Grandpa's Home Cooking

Nancy's Healthy & Delicious Homemade Granola

Grandma Nancy makes her own granola because it is good stuff! She makes it with ingredients she selects and buys individually to insure she'll have the best granola for her breakfast.

Nancy eats cereal for breakfast. Period. Oh yes, now and then she likes to have a plate of Grandpa's bacon and eggs and sometimes she likes to prepare and eat pancakes, which daughter Marta loves. But typically, you can expect to see Nancy sit down at breakfast with her big bowl of cheerios or wheat flakes, her homemade granola, and fresh blueberries and/or bananas, chopped fresh dates, peaches, or strawberries. Nancy brings a bountiful bowl of goodness to the table nearly every morning.

Here's Nancy's recipe for homemade granola that is out of this world. Nancy regularly makes granola on Sunday afternoon.

Ingredients:

• 6 cups Oatmeal (Old fashioned Quaker Oats--no quick oats!)
• 1/2 Cup Wheat germ
• 2/3 Cup Flaxseed meal
• 1 Cup Almonds, slivered
• 1 Cup Pumpkin seeds
• 2/3 Cup Coconut
• 2/3 Cup Walnuts or pecans, chopped small
• 1 Cup water
• 1/2 Cup brown sugar
• 1/3 Cup Canola oil
• 1/2 Cup molasses
• 2 teaspoons Cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon Salt
• 1 Tablespoon Vanilla

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. 

2. In a large bowl combine oats, wheat germ, flaxseed meal, coconut, pumpkin seeds, and nuts and mix well.

3. In a large saucepan, combine brown sugar, water, oil, honey, molasses or sorghum, salt, cinnamon, and vanilla.

4. Heat until thoroughly mixed; do not boil. 

5. Pour syrup over the dry ingredients and gently stir until coated well.

6. Spread onto large cookie sheets.

7. Bake at 300 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

8. For a crunchier texture, bake an additional 10 to 15 minutes.

9. Stir in an airtight container in a dry place.

10. Granola will keep up to 6 months but it's gone at our house so fast that you can expect Nancy to sometimes make it twice in a month (unless more than 2 people are it daily). 

Fill airtight tins of granola and give goodness for Christmas. This would be an especially nice gift for a person living in an independent living facility.

Duck Fat!

Oh yeah! Grandpa is going to use more duck fat in his cooking. It is better than poultry fat. Why? Because duck fat is richer in fat. The French have learned. Duck liver cooked in duck fat is sublime. This is superb Foie Gras.  Man, you talk about fat! Spread that on toast points and your eating pure fat:-) Yeah, well, just cut back on portions and/or do a few more exercises and enjoy the richer flavor of duck fat. 

Use duck fat for sauteing vegetables, poultry, and seafood. Use it to make confit. And, I'm told it is good to replace butter with duck fat in savory pastries. Have I used duck fat to cook all of these things? No. But I am about to for some of these things:-) And I will report the results to you on Grandpa's Home Cooking! 

I have rubbed the cavity and/or breast of a chicken with duck fat, coarse kosher salt, and fresh ground pepper and then roasted the chicken. Oh my. Delicious! 

Next up. Roasting potatoes. Then French frying potatoes in duck fat. No. Not American style French fries. Look for a recipe soon for French frites. We're talking pommes frites as you eat in a restaurant in France! Deep fried thin potato sticks. Potatoes that have been fried twice. 

Where can you buy duck fat? Well I doubt you'll find it at the Piggly Wiggly! You're more likely to find it at a local gourmet store. In this area, I buy it at A Southern Season in small containers such as the one pictured in the photograph. If you want, A Southern Season will sell you a 5lb tub! One person reported asking a farmer at the farmers market if he sells duck fat. He said, "Tell me how much you want and I'll bring a tub to you next week." You can also do a Google Search and you'll find a place to order it. Does Amazon sell it? Well, of course. They sell everything, don't they?

How long can you keep duck fat. A chef at A Southern Season told me you can keep it in your refrigerator for up to a month. Indefinitely in your freezer. When you need it, just pull the tub from the freezer, cut off the size chunk you need and immediately return the tub to the freezer. If you have some in your fridge and you don't know how old it is, give it the sniff test. If it smells bad, it is.