The michael5000 Kitchen #6: Ex-Girlfriend’s Granola

Provenance: This recipe is written on a postcard dated 27 September, 1991, addressed (with my name spelled incorrectly) to my first apartment in Lawrence, Kansas, where I went to graduate school. It is from my girlfriend of the time, of whom perhaps the less said the better. I used the recipe a lot that year and occasionally for a few years afterwards; this was my first go at it for at least a dozen years.

The Recipe: is quite wordy. Here goes:

THE ESSENTIALS:

A TUB O’OATS, largish, uncooked.
1 – 2 cups Wheat Germ
1 – 2 cups Sunflower Seeds
1 – 2 cups Nuts
2 – 3 Tablespoons Cinnamon

THE GOOD GOO:

¾ cups Oil
¾ - 1 cup Honey
1 stick Butter
¼ cups Maple Syrup
1 Tablespoon Vanilla
2 Tablespoons Water

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

The oven goes on 300. Make efficient use of the first wafts of heat by melting the goo in the bottom of a wide, sided cake pan. Stir the essentials into it until evenly coated and pop in the oven for about 90 minutes, taking it out several times to stir so that everybody’s evenly toasted. [She then goes on for quite a while about different variations and options, none of which I believe I ever tried.]


The Results:

Careful readers will have noted the ambiguity of the phrase “A TUB O’OATS.” I must have known what this meant at one time, but I don’t now. Taking a stab in the dark, I used a standard 42-ounce tube-shaped container of Oats, the kind you often see a jolly-looking religious dissenter portrayed on, but this turned out to be I think rather too many Oats. Using the largest cake pan in all of Castle5000, considerably larger than anything I would have owned in graduate school, it was still only possible to bake the ensemble by making a little mountain in the middle of the pan. Attempts to “stir so that everybody’s evenly toasted” resulted in numerous avalanches, which in turn led to pointed little remarks from Mrs.5000 about much she treasures a clean stovetop.

But how does it taste? Familiar, for one thing. Like the "chili" recipe, this tastes like the first year of graduate school. And, it's not half bad. Quite rich, though – you wouldn’t want to eat more than a small bowl of this unless you were about to climb up a glacier or something. Also, it’s quite…. um…. oaty. If I continue to experiment with this recipe, a key area of focus will be trying to figure out what the hell the ex-girlfriend meant by “A TUB O’OATS.”

Updates

An new version of the hummus recipe, extensively revised according to reader suggestions, has proven quite satisfactory. I call it Hummus 2.0, and it is available at the bottom of the hummus post.

Also, I was delighted to hear that Kadonkadonk gave last week's Better Than Robert Redford dessert a try, and not at all surprised to hear also that she made herself a little sick with it. The Better Than Robert Redford dessert is not to be trifled with.