Banana Granola

My hubby loves granola for breakfast and I have made a home made version before but then someone mentioned banana granola and I thought, wow that I have to try.

You will be surprised at how easy it is to make your own granola and once you have done it and tasted it you will be hooked! Also the great thing is it will save you a penny or two as making your own allows you to make several batches with the same ingredients. You can vary the flavour with spaces, such as ginger, cinnamon, cardamon, nutmeg. You could add raw cacao powder or cacao nibs....Also you can play around with the nuts and seeds you use to give it varying textures and flavours.

The use of grains is also completely up to you and you can be as playful as you like. The only constant for this recipe is the banana. You want to use two ripe/overly ripe bananas to get a real banana flavour going.

These are the ingredients I used for this batch of granola:
2 ripe bananas
1,5 tbsp melted coconut oil
pinch of salt
3 tbsp chia seeds (or flax if you prefer)
1 dl flaked dried coconut (you could use shredded too if you prefer)
2-4 tbsp maple syrup (depending on how sweet you want the granola)
1,5 dl whole buckwheat (I soaked mine over night but that's not a must)
1,5 dl oats
1,5 dl spelt flakes
0,5 dl pumpkin seeds
0,5 dl sunflower seeds
0,5 dl walnuts

1. Preheat your oven to 170C. 
2. Using a blender, blend the bananas to a smooth 'soup' like consistency. Add this to a large mixing bowl.
3. Melt the coconut butter to the mixing bowl, add salt and maple syrup. Mix. 
4. Now add all the rest of the ingredients. Make sure all the dry ingredients get coated with the banana mix. 
5. Transfer the mixture to a oven tray covered in baking paper,  flatten the mixture out so it soccer the entire tray. The point is you want to get as much of the granola to get baked. 
6. Now bake the granola for 8-12 minutes, you want that first golden colouring of the granola. Then take the tray out of the oven and flip it, so the under side, the 'unbaked' areas get the chance to bake. Return the tray to the oven for another 8-12 minutes. 
7. Depending on how crunchy you want the granola you could go for another flip & mix and allow it to bake another 4-5 minutes but longer than that I cannot recommend as it will go hard, which isn't nice biting into. 
8. Allow the granola to thoroughly cool off, and transfer to a container. If you don't allow the granola to cool off it will create old within your container within the day. Believe me I have made that mistake before. 

Enjoy the granola with yoghurt, milk of your choice and some fresh fruit or berries. 

A sort of Bircher muesli

I grew up with this version of bircher muesli, not then knowing it's name. It's been an old time favorite since then and comes back every so often when I am reminded of it. To me this is a sort of porridge substitute. Perfect summer breakfast. The grains, oats, raisins, seeds and nuts all  plump up do to the soaking but rain more of their texture than a regular porridge. 

Normally bircher muesli is made buy soaking oat, rainsins, seeds and nuts (dry muesli mix) in yoghurt, lemon juice sometimes in apple juice. I have also seen versions using soy or rice or almond milk in place of yoghurt. I grew up with water being the soaking liquid, and that's what I still use now with the addition of a little lemon juice. 

Now for the health aspect to this dish. Apparently the body can better absorb and digest both nuts, seeds and grains if they have been soaked or cooked. Even more so soaked as they then retain all their nutrients which are otherwise lost in the heating process. You might have heard of sprouting seed, grains and nuts, this is a nutritional approach to getting the very best out of these products. It's called eating living food, which in itself means higher nutritional benefits. Soaking the muesli is a step towards sprouting, so again higher nutritional value. In addition eating oats and other whole grains helps reduce bad cholesterol levels and also helps maintain a steady blood sugar level which in turn means you stay full longer. 

The great part is you can make endless variations to the muesli mix. You can even make it gluten free by using rice flakes, quinoa flakes, amaranth flakes, buckwheat, and oats (just make sure they have not been processed in combination with other gluten containing grains).

You can replace the raisins for cranberries, goji berries, dried blueberries, dried apricots and or figs, or any other type of dried fruit. 

You can replace the flax seeds for chai or use both. 

You can mix various grain flakes such as rye, buckwheat, spelt, kamut etc..

I usually keep the mix for 2-3 days, I think you can keep it for 4-5 days but I wouldn't try longer than that. It's easy enough to make the night before so large batches are not really necessary. 

Ingredients for 2 portions - the portions will almost double in size once soaked: 

2 dl mixed grains (oats, buckwheat, rye)

2 tbsp sunflower seeds

2 tbsp flaxseeds

2 tbsp dried fruit (if you use larger fruits then I would recommend dicing them into raisin size)

squeeze lemon juice (approx. 1-2 tsp)

4 dl water or yoghurt or milk (almond, soy, rice, oat)* 

you could also decide to use half & half the amount of liquids with water 

1. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl large enough to allow for the liquid to be added without over flowing, or use a tupperware. 
2. Add the lemon juice and mix.
3. Add the water or other liquid, mix and place in the fridge over night. 

Enjoy with yoghurt or other milk of your choice. I love to add some fresh summer fruit to give it some additional sweetness and color.  

9 Grain porridge & rhubarb compote

I love porridge. It reminds me of my dad, his porridge was always creamy yet had lots of texture. Recently I got back into making oat porridge and it is just as fulfilling as when my dad made it so many years ago.

I like to use various grains because they all give various textures. For this particular porridge I used; rye, oat, wheat, buckwheat, barley and rice flakes as well as amaranth and quinoa. Amaranth is an ancient grain that is gluten free and contains high levels of iron, calcium and protein.

If you wanted to make this porridge gluten free you could skip the barley, wheat and rye flakes.

porridge for two:
1 tbsp of each grain
pinch of salt
5 dl water
1 dl soy, almond, oat or dairy milk
2 tbsp flax or chia seeds
cinnamon - optional

1. Place all the grains in a pan and add 3 dl of the water water and bring to a boil. 
2. Lower the heat to a simmering point. 
3. Stir continuously to avoid burning the contents at the bottom of the pan.
4. Add the rest of the water after 7-8min.
5. Add the pinch of salt and keep stirring for another 4-5min. 
6. Finally add the soy/almond/oat or dairy milk along with the flax or chia seeds, stir and, cook for another 1min. 
7. Set the porridge aside with a lid for 3min to allow the final swelling and cooking of the quinoa and amaranth.

Rhubarb compote

4 stalks of rhubarb

500 grams fresh of frozen* strawberries

2 dl palm sugar or honey or half of each 

1. Wash the rhubarb, and chop into 2 cm chunks. 
2. *If you are using frozen strawberries place them in a thick bottomed pan add the sugar/honey and on a low heat slowly melt the strawberries. 
3. If you use fresh strawberries then place the rhubarb, strawberries and sugar/honey in a pan and on a low heat allow these to melt together. Stir every so often to make sure that nothing sticks and burns at the bottom of the pan. 
4. Once the rhubarb has broken apart, taste - taking care not to burn yourself, add more sweetner if you feel needed. 

This compote is also perfect to use in yoghurt with your breakfast cereal or as a dessert with ice cream, or on a crepe. Infact I used it recently as the filling for a pie.

If you don't like rhubarb then exchange it for apple compote or apple sauce. Maple syrup is also always a favorite of mine along with a grated apple or honey. Simply cinnamon on it's own also adds a lot of sweetness and also aids in digestion and in the breakdown of carbs and the sugars they contain.