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Hello, everyone.
It's Chef Dominic Stewart with EFNEP, the Expanded Food
and Nutrition Education Program with USU Extension.
Today, we're going to talk about snacks.
We all love to snack.
I'm guilty of snacking.
Everybody snacks.
And it's a very, very important part of your diet actually.
You should actually be snacking throughout your day
to help keep your metabolism going.
And it's a great way to actually get
in your daily requirements of a lot of your fruits, vegetables,
proteins, things like that.
Where a lot of people run into trouble,
though, is overeating and then maybe not picking the best
choice of food to snack on.
So today, I'm going to show you a quick--
well, maybe not quick, but an easy recipe for granola,
which takes about 40 minutes or so, but it'll come together.
And you just keep it in an airtight container.
And it's at the ready for you to snack on.
So let's go ahead and get this started.
So in a large bowl here, I have some just--
some old-fashioned rolled oats.
You want to make sure that they're the long-cooking ones.
You don't want quick-cooking oats for this.
To that, I'm going to add in some pecan pieces.
I'm using pecans you can use any nut that you like.
If you don't like nuts, feel free to omit them altogether.
We also have some flax meal.
Now, this is just ground flaxseed.
We're adding this to get some extra omega
3s added to our granola that'll help with our brain and things
like that.
We also some sunflower seeds, which
are also a good source of some vitamins and minerals.
We have some cinnamon, some sweetened shredded coconut,
and some dried cranberries.
To those, we're going to add a nice pinch of salt,
some vanilla extract, and about 2/3 of a cup of maple syrup.
Now, this is real maple syrup.
I want you to make sure you look for this.
And it'll say 100% pure maple syrup.
This is not the time and place for Mrs. Butterworth's or Log
Cabin or things like that.
Those are maple-flavored corn syrup
and are loaded with processed sugar that you don't need.
So we're going to add about 2/3 of a cup of our maple syrup.
And this will be the bulk of our sweetness in our granola.
Also going to add just a drizzle of some oil.
I just have some extra virgin olive oil here.
This will help everybody get nice and toasty and brown.
And now we're going to mix these together.
So we're going to toss all of our ingredients to coat.
Put them in the maple syrup, that cinnamon, and our oil.
So you just want to lift it up and kind of shake off
your spoon.
It'll start to kind of clump together.
And you'll find those clumps, and you'll just
break them apart.
We have our oven preheated to 325 degrees.
Granola's a little weird in that it kind of takes a long time
to bake.
And you have to babysit it a little bit.
But I promise you that it's well worth it.
With snacking, like I said, a lot of people
run into trouble in that they're making the wrong choices when
they snack.
And a lot of that is kind of due to poor planning.
So when you're trying to incorporate some more
snacks or some healthier options into your diet,
if you plan ahead, like start on the beginning of your week
and plan snacks into your daily menus,
that'll help you to have everything ready.
And you can just have them predone
sitting in a container on the counter
or in your refrigerator.
That way, all you have to do is just grab it and go.
You don't have to prepare anything.
You don't have to mix anything up.
You don't have to cook anything.
It's just ready to be eaten.
So our granola is nice and mixed.
Everything is well-combined.
We're going to pour this onto a foil-lined baking sheet.
And I've lined this with foil just for easy cleanup.
I'm going to pour this onto our baking sheet.
And you want to spread it out into a nice, even layer.
This is a great way to kind of play around
with some flavors too.
Like I said, if you don't like pecans, use a different nut.
This goes great with almonds as well.
You could also put in pumpkin seeds, things like that.
Change up your dried fruit.
So we're going to take this over to the oven.
We're going to bake this at 325 degrees for about 45 minutes.
And we're going to stir it every 15 minutes
or so to make sure it browns evenly.
All right, so our granola is done.
Just pulled that out of the oven.
You just want to let it cool down to room temperature.
Give it a stir every now and again
to make sure it doesn't stick together
in one large piece of granola.
If you like granola clusters, though,
feel free to just let it cool down,
and then you can take it and break it apart into chunks
and eat it that way.
We'll let this cool down all the way,
and then we'll store this in an airtight container.
Your granola is great for your morning cereal.
This in a bowl of milk is great.
You can put this over your yogurt,
make a little breakfast parfait with maybe some fresh fruit,
yogurt, and your granola.
I'll just put this in a bag and eat it plain.
But yeah, like I said, change out the dried fruit.
Use whatever dried fruit you like.
Use whatever nuts you like.
If you don't like coconut, don't put coconut in there.
And you can play around with seeds and things like that.
Granola is very, very forgiving in what you
can add and take away from it.
This recipe, along with all of our others,
are available on our website.
And I want to thank you for watching.
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