a recipe for granola and the secret ingredient to making this “awesome”

I went back to my “records” and checked to make sure I was not going to be providing false information when I tell you it has been more than a year since I have bought a box of cereal. It was in April of 2009 that Rob’s sister, Meghan, emailed me her recipe for granola and the following May is when I started making it regularly for our family. I am still not sure where this change falls on the money-saving scale (because quality ingredients for granola can be pricey), but the main reason for switching to homemade granola was to provide a healthier breakfast option for our family. I never did by the sweet cereals for our girls (I let that be one of the treats they have at Grandma’s), but even the boxed “healthy” options I would buy were still highly processed and full of ingredients that I wanted to remove from our pantry.

For more than a year, we followed one recipe for granola that we all enjoyed. Then this past August, I had some of Meghan’s latest granola recipe when we stayed with them in Colorado. And I just had to change up a few things in ours to make it even more yummy, like her updated one. I thought the flavor couldn’t possibly get any better. Well I was mistaken.

My great friend Brie brought me over a batch of hers in November and it was just awesome!! But I couldn’t figure out why, I wondered what was that mysterious taste that made me take such delight in it. I got her recipe and went down the list of ingredients she used. We both had something to make it sweet, we both used similar spices, the nuts were basically the same… However, she had one additional ingredient in hers that I did not use in mine, and I was certain it made all the difference. Salt!!!!

Was I ever surprised at myself for not considering that magical ingredient before! You see, salt is one of my most favorite things in this world! When folks come to eat at our house, Rob will tell let them know that if they would like any salt, it can be found on Jo’s bedside table (it’s really not there, but it might as well be…) I put it on just about everything and “sparingly” is not the word that would ever describe the manner in which I shake shake shake. But I had never thought that this flavor enhancer would do such wonders in granola – shame on me! Because it does. It does. It does.

So here is the latest granola recipe that I use:

1 cup coconut oil
1 1/2 cup honey (raw is best if available)
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cardamom
1 TBLS vanilla (read label, lots of them have some form of sweetener)
2 tsp almond extract
1 TBLS kosher salt (don’t freak out, this makes more than 12 cups of granola!)

8 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup flax seeds
1 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
1 cup each: peanuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, walnuts, almonds, pecans, pistachios, etc (preferably use raw and use as many varieties as you have on hand!! You also don’t need to alter the recipe for the more, or less, types of nuts you use)

2 TBLS cinnamon

I first heat up the top ingredients in a sauce pan over low heat and stir until well mixed. In a large roasting pan (I prefer this over cookie sheets because the high sides come in handy when stirring), I add the remaining dry ingredients (except for cinnamon) and pour the coconut oil mixture on top. Stir until everything is well coated.

Bake at 250 (the lower temp keeps all the nuts and seeds nutritionally optimal) for 35 minutes. Take out and stir and bake again for another 35 minutes.

Pull out to cool and sprinkle the cinnamon on. You’ll want to stir this regularly over the next couple of hours or the granola will all clump together.

*update – we now own an excalibur dehydrator, so instead of baking our granola I use our dehydrator and turn it on the highest setting for 24 hours.

Homemade Deodorant – it’s really not that crazy of an idea…

About four years ago, Rob’s sister Meghan introduced me to the book Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. And it has really shaped our eating habits and grocery shopping in a positive way ever since. Refraining from any dairy product that is labeled ‘reduced fat’, slowly (but surely, one change at a time) eliminating processed foods and, instead, buying wholesome base ingredients to cook and bake with are the main changes we have been making. I still have a long way to go in this. But I am pleased to be able to look back and see just how much improvement has been made and to see the better habits we have since been developing.

I have to admit it was hard to have just one book be my motivator in keeping up my progress at changing the way we eat (especially when you get so many contradictory messages from other sources), so I was so pleased to run across this kitchen stewardship blog last year. The author is a huge supporter of Sally Fallon and she actually helps you, baby-step by baby-step at a time, make weekly changes that fall in line with much of the wisdom in Nourishing Traditions. But what I also love about this blog, is the other bits of healthy living aids that are provided. So many topics are covered and therefore I am now challenged with practical ways to make improvements to our way of living in more than just the area of food.

