Homemade, Crunchy, Sweet Granola

There are loads of granola recipes out there and I would like to try all of them!  For now, this granola works great and as it is a bit on the sweet side, makes a great partner to the plain yogurt that I have just learned to make.

My mom's friend Vicki gave me this recipe, which I changed a little bit from the original.  She and her husband enjoy even just snacking on this granola and they make a big batch before their yearly trip to Florida to eat along the way.  We like mixing it with yogurt and fruit, and I like that it is less fattening and a lot less expensive than what you buy at the grocery store, but very easy and quick to make and is my #1 go-to recipe when I want to bake with James.  He loves making granola!  Or "Granolan", as he used to call it, since his best friend's name is Nolan.

Homemade Granola


2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed (not so healthy but oh, I love brown sugar!)
3 tbsp vegetable oil
1/4 cup orange juice
3 tbsp pure maple syrup
1 generous tsp vanilla
1/2 cup chopped nuts (I have been using walnuts)

Preheat the oven to 300 F.  Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and spray with vegetable oil spray.

Combine oats, flour, sugar, oil, orange juice, syrup, vanilla, and nuts in a mixing bowl.  Spread evenly on prepared baking sheet and bake for 35 minutes, tossing once to prevent burning.  After the 35 minutes are up, turn off the oven but leave the granola inside for about another half hour to make it even crunchier.  Remove from oven, break up the big chunks into littler bits, allow to cool, and then store in an airtight container.

This granola will keep up to one month, if it lasts that long!

The original recipe included 1 tsp of cinnamon and 1/2 tsp ground ginger.  I don't use the spices because although I like them, I like my granola to have a more simple flavour.  Feel free to spice things up though!  Additionally, when your granola is ready to be stored, you can mix in dried fruit (I love dried cherries!).

I love that little helping hand.

Sweet baking boy.

Mmmm... breakfast goodness.

6 Little, Easy Ways to Be More Frugal

I like living simply, and I love doing things for my family with my own two hands.  I'm learning more and more every day, and I love the way that creating things that my family needs with my own know-how and with items that I already have in the house allows me to be more frugal.  This is especially important to me right now as I am going back to university in the fall, which is a pretty expensive prospect when you have little ones at home, and jobs aren't exactly growing on trees at the moment, particularly in the conservation field.

Some of these homemaking activities require (or will require, as I haven't started them all yet!) time and commitment and work, but for me, they are so rewarding that it doesn't matter.  It's actually kind of addictive, and Pinterest and blog-reading are fuelling the fire.  Oh--you make your own deodorant?  I should try that!  You have a recipe for homemade ginge rale? Sign me up!  You sewed your own apron which beautifully gathers so you can put your freshly plucked organic vegetables in it when out in the garden?  Where is the pattern?!

Obviously, I'm just starting down this path.  There are oodles of people WAY ahead of me.  And maybe, some people who drop by this blog are with me in the early phases or are just figuring out that they'd like to explore these ideas a little more, which is why I am including a few easy ways to live more frugally and do things for yourself, by yourself.  You can be kinder to the planet, have fun with items already in your home, and save a few pennies (or soon-to-be nickels, in Canada I guess!).  Some of these you've seen before in blog posts, but I thought it would be fun to do a quick review in a list format!

 1.  Make your own bread.  Really.  It isn't hard to do, and this recipe is super easy, forgiving, adaptable, uses less yeast so even less expensive, and it's no-knead.  You mix it up, leave it alone, come back, flip it around a few times, put it in a pan, give it a break, then put it in the oven.  Before you know it, your house smells like a bakery and you feel a sense of accomplishment.  It tastes way better than what you would buy in the store, for a fraction of the cost and probably even saves time in the long run because you don't have to drive to a store, pick out a loaf, wait in line at the check-out counter, get home and put it away. :)

