Savory lentil muffins

If you or your kids have a restricted diet and breads are a thing of the past, you have to try these simple-ingredient muffins!  These are a staple in our home.

Let me start by telling you what is NOT in them before we get to the ingredients.   No gluten, no casein, no eggs, this is a lower oxalate and Failsafe bread!!  

What IS in them?
-1 cup of red lentils (soak overnight, they will be more than one cup once soaked) 
-1 tsp sea salt
-1 tsp baking soda
-1/2 tsp cream of tartar
-spice(s) of choice (I chose chives)

Put all of the ingredients into a blender, add water so that it is at about halfway up to the height of the lentils.   Blend, fill cupcake cups about 3/4 full and bake on 350 degrees for 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.  Makes 8 muffins. Voila!

Salty Sweet White Chocolate bars

These bad boys are GFCFSF, egg-free, low oxalate and low salicylate!!

We made them on the saltier side, so I reduced the salt by half for this recipe, and if you like sweets, you may even want to increase the xylitol.  It was a unique flavor with the interesting balance of salt and white chocolate, like combining hot and sweet, a combination of flavors that seem to almost contradict each other, but in the end, prove to compliment each other nicely.



I imagine they would be really tasty with nut butter or sunflower seed butter too.

 

The face of pleasure!

Ingredients

• 2 rice cakes - crumbled
• 1 pear - peeled and shredded
• 1/3 C cocoa butter - melted gently
• 2 Tbs ground flaxseed
• 2 Tbs birch derived xylitol
• 1 Tbs sunflower lecithin
• 1 Tbs tapioca flour
• 1/2 tsp sea salt

In a small bowl, mix the crumbled rice cakes, shredded pear, ground flaxseed, xylitol and salt. 

In an even smaller bowl, whisk together the already melted cocoa butter, tapioca flour and lecithin.

Pour this mixture into the ingredients in the larger bowl and blend well so that all of the ingredients mingle evenly.

Press into a small casserole dish, size depending on how thick you want your bars to be.

Refrigerate until firm.  They will still be fairly soft and can fall apart, so I like the smaller square size which are better for kid size hands anyway.  =)

 Voila!

No bake pumpkin butter mousse

We were surprised with a crazy Noreaster snow storm that hit our state hard.  So when our friends lost their power for four days we had an impromptu family sleep over at my house, so we made the best of it and played with food, since her family is on the low oxalate diet too.  =)

This recipe was a total accident!  This is the kind of accident I would love to have more often!!  It turned out DIVINE.  This is reminiscent of a peanut butter pie and, if you have a good crust recipe (especially chocolate, although that is not low oxalate), it would make a great team.  We just filled custard bowls and topped with this easy whipped topping.  VERY rich and satisfying.  This would be a nice addition to Thanksgiving dinner.  Oh, and it's HEALTHY!

Ingredients
-1/4 C sunbutter
-1 C pumpkin puree
-1 banana
-1/2 C coconut nectar or honey
-1 Tbsp coconut flour (this is only necessary, if you don't have the gelatin mentioned below)
-1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
-1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
-1 tsp vanilla extract

Note - If you would like a pumpkin pie consistency like the picture below, put two tablespoons of unflavored gelatin into a little sub milk, 1/4-1/2 a cup should be enough (we use camel milk) to soften for a few minutes before adding it to the above mixture.  You can literally flip this out of a mold onto a plate upside down to make a flan-like custard dessert!

Put all of the above ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth, then pour into custard cups and refrigerate.  I made a crust with ground flax seed, coconut flour, ghee, coconut oil and a bit of sweetener and it made an awesome pie!!

The coconut cream topping is SO easy and SO tasty.

Ingredients
-1 container of refrigerated (or put into the freezer for about 20 minutes) coconut cream
-1/4 C powdered coconut sugar or xylitol which keeps it white like the picture ("powder" it by grinding in a clean coffee grinder until it is a powder)
-1 tsp vanilla

Combine the above ingredients in a bowl and whip for a few minutes until light and fluffy.  I would recommend waiting until you are ready to serve the mouse, before making the whipped topping for best results.

The oxalate roller coaster

When we started the Low Oxalate Diet (LOD) a year ago, we intended for it to be a trial period.  We had no idea how much it would change our lives and I don't mean the endless restrictions on food.

The first week is typically referred to as the honeymoon period, for good reason.  In that week, when oxalates are leaving the body fast and furious, the positive effects are clear and bountiful!  But like anything else, that provides deep healing from the inside out, the honeymoon period is short lived, as to be expected.  The following 8 weeks was nothing short of painful, for all of us!!  I've labeled that period of our lives as one of THE most challenging.  Just about every symptom they have ever had, came back in that short period of time, magnified!  As we were living it, we couldn't see the end in sight.  We didn't know that some day, the torture would end and our kids would come out of it glowing.  But when they finally did, we knew we could never go back, well, at least I knew that.  As is often expected, the spouses who just go with the flow of biomedicine question the validity of the diets, supplements and treatment protocols.  Not a bad thing, it encourages balance, and it keeps us honest.  But with this, I stood my ground, never losing trust in this important dietary change I chose to make for our boys.  Needless to say, after my husband saw the results of Gavin's oxalate dump, he was brought entirely on board with me.  There is nothing like witnessing your 30 pound child pee out thousands and thousands of oxalate crystals!! 

