Day Seventy-Three: Torrential Rain, Granola

One of Taiya's magic wands.

It rained 3 inches in 40 minutes this morning. It was enough to create whitewater at the end of our driveway where our ditch meets the road ditch. It was also enough to make William SO excited about playing outside in all the puddles, ponds, and streams that formed. Thankfully, Jeremy was happy to accompany him. Taiya and I were cozy inside, I working, she was busy decorating some cool sticks we found at the creek yesterday with yarn, ribbons, lace, and feathers. When she's done they look like magic wands or wizard staffs, ready to bedazzle the world with beauty.

I took a break from work to make granola. It turned out to be a little more difficult than usual. I use a Cooks Illustrated recipe that normally includes 2 cups of chopped almonds, but today I decided to substitute hazelnuts. I had bought a pound of hazelnuts last year and have been saving them for just the right thing, since they're expensive and also one of my favorite foods. But no perfect recipe or perfect occasion presented itself, so I figured I better use them before they went rancid or stale. However, they had to have the thin skins removed. I put them on a sheet pan in the oven for a few minutes, then tried rubbing the brown papery stuff off. It didn't work well. I put them in the oven for a few more minutes, and it worked better. But getting it all done was slow and tedious. Next time I'm sticking with almonds.

The recipe is simple and delicious:

1/3 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup vegetable oil (I used grapeseed oil)
(whisk all this together)
5 cups rolled oats
2 cups chopped nuts
(mix these into other mixture)

Press into sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Bake at 325 for around 40 minutes, rotating pan half way through, but do not stir the granola! Isn't that crazy? That way it comes out in big yummy chunks. Make sure to check it frequently at the end. It can burn quickly. Then, after it's baked you can add whatever dried fruit you want. If you want to vary the recipe, try mixing spices in with the sugar/oil mixture: cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cardamom are all good. Orange zest is yummy. You can use pecans, walnuts, almonds, or hazelnuts. You can sub a cup of shredded coconut for a cup of oats. It's so versatile! Just a word of caution: it is so delicious and smells so good, it won't last long.

Once it stopped raining, Taiya, William, Daisy and I went down to the creek to look for more "driftwood" (floodwood?) sticks for Taiya's projects. We found plenty, including some beaver-chewed sticks they thought were cool, and some beautiful flowers. We brought as many sticks as we could carry back to the house.

I have started taking daily walks up the farm driveway and back, to get back in shape (and so I can keep eating cake, cobbler, and granola). It's 1.2 miles round trip, so a good quick walk. Daisy joins me to let out some of that puppy energy. We went for a walk while dinner was roasting (sweet potatoes and spaghetti squash) and saw the damage the deluge did to the farm driveway. Huge rocks had been swept away from the ditch, a culvert was totally blocked, lots of gravel was washed away. It was an impressive mess, the size of the rocks showing just how powerful the runoff was.