Granola Gone Wrong

After watching King Corn, I want to try to cut down on our corn intake – especially high fructose corn syrup.* But, in protest to how much corn we mass-produce, I want to at least be aware of what corn is in, and possibly choose something corn-free to eat if possible. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think corn is evil. But, in our efforts to be able to mass-produce it, we have stripped the soil of nutrients, reduced the corn variety we use, and use massive amounts of land- which could be used to grow thousand of other yummy foods- for only one food type. Also, a lot of this corn goes in to the animals we eat, which is not that healthy for them and enables “cow factories” and such. Just watch the documentary...

Taking inventory of our kitchen I realized I eat corn in almost every cereal I eat for breakfast! While also taking inventory I noticed that we had ingredients on hand to make granola. So I looked up a few recipes and went to work on creating a new breakfast for us to eat in the morning.

Mistake 1: using steel cut oats instead of rolled oats (it’s what we had)

In my defense I did google and read about using steel cut oats instead of rolled oats for granola. I read that I was to expect the granola to be more like brittle that would take some breaking apart.

Mistake 2: leaving it in the oven too long.

I kept expecting the mixture to get hard – like brittle, but it stayed liquidy no matter how long I left it in the oven. Finally, when it starting smelling like it was getting too done (a.k.a. burnt), I took it out. That’s when it turned in to brittle and it took Jamie and two spatulas to get it out of the pan.

Mistake 3: too much brown sugar and honey.

I followed a recipe, but either the writer of the recipe I followed had a serious sweet tooth or the steel oats had something to do with it. We tried it in milk but it made the milk so sweet that I could not drink it– and that’s saying something because I love milk.

So what did we do? Jamie added the left over rice krispies we had and I went to the store and got some organic yogurt and cranberries. After that, it was edible, though Jamie always opted for something else for breakfast and I ate the granola over yogurt with cranberries myself :)

Here’s a picture of my salvaged breakfast:

The granola contains honey, brown sugar, and almonds.

Though this attempt did not turn out to well, I’m determined not to give up. We will not be having granola for breakfast any time soon because 1. I’m not sure Jamie is ready for that again, and 2. We bought tons of muffin mixes last week because Lowes Foods had them on sale :)

*here is a clip of how to make high fructose corn syrup –makes you think twice about the stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jisBG3egS8o