ON GROWING UP, ON MAKING GRANOLA (TWO WAYS)

I've been feeling tense and jittery this week, for reasons too innumerable to list here, just a jangled five-four-frame of coiled springlike energy. It feels like the last day before summer vacation, before the start of something grand, and it's hard at times like this to remember that I'm supposed to be a grownup lady instead of an antsy twelve-year-old tomboy with the jitters.


Then just now I ate a bowl of homemade granola I'd assembled with my very own hands and baked two days earlier, which is something that the twelve-year-old me would never have done, and came back to reality again, just a little bit. Something about the comforting, crumbly association of oats, nuts and a lingering touch of sweetness from honey has that effect on me.


I always imagined adulthood would be something I'd be solemnly ushered into one day, didn't you? After some kind of difficult entrance exam, like a prestigious marble-columned university.

Maybe there'd even be some chanting in Latin.

I'd get to a point, younger me imagined, where the right career seemed obvious, where relationships were clearly defined and my legacy seemed secure. Then what actually happened instead was that I arrived at various checkpoints along the way: fourteen, eighteen, twenty-one, twenty-five, thirty....and no one showed up with a tasseled cap, or even so much as a Congratulations, you did it, you've made it handshake. Now? Now I'm thirty-three, and I think I finally realize that you show up to this adulthood thing with all the oddly-shaped life experiences and childhood phobias and bizarre tools, all the scrappy threadbare duct-taped notions you've managed to gather along the way....and nothing else. Well, maybe not quite nothing else. Maybe not alone, if you've been lucky enough to gather around you a circle of family, confidantes, lovers, supporters and antagonists as you went along. There's no marker along the way that says Congratulations, there's just you. Hefting that lumpy bag of strange, dinged-up tools along with you. Doing those things you do, whatever they are, with the people that you have.

Your adulthood takes the form in which you sculpt it, in other words. Whether you're waiting tables or researching a cure for cancer, what you're doing is living in the world you made (and if your world contains fragrant pans of warm, crumbly homemade granola, then so much the better, is what I say). The life you fall into, whether haphazardly or with great intent, is the life you're going to have.

Until you change it.


I know, guys. This is heady stuff for an intro to a blog post about cereal.


More to come, most likely sooner than later, about all this sketchy, vague, life-changing, growing-up stuff. I promise. In the meantime, here are two recipes for homemade granola that start off similarly enough in the bowl--oats, nuts, crunchy add-ins, a tasty oil for flavor and texture, a touch of honey--and then diverge pretty sharply into savory versus sweet. The former feels very 'grown up' to me, and whether that's due to the fact that it's unexpectedly not-sweet (even a little salty), or maybe the warm kick of smoked paprika and a little cayenne....I don't know, and I don't much care. I just call it good. This is a cereal for sprinkling on plain Greek yogurt, maybe with the addition of a couple of slow roasted grape tomatoes. Or for just snacking on out of the bowl, like you would a spicy handful of mixed nuts. Whatever is your bag.


Then there's the sweet variety, rich with coconut oil and the dark background notes of cocoa powder, crunchy and nutty from toasted coconut flakes and almonds. With the final flourish of chocolate shavings (buy the best quality you can find....and get one with roasted cacao nibs in it for an extra treat, if you can!), it's most definitely chocolate for breakfast. I most definitely wasn't allowed to have chocolate for breakfast when I was a kid, so maybe that makes this option feel very grown up, as well.

Savory Olive Oil & Pepita Granola with Orange Zest & Spice*

1 1/2 cups oats
1/2 cup pepitas
1/4 cup sliced almonds
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp smoked paprika
1/8 tsp cayenne
1/2 tsp orange zest
1 T almond butter
2 T olive oil
1 T honey
1 egg white

[ Each of these recipes makes a smallish batch of about 2 cups of granola, but can easily be doubled or quadrupled if your household is larger than mine. ]

Preheat oven to 300 degrees, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Combine all dry ingredients (oats, pepitas, salt, spices & zest) in a large mixing bowl and mix well. Add the first wet ingredients (almond butter, olive oil, honey) and stir gently, allowing clumps to form. In a separate bowl, beat egg white until foamy, then gently stir into granola mixture, forming even more clumps. You want these clumps. These clumps are your friends*.

Spread granola in a single layer about 1/2" thick on the parchment, and bake at 300 for about 20-30 minutes, until just golden brown. Remove and let cool, then gently break up granola into a variety of clumps and store in an airtight container.

[ Some people like their granola to look like a loose collection of individual oats, without any clumps at all. You may be one of these people, in which case I do not understand your mysterious ways. CLUMP IT UP. ]

 

Sweet Granola with Toasted Coconut, Almonds, Chocolate & Cacao Nibs

1 1/2 cups oats
1 T cocoa
1/2 cup coconut
1/4 cup sliced almonds
1/8 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 cup coconut oil
2 T honey
1 egg white
one 3 oz. bar of excellent quality chocolate*, shaved with a sharp knife or finely grated**

[ *I used a bar of Scharffen Berger milk chocolate with roasted cacao nibs, even though I'm generally more of a fan of dark chocolate, because I saw it in the store and was instantly coveting those crunchy little nibs for my granola. Either version, I think, would be delicious. ]

[ **Pro tip: It really helps if you throw the bar in the freezer for about twenty minutes before attempting this, especially if it's June. ]

Preheat oven to 300 degrees, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Combine all dry ingredients (oats, cocoa, coconut, almonds, sugar & salt) in a large mixing bowl and mix well. Add the first wet ingredients (coconut oil, honey) and stir gently, allowing clumps to form. In a separate bowl, beat egg white until foamy, then gently stir into granola mixture, forming those tasty, tasty clumps.

Spread granola in a single layer about 1/2" thick on the parchment, and bake at 300 for about 20-30 minutes, until just golden brown. Remove and immediately sprinkle with chocolate shavings, gently breaking up granola into a variety of clumps as you go and allowing the chocolate to melt here and there into the little craggy, toasty oat crevices. Let cool, and store in an airtight container.