I have been working for the last couple of years on modifying our eating habits to promote healthy living, but I shied away from learning how I should also be making changes in the topical products we use. I knew that once I started learning more about the harmful effects so many common toiletries can have on our bodies that I would be completely overwhelmed!! But thankfully, this kitchen stewardship blog is helping me carry on the same approach I have with our eating and by guiding me to make little changes to other areas, one step at a time. So when a post she had done on homemade deodorant resurfaced again in one of her recent blogs, I felt like it was time to move in the direction of modifying some of the toiletries we use.

Here is the link to her post: homemade deodorant
adding this update on 1/6/11: I saw she reposted it again today, with a few pieces of additonal advice: update on homemade deodorant

She makes it super easy to carry out (and makes a super convicting point about the hazards of antiperspirants) and it is super *inexpensive! Do you see that I am trying to help you see that this was a ‘super’ idea I followed and not a crazy one :-)

Or if you just want the steps/recipe without all the extra reading, then here is what you need to do:
1) Mix about 1/4 cup baking soda and 1/4 cup cornstarch in a small bowl.
2) Add coconut oil, a Tablespoon or so at a time, until all the dry ingredients have been mixed in. I find it takes about 4-6 Tbs.
3) Optional: If you’d like more scent, add a few drops of your favorite essential oil at this time. (I have not done this yet)
4 )Make sure your coconut oil is in its solid form. It has a 76 degree melt point, so you may need to refrigerate it first for a short time if it’s warmer than 76 degrees in your house.

There was a suggestion that you could store this in an empty deodorant container. But I found it easier to just keep it in a little (and pretty) glass jar. Then I take a small amount out and and rub it on each morning. I have been using it for almost two months now and have had no complaints on its effectiveness. And I actually believe that at the end of the day I am more pleasant to be around; in the body odor sense, i.e. As I can’t always guarantee my mood :-)

So be it crazy or not, I am sold on this change!! Rob is still hesitant to follow suit, but he can’t offer a valid reason on why, other than it being just ‘too weird.’ Weird, yes. I can see that. But I’ll take weird if with it comes healthier and effective and more cost friendly!

*the cost really works out for us because I do have access to a coop where I can get Tropics Best Organic Coconut oil for $28 a gallon. But even without that incredible deal, the cost to make this with a pricey jar of coconut oil at the store will still come out cheaper than the average purchased deodorant.

seriously, child! I mean really???

Before reading this post you have to know that the words in the blog title are not ones expressing frustration or anger. Because even though I might (or you might) say similar phrases when addressing a child that has made some crazy poor choice, in this case these are words of pure astonishment and awe!

They filled my mind and came out as praise both a week before Christmas and then again yesterday when Halle (who is only 7 years old) amazed me with yet another long and weighty-in-matter chapter book she had completed in just one sitting, in a little over two hours.

But let me back up to explain a little more about my marveling…

I know I have mentioned Halle’s love for reading on this blog before (here is one post) and some might know that she started reading when she was 4. And when I say ‘reading’ I mean she was reading fluently and reading chapter books (long chapter books) regularly and without any aid or prompting on my part.

Here is a picture I took before she turned 5 reading (for her 2nd time) Charlotte’s Web.

I used to try to keep up with everything she has read by giving her an account on www.goodreads.com but it was an impossible task, and I lost track long ago. And what makes grasping her full literature intake all the trickier is that she reads and re-reads so many of her chapter stories over and over again. Even though I know what is on her book shelves, I am not always sure of what she picked up to read that day. We also get lots of books at the library each week that I don’t put effort into documenting. In addition to all that, even more literature floods our home because Rob’s mom has given Halle a subscription to several most excellent children magazines by a publisher called Cricket. Three of the magazines, Spider (ages 6 – 9), Ask (ages 6-9), and Cricket (ages 9-14) come in the mail each month, and when they do Halle will sit down and consume all the literature within in just a short while.

I have so wanted to be able to read along side of her and be able to discuss all that she is filling her mind with, but there is no way I can keep up!