It's difficult, very difficult, to feed children who are already on such restricted diets, but with some research and experimenting, just like anything else, it became second nature.  A person on the LOD cannot eat grains, nuts and many common vegetables and fruits.  "Healthy" food choices are a matter of perspective.  In our case, spinach, raspberries and almonds, which are highly regarded as superfoods, would be physically harmful to our children.

So what does this all have to do with today's blog entry?  I'm sure you have seen my son's oxalate crystals picture in a recent entry.  In the process of "trying" a higher oxalate food (green beans!) I have caused my children to begin the dumping process all over again.  I don't know, if it will last quite as long as the first one, but as the oxalates leave the cells, there is no shortage of dumping symptoms in our house!!  Gavin is experiencing extreme moodiness, he looses the ability to communicate with us, staring at us blankly when we ask him a question, he has multiple potty accidents a day, he easily angers, he continuously tries our patience by doing things he knows are unacceptable (all while watching us for a reaction), he becomes defiant, he is clicking his tongue almost non-stop, and his BMs hurt even though he is not constipated.  He also becomes clingy and needy, he whines instead of talking (unless we remind him not to, over and over again) and he has regular belly aches.  Some of you are probably thinking, "this sounds like typical kid stuff to me"....it's not.  We have seen our children thrive on the LOD and we see the effect of what putting back the higher oxalates foods into the diet does to them.  It's simple, cause and effect.  If this is "typical" kid stuff around your house, I would encourage you to do some investigating!  Children with high oxalate problems become adults with kidney stones and worse.  Oh, and one undeniably huge sign for us is constant hunger.  When Gavin is dumping oxalates, it's as if he can't get enough food and considering his small stature, I can't imagine where he is putting it or why it doesn't cause him to gain more weight!!  I wish it would, that would be the up-side to this frustrating event!!  The oxalates must do something to the body that prevents him from using the nutrients in the foods he eats all day.

Susan Owens has been heading up private research into the connection between oxalates and autism for over 15 years.  She is part of the Autism One research Think Tank Team.  I asked her, if she could explain oxalates to me and I would like to share that explanation here:

Well, this is a whole different thread of autism research, so there is a bit of a learning curve here as there is for all of the different therapies, but let me see what I can do to define some things for you.

Oxalate is a simple but very reactive chemical that plants make in order to defend themselves against insect predators. I saw a presentation in Houston by an oxalate scientist who had modified a plant that caterpillars eat to remove the gene that made oxalate, and after the plant didn't make oxalate, that caterpillar would strip the plant until all that was left was the stick. This caterpillar might start munching on the oxalate-containing version of the plant, but would stop quickly. The scientists dissected the caterpillars who tried to eat the oxalate-containing plant and found their teeth were broken and down to nubs, which is why they stopped eating it!

I guess it is a good thing that not all plants make large amounts of oxalate, or we would have nothing to safely eat!

Our bodies are adapted to eat oxalate when everything is working the way it was designed. Our flora are supposed to have a microbe called oxalobacter formigenes that only eats oxalate and cannot survive on anything else, but it has been frequently killed back by antiobiotics that are used routinely. Also, most of the calcium that enters the gut from food (80%) stays in the colon and it is available to bind free oxalate and that keeps the oxalate from being absorbed in the colon. Casein contains a lot of calcium, so when someone is casein-free, the amount of calcium they get from the rest of the diet is reduced, so there is less calcium there to bind the oxalate that is in the diet. Taking calcium as a supplement before meals helps to remedy or at least help that situation, but timing is everything!

Once oxalate has been absorbed through the colon or through a leaky gut anywhere in the GI tract, it circulates through the blood and can enter cells, especially cells that are looking for sulfate, for it hitches a ride into cells using the sulfate transporter. If you are low in sulfate and high in oxalate, this is a problem!

Once inside cells, oxalate inhibits many enzymes, and almost all enzymes it is known to bind are enzymes that contribute to our energy or mitochondrial function. Key members of that group of inhibited enzymes are the ones that use biotin.

Biotin is a sulfur-containing vitamin that you get both from food and from bacteria that live in the gut. Oxalate inserts itself next to biotin in the active site of these enzymes, and shuts down the operation of the enzyme.

Because of which enzymes are involved, this affects our ability to use glucose, to make glucose, to make ATP, to regulate our fatty acid metabolism, and to run the Krebs cycle.

