turning every so often if you feel like it.

Other things you could add :

dried fruit such as : goji berries, dates, figs, apricots, cranberries

Seeds such as sunflower, pumpkin, sesame,

Nuts such as walnuts, hazelnuts, coconut flakes, brazil nuts, pecans etc

Flavours such as tahini, nutmeg, orange, vanilla, molasses

The only warning I will give is that eating it all yourself is not in keeping with the spirit of the season! Enjoy!