Granola Round 1: Not Better than Hippie Crack

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man hippie in possession of good fortune oats must be in want of a wife batch of granola.  

Okay, I may or may not have adapted that from beloved Jane, but really, let's be honest with ourselves.  If you eat granola, you have a hippie alter ego.  I think sometimes mine looks something like this:  

(photo courtesy of speeddealercustoms.com)

Or maybe something like this:

(photo courtesy of theclassyfashion.com)

My sister Kate brought me back some delicious granola from her time spent during the Peace Corps paid vacation medical evaluation in Washington, DC.  She and her medical evacuees found this great bakery that sold great granola.  AKA Hippie Crack.

**Clouds part, the sun shines, and a chorus of Hallelujah flows down from heaven** No joke.

Also on the day that she gave it to me, we were hanging out in our parent's kitchen making lunch with our younger sister Megan.  Somebody threw a recyclable item into the trash can, to which I promptly took it out and scolded the culprit.  Their responses?  In very whiny, high-pitched voices, "Oooooh, I'm Tamsen and I'm from Cotaaaaattttiiiiiii!"  And if you know anything about Cotati, you will know exactly what they mean.  They mean hippie.  For those of you in Colorado, think Boulder.

Again, I digress.

This week I was inspired by a few things to make some of my own hippie crack.  As if seeing granola prices at the grocery store wasn't enough (seriously, five bucks for 12oz?! Is anyone else as scandalized as I am?)  An abundance of oats and my rekindled love of yogurt were also inspirations.  Not to mention the fact that the Mountain High brand Vanilla yogurt was on sale this week.

I adapted a recipe from Fine Cooking (find original recipe here).  I swapped out the oat bran for wheat germ, as the store I was at gave me the inability to locate such bran, if it did indeed carry it.  I also swapped out the raisins for dried cranberries, since we already had those at home.  

I burnt it a little.  Actually, I threw out just under half of it because it was too toasty to eat.  I did make an attempt to adjust cooking time for the high elevation (5280 here in Denver), but apparently cutting down the cooking time by 25 min was not enough.  Must go the full half hour or 35 min to avoid excessive toasty-ness. Lesson learned!  

Result:  Hippie Crack > my granola.  But now that I have the secret ingredients to said hippie crack, I can make my own knock-off version!  And minus the coconut.  Yuck.  I believe that I pulled out the coconut from the original package.  And honestly, mine wasn't too bad!  Try it out for yourself if you like.