domestic dilettante, humorless feminist shrew

A few weeks back, the New York Times posted a recipe by Melissa Clark: Olive Oil Granola with Dried Apricots and Pistachios.

I love a good granola, which for me means lots of seeds/nuts, some sort of fruit, and a bit of salt. This sounded right up my alley. Then I looked at the ingredients and realized that this was a pretty minimalist granola–the only additions to the stuff mentioned in the recipe name were pepitas and coconut chips, plus I can’t really envision pistachios making delicious granola. (Though I do love pistachios. Just…by themselves.) So I figured that I’d run by Mr. Bulky and see what I could find to make a more delicious, more interesting granola.

The day after I made the granola, we had some friends over and I set out bowls of it, because I am a crappy housekeeper but a fantastic hostess. The bowls were refilled repeatedly–this stuff is pretty addictive. I’ve been taking it to work and eating it with jam and yogurt for breakfast, and it’s delicious.

The batch that I made was pretty epic–I’m not convinced that most people want a roasting pan of granola–but it would be easy to cut in half. (Also, to be fair, the granola keeps just fine. I made mine about two weeks ago, and it’s still going strong.)

4 cups rolled oats
2 cups pecan pieces
1 cup pepitas (the original recipe called for raw ones; I used roasted, unsalted ones)
1 cup sunflower seeds (I used roasted, salted ones.)
2 cups coconut (the flake kind that you can buy in the bulk food section)
1 cup golden flaxseed
1 cup yogurt-covered raisins
2 cups dried cranberries and/or cherries (I used a mixture of the two, since that’s what was around)
1 cup olive oil
1 1/4 cups honey or agave nectar (again, I used a mixture, since that’s what I had)
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tsp kosher salt
cinnamon
ginger

Preheat the oven to 300. In a roasting pan, combine the oats, pepitas, sunflower seeds, flaxseed, pecans, and coconut. Mix up the olive oil, honey, sugar, salt, and cinnamon and ginger (to taste), then pour the oil mixture over the oat mixture, stirring it well to make sure that the oil and sweeteners are evenly distributed throughout.

Granola goes into the oven. Stir every ten minutes, and take it out when it looks brown and granola-y. I can’t be more specific than that, sadly, as my oven is not known for consistency, and so when I said “300″, above, it could very well have been 275 or 350, and I’d never have known the difference. It looks like granola when it’s done, though, and if you watch the coconut, you’ll notice when you see it starting to brown up too much.

Let it cool, then consume. Store it in airtight containers and eat lots of it, because it’s delicious.