I simply adore Saturday mornings with my husband. We sleep in until we can’t sleep in anymore, roll out of bed, and head downstairs to our kitchen. My husband fills up our black and stainless steel teapot with water and he makes Vivace coffee in our used and abused French press. We take turns making our typical eggs, bacon, and toast breakfast, but one particular morning, we were sans the eggs and the bacon. Not ready to settle for an early lunch, I reached into the cupboard for my trusty Betty Crocker cookbook and flipped to the breakfast section. Waffles, no – out of milk; frittata, nope – no eggs; oatmeal, nada – my husband hates oatmeal.

I flipped the page one more time and stumbled on a recipe for granola. Oats, nuts, raisins – check, check, check. This would be my first adventure with homemade granola, but I was more than up to the challenge. The recipe I had was flexible in that you could pretty much add anything you like to the mixture. Here is the recipe I settled on:

Homemade Granola
(makes 15 servings)

4 cups regular rolled oats
½ cup chopped hazelnuts
½ cup chopped walnuts
½ cup packed brown sugar
¼ cup cooking oil
¼ cup honey
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 300°F. In a 15×10x1-inch baking pan, combine oats, hazelnuts, and walnuts; set aside. In a 1- to 1½ quart saucepan combine brown sugar, oil, honey, salt, and cinnamon. Heat over medium heat until mixture is combined and smooth; stir in vanilla. Pour sugar mixture over oats mixture, stirring until well coated.

Bake in the preheated oven for 35 to 40 minutes or until mixture is golden brown, stirring carefully every 10 minutes. Stir in raisins. Spread granola onto buttered foil; cool completely.

Store granola in an airtight container (I chose my Tupperware Ice Prism Bowl) for up to 1 week or freeze for up to 3 months.

Not only did we gobble down the granola for breakfast that beautiful Saturday morning, throughout the week we poured milk over it, sprinkled it on yogurt, and mixed it in with vanilla bean ice cream. It was all consumed before I knew it. I feel a second (and possibly a third and fourth) batch is in order.