2-3. Grow your own vegetables.  This one is sort of a frugality double whammy, are you ready?  Grow your own vegetables from seed (all of them) rather than buying the seedlings at the garden centre.  This is loads of fun, gives you an activity to interest your active three-year-old son and prevents him from endlessly, noisily crashing his cars around you, or colouring on your bedroom door, and costs less than buying the seedlings (which in turn costs less than buying the full-fledged vegetables).  Frugal tip number three: grow them in cut up toilet paper and paper towel rolls.  Save them and then plant in them when you need to.  They hold the soil, can be planted as they are in the ground because they'll decompose and you won't have to disturb the roots shaking them out of the pot, reduce household waste, and save you loads of money on unsustainable peat pots.

4. Save your eggshells for your garden.  Egg shells break down in the soil, add to the compost that you are hopefully already adding to your garden, and provide much-needed calcium to the most beautiful of all garden crops, tomatoes.  Also, slugs don't like to cross them so they can act as an effective barrier to those horrid slimy creatures (and as a biologist I say that with love and no discrimination against a natural creature of any kind).  If you eat lots of omelettes or angel food cakes, you'll collect quite the pail-full of these in no time at all, and your afore-mentioned three-year-old boy will love helping you crunch them up!

5. Use vegetable crisper compost to make new veggies!  Specifically, celery (above) and green onions (not pictured).  I don't know if there are other veggies you can do this with but these are the two I've tried.  When you cut them back to nothing and all you have is the bottom of the celery or the silly little white onion bulb from the green onions, just as you're about to toss them in your compost bin, think again and stick them in a glass of water.  They'll grow and you can harvest them again!  Gets you a lot more bang for your 99 cents (or $1.49, if it's the celery and it's on sale!).  It also provides a fun little experiment for your kids and it doesn't take long--those celery leaves are 5 days old.

6. Use orange peels to make your own environmentally friendly household cleaner.  Have you noticed yet that I save a lot of garbage?  Toilet paper rolls, egg shells, celery bottoms (what is the correct term for those anyway?) and now orange peels.  And it's not only me saving them, I have my parents and my sister saving them for me too.  And I require that my husband take home the orange peels leftover from his lunch.  But I like this cleaner, it's fun to make, smells better than cleaning with straight vinegar and it only takes a few minutes using something that would end up in your compost bin.

I love little tips like these!  Please share yours and I can delightedly add to my little rituals of using weird items to cut down on waste and create great new things.

Growing a Sourdough Starter from Wild Yeast

I should say before I write anything else that I am NOT a sourdough expert.  I have not yet baked a loaf of sourdough bread.  My sourdough journey is in its initial, tentative steps.  But I have successfully gotten a sourdough starter going from wild yeast, and I am quite proud of it.  I can get you at least that far, and then hopefully if you return to my blog I will have had luck with the baking step--if not, I'll be pointing you to other blogs and websites for further reference!

I have seen recipes for sourdough online, and in my favourite cookbooks, and most of them start with a "cheater" starter using commercial yeast.  That's ok, if it turns out for you and you like it, but being a biologist I thought it would be a lot more interesting to start my own.  When I read that you could "capture" wild yeast to develop your starter, it sounded infinitely more exciting to me!

It is so easy to do, and I am glad that I tried.  I even abused my poor starter a little bit, and it is still going.  It needs to get a little stronger before I attempt bread again (my first shot at it was pretty miserable) but even the fact that it is living on top of my fridge seems amazing to me.  I got the instructions/recipe for one technique of getting a starter going from this post on The Fresh Loaf website and followed the directions with the ingredients that I had.  It takes time to develop a starter, it is certainly not closely related to instant or even regular active dry yeast.  It takes patience, clean dishes and hands, and a lot of love.  But you can totally do it in your kitchen!  All you need is some whole grain flour and pineapple or orange juice.  So let's get started:

As you can see, I used regular Robin Hood whole wheat flour.  I think if you can get organic stone-ground rye, like I have since purchased from the Bulk Barn, it would be better.  However, mine worked with the flour I used.

