Cooking for 2: Homemade Granola

Granola

½ cup old fashioned oats

Pinch of salt

1 Tablespoon oil

1 Tablespoon honey

½ teaspoon vanilla

1 ½ Tablespoons dried fruit

1 ½ Tablespoons nuts of your choice

Heat honey and oil in the microwave for 15 seconds.  Add vanilla.  Add oats and pinch of salt.  Put a piece of parchment paper on a pan.  Put granola mixture on parchment paper.  I would strongly encourage you to get parchment paper and try it.  I didn’t know about it growing up and it is the most wonderful stuff.  You don’t have to grease it for rolls, cookies, and granola!  If you don’t want to, you can grease a pan and put granola mixture on top.  Bake at 350 for about 12-14 minutes, stirring half way through.  When finished, mix in fruit and nuts.  Transfer to a bowl to cool. 

I made these 3 kinds:

Cranberry Pecan:  Put dried cranberries and pecan pieces. 

Blueberry Almond:  Instead of vanilla, use ¼ tsp. almond extract and ¼ vanilla extract, dried blueberries and slivered almonds

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip:  I put a tablespoon of crunch peanut butter before adding oats and salt.  I skipped nuts, but you can use smooth peanut butter and add/don’t add peanuts if you want.  I also put 1 ½ tablespoons mini chocolate chips.  They melted, but if you don’t want them to then just wait until the granola cools a little more before adding them. 

If I didn’t have any of the above fruits and nuts, I would see what I did have and add something that sounded good.  There is no one right way to make granola.  I was going to add chocolate raisins to a batch, but they didn’t last long enough to try it.  I wonder what happened to them?!