Cherry Orange Granola

“Can’t see my eyes!” – This was Juliana’s phrase tonight before going to bed.  (I really need to start writing these down.  A few weeks ago, she woke up to tell me “Rocks in my ears.”)  I started toying with the idea of somehow creating a plot around this statement.  It reminded me of the Oedipus Trilogy (yeah, remember that really REALLY old play you had to read in high school by Sophocles?) and how the blind man could see everything so clearly while Oedipus could not “see” anything even with eyes that do work.  Maybe I should go back to teaching high school rather than middle school after all….  I probably couldn’t teach about Oedipus and all that killing his father and marrying his mother.

On with the recipe:  My friend Hilary gave me some of this granola as a gift and it was wonderful.  Well, pretty much everything she makes is wonderful.  I got the recipe out of her and here it is.  You can use any type of dried fruit you like.  I wonder if lemon zest and dried blueberries would be good, too.  The original recipe uses dried cranberries.

Cherry Orange Granola
yield 7 cups

5 cups rolled oats (old fashioned oats)
1/2 tsp. salt
1 Tb. of cinnamon or 2 tsp. of cinnamon (depending how cinnamon-y you like it)
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup powdered/dry nonfat milk (optional)
zest of 1 orange or 2 for more orange flavor
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup chopped nuts (I used walnuts; toasted nuts would be good.)
1 cup dried cherries (I used TJ’s dried tart montmerency cherries)

1.  Preheat oven to 300 degrees.  Pour your oats into a greased large roasting pan or a couple of greased cookie sheet pans with a rim, so the oats don’t fall out.
2.  In a medium pot, mix the salt, cinnamon, brown sugar, water, canola oil, dry milk, orange and vanilla.  Heat this on medium-low until the sugar dissolves and it is mixed thoroughly.
3.  Pour this mixture onto the oats and stir to coat.
4.  Bake for 40 minutes and stir every 15 minutes or so.  Once cool, add the nuts and dried fruit.  I don’t add the nuts with the oats because sometimes the nuts burned on me.

Recipe adapted from Life as Mom