Day 1
Combine 2 tablespoons of whole wheat or rye flour with two tablespoons of juice. Mix well, and cover lightly (I used a piece of cotton dishtowel held in place over a mason jar with the screw band).  Keep it in a warm place, like on top of your refrigerator.

Day 2
Add another 2 tablespoons of w.w. or rye flour and two more tablespoons of juice.  Mix well again, and re-cover.

Day 3
Add yet another two tablespoons of both flour and juice.  Mix it up, cover it up, sing it a little song.

Day 4
Open up your starter, stir it all up, measure out 1/4 cup and then discard the rest.  Wash out your jar, and return your 1/4 cup of starter to it.  Then add 1/4 cup of unbleached all-purpose flour, and 1/4 cup of warm filtered water.  Stir it all up nicely, cover it back up, and put it back in its warm little nook.

After Day Four
Continue the Day 4 steps of stirring, discarding, and adding flour and water to it until you start to see some really bubbly action, the starter begins to expand, and you smell a characteristic yeast scent when you give it a sniff.  I'd keep it going for a while.  I noticed my starter took off in the evening of day 5, but I am now at day 15 and still have it on my counter, feeding it at least once daily and sometimes twice if I think it seems hungry.  You want to get it strong enough to to really be able to leaven your bread when you use it to make a sourdough loaf, and it takes a little while to get there.  Some people recommend at least two weeks.  Trust me, you want it strong.  I would show you a photo of my horrible first attempt at loaves if I hadn't been so ashamed of them that I threw them out to the birds and didn't take a picture!

My sourdough starter on Day 7, ready to be fed.

According to SourdoLady (the user who posted the procedure on The Fresh Loaf), when you feed it you can actually keep less starter than even a quarter cup, for instance 1-2 tablespoons.  I personally keep holding onto 1/4 cup because I am worried that something will happen and I will have thrown it all away and have to start over again.  But you should give it more water and flour in order to feed it properly.

To feed your sourdough starter, it is basically the same as the Day 4 step.  You discard most of your starter, mix it up with flour and water, and let it go crazy eating and growing.  From what I have read, you should feed it equal portions by weight water and flour, which comes out with a quantity of almost double the flour if you measure using cups.  Basically, when you mix it up, it should look like thick pancake batter.

When your starter stops expanding, starts to sink back down, begins to smell more like alcohol than yeast, and gets a layer of clear or yellowish liquid near the top, it is hungry and really needs to be fed.  After your starter gets going and becomes strong, you don't have to keep it at room temperature anymore.  You can feed it, put it in the fridge, and leave it.  Weekly feedings are recommended but if it's strong, it can go even longer than that and still be revived when you take it out to get it ready for baking.  I really should have taken before and after photos to show you the difference in volume from where it starts before a feeding and ends up later; I may edit this later and add one in. :)

Starter on Day 10, ready to be fed.

The way I have described feeding it, you'll never really have more than about 3/4 cup of starter, and when you bake, you'll probably need at least a cup plus some left over to keep your starter going for the next time.  If you want to increase it, the feeding before you plan to use it (say the night before), just give it a bigger feeding.  That will increase its volume to what you will need.  And when you feed it, the quantity that you discard can be put to use; it doesn't absolutely have to be thrown away. You can give it to a friend to start his/her own starter, or you can use it in a recipe like sourdough pancakes (note: I haven't made these yet, they're on my to-do list and if anyone is interested I'll post the results up here when I do it).

Good luck!  I am still learning, and my starter has in the last couple of days had a couple of near-death experiences.  If you check out the post I linked to earlier where I learned how to do this and have a look at the enormous comment thread, you'll get loads of help.  Also check out this post by Tamatha at A Flock in the City; she is amazing and knows all sorts of things about baking and fermenting and looking after various cultures.  She actually posted a sourdough bread recipe today, than I plan on trying as soon as my starter seems a bit more hearty!

