Homemade Granola Recipe

Eating healthy has become a priority in our household.  A lot of people may think that eating healthy is expensive but we've found a bunch of ways to keep the costs down.  For one, we order some of our ingredients (Chia Seeds) online where they are FAR cheaper than they are at Whole Foods.  We also buy our most used items at Costco where we can get bulk sizes - Quinoa, honey, oats, eggs.  Another way for us to save on eating healthy is to make some of the food that we could purchase at the store.  We do this with pizza dough, cookies (not healthy, but you need a vice), granola and smoothies to name a few.

We eat a lot of granola.  I never thought I'd be one of those "granola eating healthy people" but here I am writing a post about making your own at home.  It's so simple and you can make a huge portion at once to save for a few weeks.  We eat granola almost everyday with Greek Yogurt and fruit which is pretty much a staple around here.  At any given time there is at least a tub or three of Greek Yogurt in our fridge.

A co-worker of mine said she makes her own granola using a recipe on Allrecipes.com and sent me the link.  I stared with the same recipe and I've since added a few things and changed a few of the amounts.  If you follow the recipe just as it it, it's delicious.  I don't want to take anything away from the original recipe, I just have a few other things on hand and added them in.  

The following recipe will make enough granola for our house for about 3 weeks.  I mix all of the dry ingredients together in a large bowl and the wet ingredients in a small bowl then mix the two together.  

4 cups old fashioned oats

1 cup each: sliced almonds, chopped walnuts, chopped pecans

1/2 cup of salted sunflower seeds

5 tbs of Chia Seeds

1/3 cup oil

1/2 or little more of honey (sometimes I do half honey and half maple syrup)

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

palm full of ground cinnamon

Once it's all mixed together I spread it out on two large cookie sheets and bake at 300 degrees for 21 minutes, stirring every 7 minutes.  Sometimes I go a little bit longer, you'll be able to tell how crunchy the granola is at the end.  

With the bulk items that we bought at Costco we have enough ingredients to make granola for a year.  I'm dying to try this on some frozen yogurt or ice cream, but we haven't had any of that in the house in a long time.  And I'll be honest, there are plenty of days when I grab a handful of granola on my way past the pantry  because it's so good.  I wish you could smell how great the house smells after the granola is baked.