Frugal Cooking

It is high time for an update on my frugal cooking attempts. I have become a fairly regular maker of granola, for several reasons. A - Store bought granola is expensive. B - It often contains items I pick out, such as raisins. C - Store bought granola has high fructose corn syrup and other not-so-good-for-you items. The beauty of homemade granola is that it solves all those issues - it's cheaper and way more delicious, plus I control the sugar and fat contents. Win, win, win.

Plus, aside from the stirring (which when you don't have a pooping baby is really not that bad), it's pretty easy. Here are the basic ingredients for the kind of granola Ian and I like - oatmeal, sesame seeds, coconut, almonds, honey, brown sugar, vegetable oil, vanilla:


Of course, since I follow no recipe exactly, I sub out a little of the honey for molasses. I did it the first time out of necessity (we didn't have as much honey as the recipe called for) and Ian and I both liked it so much that I always do it now. And I use less brown sugar than it calls for, because this recipe is already pretty sweet. Also, it technically calls for canola oil, but I don't always have that on hand, so I use vegetable oil. You just mix the dry ingredients and melt the oil and honey/molasses/brown sugar together.

Stir it all together and throw it on a pan lined with parchment paper (makes cleaning SUPER easy).

Out it comes, 20 minutes later (plus a few stirrings), clumpy, crunchy and delicious. Of course, I have a reusable container that just gets filled up each time after I make it. Yummy!In this particular batch, I also threw in some wheat germ and oat bran, because, well, I had it and it sounded virtuous. It came out great!

I am also in the process of making my own vanilla. I bake a lot and vanilla (real vanilla) is expensive. Plus, my sister Sarah wanted to try it out, so we ordered some beans from Madagascar (did you even know you could order beans from that far away?) and man, oh, man, do they smell incredible.

Here are the bean pods:

I had no idea the actual beans were so tiny. But once you slice open the pods to scrap out the beans, they are like tiny little black pin heads.

Anyway, in go the beans and pods into a jar (yes, saved from a used up jar of olives) and then you pour vodka over it. I had NO IDEA vodka was the liquid in vanilla. I guess I never really thought about it before, but isn't that interesting?

Seal the lid, shake the contents and wait...three months.

In May, we should have some delicious vanilla.

Note to self - do not wait to make vanilla until you are out.

I will report back and let you know how it turns out. Or better yet, if you live nearby, why don't you come over from some cookies in May?