This post is shared with Simple Living Wednesdays, Frugal Days Sustainable Ways and Homestead Barn Hop #58.

Oatmeal Whole Grain Pancakes

We love eating pancakes.  They are frequently requested by James, and we eat them almost every weekend.  Sometimes I even make them throughout the week.  Now that we have young children, I find that one of the best ways to visit with our friends who also have children is to host breakfasts rather than suppers--everyone is fresh and at their best for the day (and we're all up early anyway), you can cook a no-fuss meal and be completely casual and relaxed, and after breakfast you still have time to visit while the kids play. Once everyone goes home, there's still much of the day left to get things done, spend time with family, do your grocery shopping, go to the park, etc.

This recipe is a great one if you are having friends over (or if you have a lot of children!) because it makes so many pancakes, and with the oats and whole wheat, you feel a little better about serving them.  If we make it for our family alone, the leftovers are still great popped into the toaster through the week for a quick breakfast or snack.  My mother-in-law gave me the Robin Hood Home Baking cookbook last year for my birthday, which is where I got this yummy recipe.  And I haven't made anything in that cookbook yet that hasn't turned out to be delicious.  This one, however, is the recipe that we most often prepare!

The necessities.  And despite the supermarket egg carton, those are farm fresh eggs from the Summerside Farmers Market!

Oatmeal Whole Grain Pancakes - adapted from Robin Hood Home Baking

1 1/2 cups rolled oats
2 cups milk (*or almond milk, if you're dairy free*)

3 eggs
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla

1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tbsp brown or granulated sugar
2 tbsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 - 1/2 tsp cinnamon

In a small bowl, combine milk and oats.  Set aside until milk is mostly absorbed.  Meanwhile, preheat your griddle to about 350 F.

In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon.  Stir well.

Add eggs, oil, and vanilla to oat mixture.  Beat well.  Add oat mixture to flour mixture all at once, mixing until smooth.

I promise I put vanilla in there too!  Just not before I took this picture.

Here it is, ready for the griddle.

Spoon batter by 1/4 cupfuls onto griddle.  Cook for 2-3 minutes or until bubbles break on the surface and bottoms are golden, turn and cook for 2 or so minutes more until bottoms are lightly browned.  Serve hot with maple syrup, fresh fruit, yogurt, caramelized apples, whipped cream, etc.

Mmmmm... yummy pancakes.  I'm sorry I have to leave you with this photo, but we got so busy eating them that I didn't take a "pretty" photo of them stacked on a plate and drizzled with beautiful Canadian maple syrup!

I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we do!  And that you're having a wonderful and blessed Easter holiday.  He is risen.

This post is shared with Homestead Barn Hop #57 at The Prairie Homestead.

Another Multigrain Bread to Try

We ran out of bread yesterday and I had to (gasp) buy a loaf.  I actually really mind doing that because I am very rarely pleased with what I bring home.  My parents buy bread at the bakery in Kensington and I really like that bread, but otherwise, I am pretty picky and only like homemade.  However, I had a lot going on and kept putting off the (easy and fast) dough making process, until the point where we ran out. Then this morning, our bought loaf was almost gone.  I didn't really have time to wait the 15 or so hours for a loaf of my no-knead recipe, so I dug out a recipe book and tried a regular "knead and have bread in two-three hours" type of recipe.  Here are the results.

Adapted from Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook 15th edition; Mixed-Grain Bread

Mixed-Grain Bread

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 packages active dry yeast (4 1/2 tsp)

1 1/2 cups milk
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup cracked wheat (I used Red River Cereal)
1/4 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 1/2 tsp (1/2 tablespoon) salt

1 1/2 cups additional whole wheat flour
1/2 cup rolled oats

1 1/2- 2 cups additional all-purpose flour

In a large mixing bowl, combine 1 cup each of whole wheat and white flour with dry yeast, set aside.

