Mmm, Granola

My very own granola! Well, Anna and I made it together, and we adapted it from some other recipes, but for all intents and purposes, I have my own recipe! The Machon put on a party for the kibbutz children today and I agreed to make some of the food. I made tahina cookies (sooo good...I can't take the credit for this recipe, though). They are basically shortbread cookies with Tahina, and they don't use any eggs. Anyway, I also decided to make granola. It seemed fitting given that we are a bunch of crunchy environmentalists.

We also made pita. The dough is so easy - basically flour, water, salt. We made the dough in advance and then gave little balls each of the kids so that they could bake it themselves. I don't know what the contraption is called that we use to bake it, but it looks like an upside down wok that is placed over an open fire. We brought chocolate spread, date spread, honey, zaatar, and labneh as toppings. And Lior made some delicious herbal tea.


Homemade Pita!


And the fixings


The rest of the party also turned out to be a great success...there was mud building (which just turned into the kids taking mud baths), arts and crafts, face painting, and some musical instruments. I was really surprised at how everything came together so easily. I guess it's fairly easy to entertain children when getting dirty and food is involved.




Mud building got a little out of hand

It was a nice change from the normal tense relationship that we have with the kibbutz. Although, we may have made things worse for ourselves when they find out how hard it is to get all of that mud out of their kids' hair and clothing.

Anyway, here is the granola recipe:

3 cups rolled oats
3/4 - 1 c. almonds (chopped - or crushed with an empty wine bottle because we couldn't find a decent knife)
3/4 - 1 c. pecans (chopped)
cinnamon (unfortunately I don't know how much of the spices I put in, I was eyeballing it)
nutmeg
3-4 T. vegetable oil
6 T. maple syrup
2 T. honey
1 t. vanilla extract
1.5 c. dried fruit (I used cranberries and chopped apricots)

Preheat oven to 350. Mix oats, nuts, spices. In separate bowl mix wet ingredients then pour into dry mixture. If it looks dry add a bit more oil. Spread into baking dish. Stir it every 10 minutes or so - Anna explained that you have to move all of the granola away from the edges and then stir it and spread it out again to stop the outside from burning. It should take about 30 minutes until it is ready. Once it has cooled some add the dried fruit.

Mmmm...I hope there is some left from the party!