Mountain Man Granola

By admin on October 14th, 2009

I guess the Omnivore and I are mountain people.

I was always baffled by that question: Are you a beach person or a mountain person?

Can I just opt out of that question?  I think I’m neither.  Does that make me a bad person?

It’s like that horrible excuse of being a math-and-science person versus a history-and-english person. Puh-lease.

Anyway.  For the record, if I had to choose, we are mountain people (and, for the record, math people, too).  But I don’t want to choose.  I just want to eat granola.  Crunchy, maple-walnut granola.

The Omnivore grabbed a fistfull of this stuff and declared that he must be really hungry because this granola actually tasted great.  Um, whatever happened to the option of the granola being delicious all by its lonesome?

He followed up with a question.  “Is this healthy?” and I responded “Yes!” and then mumbled so that he couldn’t quite hear me “…in comparison to your usual Dunkin’ Donuts breakfast.”

No.  This isn’t a low-fat granola.  Yes.  It calls for sugar.  Three sources of sugar, in fact.  But when you’re in the mountains, you need energy to keep you going.  So you can scale those rock faces.  So you can capture those bears.  And all that jazz.

So it’s more like an energy-mix than it is a healthfood-fix.

Maple-Walnut Mountain Man Granola
2 cups oats
1 t cinnamon
1 t salt
1-2 T ground flax seed (optional)
2 T honey
2 T brown sugar
3 T veggie oil
2 T maple syrup
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 cup chocolate chips
1/3 cup dried fruit

Mix together oats, cinnamon, salt, and ground flax seed.  In a separate bowl mix sugar, maple syrup, oil, and honey.  Combine oats with liquid mixture.  Spread onto a baking sheet  lined with parchment paper.  Bake for 30-40 minutes at 325* stirring, flipping, and redistributing oats every 10 minutes.  Allow to cool before adding nuts, chocolate, and dried fruit.