In a saucepan, combine milk, water, cracked wheat, cornmeal, brown sugar, oil and salt.  Heat and stir over medium-low heat just until it becomes warm, between 120 and 130 F.  Add this warm milk mixture to the flour mixture, and beat on low speed with an electric hand mixer for 30 seconds, scraping the sides of the bowl.  Then beat on high speed for three minutes.

It's weird for me to use a hand mixer during the bread making process!  Not entirely unpleasant, however.

Using a wooden spoon, stir in the next 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour, and the 1/2 cup of rolled oats.  I used quick oats this time.

Then mix as much of the remaining white flour as you can into the dough.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead in enough of the remaining all-purpose flour to make a moderately stiff dough that is almost smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes of kneading should do.  *I used about a cup of the all purpose flour after mixing in the whole wheat and oatmeal.

Shape the dough into a ball, and place in a lightly greased bowl, turning over to grease the whole surface of the dough.  Cover, and let rise in a warm place until double in size, about one hour.

Dough immediately after kneading.

Dough after an hour sitting in the sunshine on the floor in the dining room.

Punch the dough down, turn onto a lightly floured surface (mine wasn't floured, it didn't stick) and cut into two equally sized pieces.  Cover them (I used plastic wrap that had been over the bowl) and let them rest for ten minutes.

Shape each piece into a loaf and place in greased 8x4x2 inch loaf pans.  Cover again and let rise in a warm place until double in size, about 30 minutes.  While you're waiting, preheat the oven to 375.

Brush tops of loaves with water and sprinkle with additional rolled oats.  I used large flake oats for the top.

Bake for 30-35 minutes until bread sounds hollow when lightly tapped.  Immediately remove bread from pans, and cool your luscious loaves on wire racks.

My loaves. You may notice a slight discrepancy in size and shape--the second one fell victim to a small plastic jar of car-shaped gummy vitamins falling on it during the second rise.  I gave it time to recover, and put it in the oven when the first one came out, but it never quite regained it's proper shape or stature!

A shot of freshly sliced bread. 

Overall, I think this is a nice recipe.  When I first started baking the no-knead recipe, I wasn't sure how I felt about it.  It tasted different, it was denser and heavier, and it seemed almost a little TOO rustic.  But now that I'm used to it, I prefer it.  Now when I bake more "regular" homemade bread, I find it tastes really yeasty and sweet and is super soft.  That might be just the kind of bread you like--my sister tried it and liked it, and my husband (who isn't exactly effusive in praise about most homemade products) said it was really good.  So I do think it is a nice recipe, but I enjoy the other one more.  I find the "bits" in this bread more obvious when you're chewing it, because in the no-knead recipe, they have hours to absorb some of the dough's moisture and become softer.  Maybe you like your bits a bit bittier.  I'm not sure how I feel about it.

However, when I'm short on time and can't wait an entire day (or night) to have bread, I think this is a pretty tasty recipe and it's nice that it makes two loaves, rather than one, even though they are a little smaller than the loaves I'm used to.  If you have a favourite multi-grain whole wheat recipe, please pass it on!  I love trying new bread recipes.

This post is shared with Homestead Barn Hop #57 at Homestead Revival.

Montreal Style Bagels

Disclaimer: These bagels are made with unbleached (but still refined) white flour.


Now I revere whole grain goodness as much as the next earthy-granola-conservationist-farm-friendly mamma, but I also like to live a little.  Perhaps there will come a day when a 100% whole wheat bagel will tempt my tastebuds the way a delicious Montreal-style bagel will, but that time is not now.  And I rarely make them, so I don't feel in the least guilty enjoying one once in a while.

If you are daring enough to rebel against the whole grain train every now and then, this is a recipe that you should definitely have in your collection.  If you already make Montreal-style bagels at home and your recipe is better than this one, please share it!  The closer I can get to that true epitome of deliciousness, the better!

