Midway through visitor month chez nous and feeling very blessed with all the people coming through my house. I do like full tables. It’s so hard to have a full table and not do dessert. A few nights ago, it was an apple and walnut cake, slathered in treacle frosting and topped with golden candles for our visiting six-year-old and for my Blue. My soon-to-be three-year-old Blue.
Gracious.
Three years since tiny blue feet. I thought he’d be born in a snow-storm, the way that fall was going. Earlier in the week, the wind had been bitterly cold and I bundled Beangirl into extra layers before she went outside to play. I was cosy and enormous, but impatient. When the snow fell, I thought it might be the change in weather needed to prompt a small determined child into joining us outside. But Blue had his own clock, and Ottawa doesn’t tend to hold on to her October snow. It melted away, and we could see the grass in the yard again before Blue appeared. Three years.
And so birthday cake. We’ll make him another one when we get to his real birthday next week, but the shared apple cake was a pretty good dress rehearsal. He was delighted to share, and wants to make sure that there will be visitors again soon. And another cake. And candles, too. Still my small determined child.
But visitors don’t just mean cake; they mean breakfast, too.
So I make granola. This recipe has its genesis in my Blob-days. It’s good food to keep on-hand when there are lots of people coming and going. Sharing food. It’s also a recipe I’m often asked to share. Somewhere out there, there’s a congregational cookbook (for a congregation, I must say, of which I wasn’t a member but – thanks to Spouse – a church I still hold dear) that sports a recipe for “Katie Munnik’s Granola”. I’m sure the following recipe is quite different from that one because, like all the best things in life, it keeps changing. I tend to go through phases with my granola: the peanut butter phase, the tahini phase (always a nice one), the applesauce phase (dried apples are a nicer addition, I decided in the end), etc, etc, etc…
But what follows is more or less what’s in the jar on my counter right now. It looks like fall, smells fantastic, and keeps me going all morning.
And Blue likes it, too.
Here you go:
6 cups rolled oats
A handful of sunflower seeds
A handful of chopped nuts
1 tbsp coriander seeds
¼ cup vegetable oil
¼ cup brown sugar
¾ cup water
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg
A handful of dried fruit (this week, it is cranberries and currants for us, but often it is just raisins. Whatever makes you happy.)
Mix together your oats, nuts and seeds. Mix wets separately, then pour over dries and sprinkle with cinnamon and nutmeg. I bake my granola in a rectangular glass dish, lightly oiled.
Pop it into the oven at 350˚ – it usually takes about 40 minutes to bake. Keep an eye on it and give it a stir up every so often. I tend to bake it half way with the oven on, then turn the oven off and leave it to finish in the cooling oven. You might need to experiment with times for your oven for this. But you know the goal – crunchy and sweet, not soggy or charred.
When your granola is cool (for me, the next morning), put it in an air-tight container with the dried fruit of your choice. It looks great on display in a glass jar, though you might be tempted to grab handfuls of this good stuff as you pass through the kitchen if you put it so prominently on display. Not necessarily a bad thing, but…
And the music selection for this recipe: Old Man Luedecke in Halifax. You’re waiting for the second to last track, because it’s perfect for breakfast – but do tuck and enjoy the whole concert. Cheeky, fun-loving banjo. It’s good stuff.
