CEIMB: Nutty Granola, or "I didn't eat it all, you did."

The first recipe that I made when I joined Tuesdays with Dorie was Granola Grabbers, these really wonderful, spicy granola cluster cookies. Until Amanda told me that she was in an online baking club that required her to bake every week and then blog about it, I had never even heard of a food blog. I did read Amanda's blog, but I did not have a blogger or google identity, so I had to walk down the hallway to comment on it in person, just like in the olden days. So the first day that I ever really sat down and read a bunch of food blogs was on the Tuesday that I posted the Granola Grabbers.

Well, clearly, before I started food blogging I was a troglodyte living deep in Plato's cave. I didn't know that I didn't know. Back then, I had no idea that granola was even something that you could make yourself. I remember reading several posts, many by people whom I now count among my favorite bloggers, in which people wrote about making their own granola to use in the cookies. I thought to myself: "these people MAKE their own granola? Man, they are hardcore."

And yet here I am, six months later, feeling absolutely certain that I will never buy granola again.


Ellie Krieger's recipe for Nutty Granola is super fast. I am positive that it would have taken me double the time to get into my car and drive to buy some granola at the Western three minutes from my house than it took me to whip this together. It is also super easy. I made it once and will remember the recipe forever. And this is coming from someone who sometimes forgets to put on shoes in the morning. And it is amazingly, and I mean A-MAZ-ING-LY, delicious.

Peggy told me that she and her hubs had this for breakfast every morning for days. David and I are not that civilized, apparently -- we just grabbed a handful of it every time we walked past the fridge for the approximately 15 hours that it existed, and then it was all gone. That's when the accusations started flying. David had been home with our one year old for a couple of hours on Tuesday morning. When I got home, I noticed that the container of granola was looking emptier than it had been when I left the house earlier, but that was okay; I was glad that David was enjoying it. Well, when he got home later in the day, most of the rest of it was gone, and we had the following conversation:

D: What happened to all the granola?
C: What? It was almost gone when I got home earlier.
D: I remember there being like half a container left. Were you all just snacking on it? That's okay. I just thought maybe you used it to make those cookies or something.
C: It was practically gone when I got home, there wasn't enough there for cookies.

Obviously neither of us is going to cop to having eaten most of those 9 servings in that 15 hour span. Really, the only bad thing that I can think to say about Ellie's granola is that it is almost impossible to stop eating it.

There is really not a whole lot to say about the process, and for once, I am going to seize on the fact that there is not a whole lot to say and actually not say a whole lot, instead of just jabbering on about something unrelated and irrelevant. You mix everything (i.e., oats, three kinds of nuts, raisins, salt, cinnamon, and maple syrup) in a big bowl, spread it on a baking sheet, and bake it. That's it! I am making my second batch tonight.

The great Leslie from Lethally Delicious chose the granola for CEIMB this week. Leslie, we kinda sorta liked your pick, can you tell?



P.S. There is something kind of funny about the fact that the word "bloggers" gets flagged as misspelled by the Blogger spellcheck.