Why Montreal?  Only because they are the most beautiful bagels in the world.  Granted, I have not eaten a New York bagel before but in this photo comparison I found on Google recently, I don't know if I need to.  It just doesn't look as delicious as the bagels I know.  Rustic, asymmetrical, chewy, delectable perfection.

Which would you rather eat?  I thought so.

My first experience with this carbohydrate ecstasy came to pass when I was in high school and went to visit my older sister who was living in Montreal at the time.  After one bite, I knew I could never go back to bagels as I knew them.  This was a sweeter, chewier, heartier, more grown up, "old-world" tasting thing of beauty that shouldn't have been in the same category as the bagels that I had previously eaten.

Craig took this picture the last time we were in Montreal and loaded up on bagels our last day in the city to bring home to share!

Delicious Fairmount bagel.

Unfortunately, the only place to get them fresh (that I know of) is in Montreal.  You can buy them (previously frozen, I think) here on PEI in an awesome little corner store called the Brighton Clover Farm, and the Charlottetown Farmers Market sells them as well.  That's all well and good, but they're less fresh and more expensive that way.  And I don't live in Charlottetown.  So a couple of years ago, I went in search of a recipe that would come close to imitating them in my kitchen.

It's not perfect, but unless you have Fairmount or St. Viateur bakeries down the street from where you live, it's the next best thing, and certainly much better then anything you'd buy in a store!

Montreal Style Bagels

1 1/2 cups warm (but not too hot) water

5 tablespoons sugar

3 tablespoons canola oil

1 package active dry yeast or 2 1/4 teaspoons

1 small egg; beaten

1 tablespoon malt syrup*

4 1/2 cups (or so) unbleached flour

1 teaspoon kosher salt

6 quarts water

1/3 cup honey

1/2 cup poppy seeds or sesame seeds

In a large bowl, stir together the warm water, sugar, canola oil, yeast (not instant), egg and malt. Keep combining until the yeast dissolves. Then stir in salt and one cup of the flour. Gently add enough flour to make a soft dough, about 3 cups.  Turn your dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead for 10-12 minutes, adding extra flour as you need it. When your dough is firm and smooth, cover with inverted bowl and let sit 10 minutes.

Divide the dough into 12 equal parts. Roll each piece into a 10 inch rope, then curve each one pressing together ends to make a bagel shape. You may need to use a few drops of water to help the ends stay together.  Let your bagels rise for 30 minutes, perhaps longer if the temperature of your kitchen is a little on the cool side (like mine always is!).


While your dough is resting/rising, fill a large pot with the 6 quarts of water, stir in the honey and bring to a boil. Preheat oven to 425 F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. When the honey water has come to a boil, drop the bagels in (three or four at a time), and let boil for 90 seconds, flipping once at 45 seconds.  Don't worry if you can't really flip them, or keep track of flipping them.  I don't always do very well at that step.


Remove the bagels from the pot and pat dry on clean tea towels.  Dip the bagels in bowls of sesame seeds or poppy seeds, flipping them over and generously covering both sides. Place on parchment paper-lined baking sheets.  Bake at 425 for 8-10 minutes, then flip and bake another 8-10 minutes.  How long you bake them depends on your oven, I followed the original recipe's instructions for 8 minutes the very first time I baked them (picture below, the only picture I have of my bagels was from my first attempt so they aren't very well rolled, and as you can see, a little on the light side).  I prefer them to be a little darker, so I tend to leave them about 10 minutes or so on each side.

Enjoy with whipped cream cheese, tomatoes, thinly sliced red onion and a little smoked salmon!  Or, with cream cheese and blueberry jam!  Or, if you are like my husband, peanut butter.

*I use Eden Organic Barley Malt syrup.  I bought it at the Bulk Barn; you can also use malt drink powder--either should be available in a health food store.

Note the light colour and less-than-professional rolling--they still turned out delicious, and I have since improved my bagel making skills!

This post is shared with the Homestead Barn Hop #55 at The Prairie Homestead.