The child literally wakes up reading and goes to bed reading! If I had to guess, I would say she reads an average of 5-6 hours a day. Because we homeschool, the mornings are pretty relaxed and often she will wake up around 7:30am, but remains back in her room until 9 reading through her chapter books. Then during rest time (2:30pm – 5:00pm everyday), she is reading some more. While I do school things with Dee and Gracie that are unique to them, Halle is reading. When we run errands, she is reading in the car and often times in the cart at the grocery stores. And when I am in the kitchen getting dinner ready in the evening, most of the time, she is in the den or back in her room reading, reading, reading! Then at bedtime (8ish), she is given a time limit as to when to stop reading which usually gives her another 1 1/2 hours or so of more time with books (but that nighttime estimate is on the conservative side, because many times Rob will get out of bed after 11pm and see that her light is STILL on and that she is STILL reading).

What gets me lately is not the amount of time she spends reading, but her speed and comprehension in doing so. I knew that slow was never a word that described her reading style, because she can easily breeze through a Boxcar Children Book in less than hour. She brings out a stack of around 7 each day that she goes through before dinnertime. But I figured the speed was because she reads them over and over again and is so familiar with the content and storyline. In 2010 there were 146 books in the series (now I see there are an additional two we need to acquire) and she has completed all of them (thanks to the library, half-price books, and amazon.com). She knows them so well that when a discussion came up between a 14 year old girl who mentioned she had read one of the Boxcar books once and thought the title had something to do with ‘a houseboat mystery’, Halle replied back, “Oh, you mean number 12?” Which sure enough, she was right. Number 12 is indeed The Houseboat Mystery.

I also do not comprehend how she picks up on the vocabulary of many of the books she reads. She sees a word used and then based on its surrounding context, she seems to get them and understand them. Even words like ‘polygamy.’ I know this because last year sometime, a friend of mine and I were watching one of the movie renditions of Jane Eyre during the kiddos’ rest time. When Halle came out, we were at the wedding scene that was interrupted between Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester. We brought Halle up to speed and explained that the wedding could not continue because it was discovered Mr. Rochester was already married. Halle pondered this for no more than a second before concluding, ‘well if he were a polymast, he could get married.” Astonished at this, I asked “do you mean polygamist?” After her confirmation, I was able to discover that she had come across the word a couple years ago when she had read through the Lemony Snicket series. Apparently the word came up, Halle read about it, remembered it, and then used it again more than a year later with the correct application to poor Jane’s dilemma!

So you can see, I have much to wonder at with Halle and her reading. But with some recent happenings, I now see that she can read quickly (like speed reading) and with amazing comprehension when going through a book for the first time. When I mentioned that I was in awe just a week before Christmas, it was because we had given her The Voyage of the Dawn Treader to read. My mom had wanted to take the girls to see the movie and it was the one book Halle had not yet read in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia Series. So at 2:30pm one rest time before we left for Houston, I handed her the book to begin her reading. And when she came out at 5:00pm, she had told me that she finished it. Hence the “seriously, child! I mean really????” response.

Could she have actually gone through it that fast and picked up all of the story? When I worked my way through them several years ago, I know that it took me at least a week to get through each one of them.

I decided I needed to check her comprehension of the material and with a little bit of googling, I found some questions here on the novel that I talked with her about. She pretty much aced the quiz I had come across! The questions that she missed upon first asking, she was able to complete correctly with a little assistance from me. She got it!!

Then yesterday, she took the book I had started as a read aloud, over the weekend, back to her bedroom during rest time. This was Little Pilgrims’s Progress a retelling of Paul Bunyan’s classic that is still 336 pages long. Sure enough, at 5 oclock out she came with the completed book in hand. Wha-what!!

Again, all I can say is ‘wow!’

I am still at a loss as to what I should do with this (if anything at all). When parents realize they have a child that has talent in a sport, they get them more involved and enroll them with teachers/coaches/instructors to help further develop their skill. But with reading, I don’t know what I can do. I have talked with other English teachers to get feedback on this (because I do think it is a gift she has as Rob and I do not read that way nor do Dee and Gracie show signs of similar potential), and they suggest to just keep encouraging her and find ways to expand her comprehension and thought process of the stories she reads.

So that is what I will try to introduce to her, but I just want to be careful that it doesn’t become a turn off for her. I so want her love for reading to be enhanced all the more by exploring deeper into what she reads! I just feel so inadequate trying to do so.

I am always open to thoughts and suggestions on this matter :-) and I would love more great book recommendations that I should stock her bookcases with!