The awesome thing about granola is- you can tweak it, and change it up based on what you have on hand (as long as you have the oats!) and what flavor you feel like having.

This is my third time making it and the first time I’ve made it right. The first two tries I think I was lacking adequate oil or butter.

I used coconut oil, but I suppose you can use vegetable oil or even butter. I will say, coconut oil is expensive, but there are great health benefits and it lasts a long time if you don’t use much or often. Dr. Oz says it’s good, so it must be right?

Note- you can use any ingredients you want really- I intentionally bought the oats, nuts and seeds knowing I was going to try a new granola recipe- as for the liquid, sugary goodness part, I came up with this mixture based on what we had in the cabinets- I think the brown sugar took it to next level goodneess.

You could health it up and add chia seed, flax seed, etc. – whatever seeds you are into these days.You could also substitute the PNB with almond butter or whatever you prefer. What I’m saying is substitute any of the ingredients with what you like.

This is definitely a desert.

Ingredients:

2-3 cups oats
Handful Sunflower seeds
Handful Slivered Almonds
Handful Chopped Walnuts

3 Tablespoons Coconut Oil
3 Tablespoons Brown Sugar
1 Teaspoon Vanilla
2 Tablespoons Cocoa Power
3 Tablespoons Peanut Butter

Handful Dark Chocolate Chips
Handful Raisins

Preheat Oven to 300

Step 1:

Put the first set of ingredients in large bowl

Step 2: 

Put the second set of ingredients in separate bowl and stir well. If you use coconut oil- zap it for 30 seconds because it is too solid otherwise

Step 3:

Pour liquid mixture onto oat mixture and mix up well.

Step 4:

Bake everything on cookie sheet for 20 minutes, stir and flip, bake for 10 more minutes

Step 5:

Let everything cool and add chocolate chips & raisins

Step 6: 

Thank me for finally getting a granola recipe right and now you will enjoy the deliciousness of that success.

I’ve stopped buying cereal- as we try to stay away from processed foods and preservatives (for the most part). My plan is to make healthier versions of granola and use it as a cereal substitute, because I can’t possibly live without cereal.

The post We’re so Granola we make our own Granola. appeared first on Lindsey Hein.

On Saturday before we headed to the store we actually did it.

With the meal plan, I won’t have Glenn emailing and texting me every single day asking what we should have for dinner. This has pretty much happened daily, the entire time I’ve known him.

A lot of people meal plan to save money- which I’d like to do too. I do not however think we saved any on our grocery bill this week. There is definitely a way to meal plan and save money, but I’m to lazy to figure it out just yet.

We did buy everything we need for the meals, which wasn’t necessarily inexpensive but hopefully we won’t find ourselves going back to the store to random things throughout the week.

I’ll post the ingredients & recipes on separate posts each day. Recipes aren’t usually very specific, you can kind of wing most everything we make.

I got the idea for the spicy chicken enchiladas from Stuft Mama’s blog, but we followed our own recipe.

Spicy Chicken Enchilada Meal:

Corn Tortilla
Chicken
Shredded Cheese
Spinach
Jalapeno Jelly (We use Dillmans Farm – local place in Bloomington)

Rice
Refried Beans
Enchilada Sauce (homemade)

Salsa
Hot Sauce

• Cook Rice
• Cook Chicken 
• We just cooked it on the stove and cut it up into little pieces… cooking in the crockpot all day with salsa and shredding it would have been better.
• Use whatever spices you want to make it… spicy. 
• Make Enchilada Sauce 
• Recipe here
• Pour a little enchilada sauce on bottom of pan
• Put chicken, chopped spinach, shredded cheese & dab of jalapeno jelly on corn tortilla, roll up tortilla’s and line them in pan 
• Pour enchilada sauce all over tortilla’s and sprinkle with chese
• Bake at 350 for 25ish minutes

We put hot sauce on pretty much everything except desert. 

Here’s what we’ll be eating the rest of the week…. I’ll post each recipe each day. Although you won’t need the recipe for Sunday, because we at box macaroni…. #healthfail.

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