Grumpy Granola

It's 8:25am and I'm disgruntled. My nose is stuffed, my legs are achy, my head kinda hurts, I'm thirsty, and the rooster woke me up at 7am... along with the dumpster trucks that roar back and forth to the nearby quarry. Ugh.

It sounds like a hangover. But the sad part is that it's not.

The crisp morning air wasn't enough to snuff out my melodramatic woes. So I'm making granola. As I sit the air is filling with a sweet almond scent of golden goodness. ugh.

I'm hoping that this batch will come out particularly well. Mostly, because I want to write about it. And I'm mostly writing about it because I'm sitting here, the unhappy clam that I am, waiting to turn the granola every 10 minutes.

So this is what you need:

• 3 cups rolled oats
• a glob of molasses (~1.5 tbs)
• small palmful of brown sugar
• a capful of canola oil
• 2 tbs of some sort of nut butter (I used sunnutbutter- made from sunflower seeds)
• a sizable mound of honey (~1/3 cup)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp almond extract
• a pinch or two of salt

Okay then, you have all your goods:

• mix together molasses and brown sugar with a fork until well combined
• add oil, nut butter, honey, extracts, and salt
• combine well
• examine your black substance and realize it resembles a mini BP oil spill, reflect on thisfor a moment, thank god you're not a sea turtle or sperm whale, and move on
• Mix well into rolled oats. This will take a few minutes of stirring and chopping with some sort of big spoon. You'll think it's too dry, but it's not... just keep mixing until everything is well coated.
• Spread out onto a big cookie sheet and bake at 350 for 25 minutes
• Every 10 minutes, take the sheet out to rake the edges in to the middle, and redistribute the granola around the tray.
• Voila! You have vanilla almond granola. Stir in any dried fruit you'd like. I stirred in black currents. Cherries or golden raisins would work really well too.

At 25 minutes I taste-tested and it had an amazing flavor. But I wanted it a teensy bit more crunchy. I put it back in the oven. This was a bad idea. I ended up baking mine for 31 minutes (instead of 25 like you should), and now it's too toasted. Adding to my grumpiness.... ugh.