granolation

Hi my name is Ileana and I

1. Read recipes for fun and
2. Get insatiable urges to make muffins (I needs my fix real bad!)

That led to reading this recipe for granola muffins and making these:

Which starred this: the now-famous Galaxy Granola. More on this in a bit.

Berrylicious Granola Muffins

1 cup Galaxy Granola, Not Sweet Vanilla flavor
1/2 cup milk

1 T ground flax
3 T water

1 cup whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 six-ounce container berry-flavored yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup fresh cranberries (I still have mine in the freezer from last fall. I love these guys! Obviously you could sub another fresh berry)

Combine granola and milk in a bowl and let sit for thirty minutes.
Combine water and flax to make a flax “egg”, and let sit.
Sift together dry ingredients (flour through salt) .
Combine wet ingredients (egg through vanilla). Add dry ingredients, then fold in granola and Craisins.
Spoon into greased muffin tin, and bake at 375 for 20 to 25 minutes.

So so so so yummy. I love love love cranberries. These were texturally awesome from the granola, too. Surprisingly light and fluffy- you’d never guess it was 100% whole grain!

As the ingredient list in the above recipe reveals, I’ve got some Galaxy Granola up in my house! The company was nice enough to send me some free samples.

This arrived on my doorstep:

And I went… “Huh?”.

Actually, that is a lie. Every blogger ever has gotten a sample of Galaxy Granola, which is why I knew to request one :D

I knew that Galaxy Granola has espoused a “fruit not fat” philosophy, and that its granolas are baked in applesauce, not oils. I think obsessing with fat bar none (and not differentiating between the types of fat; some is healthy!) is a little 90s of them. As far as I know, granola is traditionally made with liquid oils, not butter or trans fat, so it’s generally pretty harmless fat. Haven’t they heard of omega 3? It’s so hot right now!

I think their motto should be "Fruit not Crap" (though I have a feeling that would not exactly fly in the Midwest). I am definitely, DEFINITELY in favor of removing the scary unnatural ingredients in your typical granola product (just to give an example, a Kudos bar contains, among other things, Soy Lecithin, Palm Kernel, Hydrogenated Palm Kernel, Hydrogenated Palm Kernel, Hydrogenated Palm and/or Palm Oil, and "TBHQ to Maintain Freshness"). Replacing all that scary stuff with fruit is definitely a win!

Anyway, that's my thoughts on the Galaxy Granola philosophy. Now the actual flavor. Along with as a baking ingredient, I’ve had the Not Sweet Vanilla flavor several ways.

First, after a long day of work, I ate several handfuls out of the bag. Truth.

Then, as a Sunday brunch, I had a bowl with milk, bananer, and blueberries.

My thoughts on Galaxy Granola, Not-too-Sweet-Vanilla, are as follows.

Pros:
- Absence of cloying sweetness
- Enjoyable textural variety: barley and spelt flakes! Crisp rice!
- Makes the milk taste good

Cons:
- A bit bland. I’m glad that they cut out excess sugar- a lot of granola is way too sweet. However, if you cut out fat, you have to have some OOMPH! If you want to eat plain oats, you can eat plain oats for a lot less money! Let’s talk about Allie-bars: I was lucky enough to sample one after our blogger meetup, and they are vanilla flavored and not too sweet and were still SUPER vanilla-y and awesome!

I’m still stoked to try the other flavors. This is just prelim :D

In the interests of a well rounded Sunday brunch I also included an egg:

And a cuppa tea, and sunshine!

So that was a yummy brunch but I was still hungry. So here’s where things got a little random.

Bear with me.

A few weeks ago, I had some green beans and, not having any particular to do with them, turned to my old friend Mark Bittman’s 101 picnic dishes. Made in 20 minutes or less. I love. It’s a classic along with Mark Bittman’s Summer Express. Also 20 minutes or less. Amaze.

So this sauce you make for green beans contains miso, walnuts, soy sauce, and ginger. It’s wicked delicious. It makes a ton (you can’t scale it down too much or your blender won’t blend) and I had a ton leftover but no fresh green beans. But for some mystifying reason my sister had bought canned. Like, it’s… July. There are… fresh. But her weirdness was my good fortune cause it meant I had something to toss with miso goodness!

Looked absolutely revolting, tasted fab!

I ended up adding some cooked eggplant to the rest of the sauce, which was also superb!