My husband, his boss and my brother are preparing for a snowmachine trip into the White Mountains so today I'm making a bunch of meals for them. It's been AGES since I made granola so I thought I would surprise my husband and make some. It's SO good, and since I found a stovetop recipe, it's really easy to make! I thought I'd share the recipe because I just found a new trick to make it melt in your mouth scrumptious! It's pretty healthy.... for granola that is.
Laura's Stovetop Granola
Ingredients:
1 C Coconut Oil, divided
12 C rolled oats (note: next time I'll use 10 C to make it into bars, and 20x more yummy!)
1 C butter
1 1/2 C dehydrated cane juice (if your using regular white sugar you will want to double the amount of sugar since DCJ is sweeter)
5 C (give or take to your tastes) additions of your choice. This time I used about a cup and a quarter raisins, 1 C flax, 1 C crunchy soaked almonds from NT, and 2 C dessicated unsweetened coconut flakes.
Heat 1/2 C oil in a large skillet or stew pot. over medium heat. Add oats, cook, stirring constantly, until the oats are brown and crisp (I don't like them crispy so I just cook them for about 10 min). Remove from heat and spread out on cookie sheet to cool.
Melt butter and rest of coconut oil in same pan over medium heat. Stir in the sugar, and constantly stir. When the sugar carmelizes, and soaks up all the oil, return the oats to the pan. Mix well, add in the additions and mix well again.
Spread mixture on several cookie sheets (line with wax paper if your reducing to 10 C oats) and cool completely. Store in airtight containers.
I have no idea how long this will stay good. It has never lasted more then a week, and that was only if I had managed to hide it from my family.
Well it's finally looking like spring around here! Monday I saw my first patch of ground since November! It would have been even longer but on Thanksgiving week we had a very strange weather pattern where it warmed up and almost all of the snow melted!
I was beginning to wonder if it was ever going to melt since it usually starts slowely warming up all through March, which it kinda has, but on Sunday it finally made it to above freezing for most of the day. Ah it's so nice! T-shirt weather for us!
I'm so excited to see the snow melting, and my goats are loving it! I see them sunning themselves all day in the back yard. I finally fixed the gate so I can lock them back up in their pen, but I don't have the heart since their pen only gets a small amount of morning sun, and the kidding house we built in January leave little to no space in the pen.
I had no idea how deep the snow had gotten until I went out to fix the gate yesterday. In order to fix the gate I had to chip out over eight inches of hard packed snow, and I didn't even reach the ground! If I try to walk anywhere off "the beaten path" I'm instantly knee deep in snow. Not that I'm complaining! The last couple of years have been low snow years, and by July you can see the effects of the low snow levels. We really need lots of snow in order to keep the trees that are too little to reach the water table alive.
Well that's it for now!
