Bread and Granola

This morning I drove Jesse to the airport for his second business trip this month. Believe it or not, he has one more before February is over! Traveling by plane is always hard, especially from one coast to another. We always pack lots of food -- tasty sandwiches, nuts, apples, and chocolate for emergency airport meltdowns. This trip, Jesse is also traveling with several slices of fresh banana bread that we whipped up after dinner last night. If the bread makes it through the 7-hour trip to Washington, D.C. (without succumbing to his stomach), it will be a tasty treat tomorrow morning before his meetings. This time I sprinkled a little sugar on top to make a nice crunchy crust. Jesse said it reminds him of the tops of some of his favorite Emily's muffins. I'll take that as a compliment!

In more baking news, I'm also going for round two of the homemade granola that I tried out last week. The recipe came from Mark Bittman's blog and turned out to be quite tasty and versatile. In this particular batch, I used 6 cups of rolled oats, 2 cups (total) of pecans, sliced almonds, and raw pepitas (which sort of look and taste like pumpkin seeds), 1 tsp. of cinnamon, 1 tsp. of vanilla (not called for in the recipe), 1/2 cup (total) of honey, brown sugar, and some leftover maple syrup. I mixed the liquids and sugar together and heated it slightly to make it easier to mix, poured it over the dry ingredients, and stirred it around until it was all coated. I have to admit that the mixture appeared to be a bit dry, but once the nuts heat up in the oven and release their oil, it makes a nice crunchy granola. After I baked the granola, I stirred in a cup of dried blueberries.

The final verdict is that the granola is delicious with a delicate, slightly sweet cinnamon flavor, and nice crunch and chew. Seriously, give it a try. You'll never buy the bagged stuff again. Jesse thinks the dried blueberries are lost on him (especially since they're twice as expensive as a bag of raisins) so I'll leave them out of the next batch and throw in a few when I eat the granola with yogurt in the morning. It's so nice to know that with just a basic outline of ingredient proportions, I can throw in any nuts I have on hand and will definitely play around with various sweeteners. For the next batch, I think I'm going to try something totally different and sweeten it with some fruit jam. Jesse also thinks that dried apples will be delicious to try. I agree!