I am continuously trying to be healthy these days, after loosing 4 stone with a lot of difficulty, I am now trying to keep in the frame of mind of maintaining it while still enjoying my food.

I started to get sick of just eating fruit and wanted to make it a treat as opposed to helping me be good, so I started to put yoghurt on top and some granola.

Apart from being expensive, the sugar content of the granola off the shelf was really high so I decided to look for a recipe I could make myself.  After some different testing with the recipe, I have finally found a really simple recipe, that costs literally nothing to make, will last a few weeks and tastes amazing! I have a few people now with the list getting longer for whom I make it for so it must be good 🙂

2 cups of normal porridge oats

2 cups of large porridge oats

½ cup of sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds ( you can buy these in a pack in Dunnes, so I would use about ½ a pack at a time)

2 tablespoons of desiccated coconut

2 tablespoons of chopped walnuts or pine nuts

½ cup or raisins

½ pack of dried cranberries (again you can buy small bags of these in Dunnes, I found them the cheapest!)

8 tablespoons of Honey

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees.
2. Mix all the dry ingredients together except for the raisins and cranberries
3. Warm the honey in a saucepan.
4. Pour in the honey a little at a time, mix it and try and cover all the mixture with the honey ( this can vary depending on much dry ingredients you have put in cause you don’t have to stick to the above measurements, mine has definitely changed every time but it’s a good starting point.)
5. Spray a baking tray with a little bit of spray oil to stop it sticking to the bottom and spread the mixture out as evenly as possible
6. Put in the oven for about 20 mins, keep an eye on it and when you see it starting to brown at the sides, mix it all around on the tray so that its evenly browned ( sometimes this will depend on your oven so it should be a golden brown colour for it to be cooked.
7. About 5 mins before its cooked, add the raisins and the cranberries
8. When its’s browned enough then, take it out of the oven and leave it in the tray for half an hour to dry out a bit, then throw it into jars or bags and it will last for about a month!

Fresh Granola, straight out of the oven!

I’d say it costs about €7 or €8 to buy all the ingredients, ( I buy the cheapest porridge oats I can find!) and you will get a good 3-4 rounds out of them and it lasts me about 3 or 4 weeks, plus you can add anything at all in but maybe try and not add Chocolate 🙂

Enjoy!