Paul Cypert Photography & Design

Hey all,

No, I haven’t turned this thing into a foodie blog… but in an effort to increase posts and let you in on more of my daily life I’m going to give you a sneak peak of what I’m doing personally in life and with a not-so-secretive new project under development.

Yes this is a picture of Granola, click to read more to find out why Out of the blue I’ve been hit with a desire to learn to cook… specifically to bake, but also to help out more in the kitchen. This boils down to:

• my love of Gordon Ramsey/Jamie Oliver cooking shows and their obsession with fresh, simple food
• the development of my tastes and senses
• a new project I’m working on with Joanna to delve into enjoying the finer things in life

Our new blog will go up soon… well it’s already up, but content will be going live soon. We’ll be doing articles on all kinds of ways to enjoy life, not just eating well. This might be a sample article (dressed up a bit more) that’ll go up on the new site. We’ll explore ways of adding something a bit nicer to your life, hopefully cost sensitive (but not always, sometimes you do have to pay more to get more and sometimes you don’t).

The price of granola in Singapore is a bit ludicrous. So we opted to try our hands at making our own. The first attempt went pretty well, but there are some things we can improve for the next batch…. but really anyone that enjoys/regularly eats granola shouldn’t be buying it, it’s super easy to make on your own.

Here’s our recipe for the first attempt:

• Dry Portion
• 4 cups rolled oats (not instant)
• 1 cup sliced almonds
• 1 cup chopped walnuts
• 1 cup dried cranberries
• 1/4 cup wheat germ
• 1/4 cup milled flax seed
• Wet Portion (to coat and bind the granola)
• 1/3 cup safflower oil
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 Tbsp cinnamon

Stir together dry portion (minus any fruit) in large bowl. In a smaller bowl mix together the wet portion. Pour the liquid over the dry ingredients and stir until coated. Bake at 300 degrees for 10 minutes, stir and cook for another 10 minutes. If you want things a little more crispy put it back in for another 5-10 minutes or until you’re happy with the color. After cooking mix in the dried fruit. Cool completely and store in seal-able container or bag.

It helps if you have a large pan or break it up into two cooking sessions. Ours was a bit too deep and the top and bottom of the pan was darker brown and middle section was a bit lighter, so we had to cook a bit longer. Super easy recipe and not much time or care required. Easy snack to make yourself so get out and try.

Paul

PS - it makes a lot!