Making Your Own Granola

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I must first confess that last night's vegetable soup was heavy for me, even though I substituted the cream with soymilk. It was the kind of meal that left me glued to the couch for most of the night, where I managed to watch (especially since they kept replaying it) poor Rick Ankiel's unfortunate run into the outfield wall at Busch stadium, then biologist/fisherman Jeremy Wade in "River Monsters." If you haven't heard of it, it's quite good TV (much better than "The Hills"). Love the way Wade peers his head into a snake's home and catches a 150-pound fishy in the Amazon only to pet him and release him back in the river. Or her. Don't want to make any gender assumptions here.

Perhaps my television coma was due to an end-of-the-semester funk. Or maybe I'm not a soup-for-dinner kind of person. Then again, what the hell is a person supposed to do after dinner? Lift weights? Pound beers? Read War and Peace?

Moving on.

I am continuing in my unabashed compliments to Kitchen Conservatory, whose recipe I tweaked for tonight's granola. Am I going to eat granola for dinner? Maybe. For breakfast, certainly. Lunch, if I'm home. And snacks, you bet. Love the granola: with yogurt, ice cream, soymilk, even plain.

So I started out with a few ingredients, brought to you from my local Schnucks:
1/3 c coconut (the recipe called for unsweetened but my Schnucks has never heard of such as thing)
1/3 c almonds
1/3 c walnuts
3 c of oats (Quaker works for me)
1/4 c sesame seeds (the recipe also called for pumpkin seeds but these were nowhere to be seen)
1/4 butter/margarine
6 T of honey and/or molasses (I used both)
and about a cup of assorted dried fruits (I found mango, yellow raisin and apricots but I suggest cranberries and/or blueberries for a less monochromatic look).

Stir and bake for 15 in 325.

Yum! Enjoy! & expect cookie recipes coming soon:)