Scientists learned that the inhibition of these enzymes could be diminished by giving high doses of biotin. What we've learned on our listserve, is that in children with autism who definitely have oxalate issues, sometimes it takes biotin supplements even greater than 20 mgs. a day to overcome the enzyme inhibition.

A lot of the leakiness of the gut goes away when people first remove gluten from the diet. This seems to help many children gain gut integrity so that they won't absorb as much oxalate.

Ordinarily, people only absorb 1-2% of the oxalate in their diet, but if you have a leaky gut, that level can get as high as 50%. A normal diet has about 100 mgs of oxalate per day, so a healthy gut would only absorb 1-2 mgs. An unhealthy gut would absorb as much as 50 mgs. on a normal diet.

With the low oxalate diet, in adults, we cut back the oxalate that is eaten to 40-60 mgs a day, and in children less proportionately. This is not as big a deal as you would think, but it seems a big hurdle if someone has decided that human beings were designed to have spinach as a daily member of the diet!

I have heard of some implementations of SCD, for instance, that may have been as high as 400 mgs/day or four times a normal diet. On gf/cf, the vast majority of oxalate is likely to come from eating too many baked goods (although starch itself is not very high) but whole grains and brans are very high). They also may eat too many chocolate goodies, and way too high a quantity of milk substitutes. Every milk substitute but coconut milk and chestnut milk are very high oxalate, even in just one cup.

I think a lot of this would become much easier to grasp if you read the following mini-paper about the leaky gut that was written for parents and others who are new to all these concepts: www.lowoxalate.

Susan Owens

I will be sending Susan Gavin's oxalate crystals in a baggie.  I hope it will help in the advancement of her research!

Oxalates move to front burner again

We have been on the low oxalate diet (LOD) for just over a year now.  We started it, because we noticed that although Grayson was doing better overall, he still had a lot of ups and downs that we couldn't tie to anything.  The bloating was not subsiding no matter what we did for him.  So the LOD was originally instated as a trial in September of 2010 and the severe dumping we experienced (in both boys, surprisingly) lasted well over a month.  It was one of the most trying times in our years of biomedicine.  We knew this was our new necessity!  The LOD became the new norm.

A year later, we are still on the LOD, although we do allow a few moderate oxalates in the diet on a rotation basis like GF oatmeal (due to such limited breakfast options) and very small amounts of strawberries.  Other than that, we are very strict with the diet.  So it came very much as a surprise to me when I saw this in Gavin's little potty last night!!

These are oxalate crystals....by the apparent thousands!! 

Crystals coated the bottom of his potty - this was a small "tinkle" left behind

Very close-up of the crystals, OUCH!  They look painful, don't they?

He has been having mood swings, BM changes and constant hunger that I was chalking up to the parasite (although we just recently treated with Alinia for 34 days). Anyway, yesterday was a busy day and so when he used his little potty above (as we were running out the door), I left it. It was just a tinkle anyway. When I got home and went to clean out the potty, I couldn't believe what I found.....a potty full of the oxalate crystals you see in the pictures!!! And there was not much urine to create this, so it was highly concentrated!

I have NEVER seen this from him before. The things that have changed in the recent past, besides the parasite medicine (which he has been off of for about a month now) are the following:

-Started feeding green beans, which we used to avoid or only give in very small amounts.  Some green beans are high, so this could be part of the problem.

-Allowing small amounts of strawberries, not even adding up to 3 strawberries at a time, every couple of days. We've been doing this for a while though. Strawberries are moderate oxalate.

-Just 2 days (today was third dose) ago we began using BioRay Cytoflora, the dump was the very next day after starting it, not sure, if this can cause dumping.

-We are in the midst of a supplement break and have begun re-introducing his supplements back in slowly. So far we have added back Vit D3, magnesium, krill oil with astaxanthin, zinc, flax oil, and today lithium orotate.

-Haven't reintroduced biotin back in yet, maybe I will add that back in today even though it hasn't been a few days since adding the lithium...

The symptoms we have been having for about a week are: excessive hunger (constant I should say), saying "hiney hurts", mood swings, defiance, lacking cooperation especially when it involves his older brother (lots of fighting), frequent potty accidents (it's like he doesn't even try), he even had a small BM accident yesterday which he has never done, whiny, looking for his lovey all day (which is kept in his bed for sleepy time, so now he is up in his bed reading books to be with it), saying he wants to "go to bed" all morning (but could be related to needing his lovey), had a very odd BM the night before the crystals appeared that was fluffy, chunky and half floated, half sunk and lastly his keratosis which is pretty much always there, is worse lately. I was thinking it was all related to the parasite possibly coming back, but now with this potty incident, I am thinking dump and wondering why.  Time to get back on the Trying Low Oxalates Yahoo board and figure this out.  It most definitely could explain the random bouts of regression we keep experiencing.  I am certainly confused between the parasite symptoms and this now though!!  In one strange sense, this is a bit of a relief, because maybe the parasite ISN'T back, like we originally thought!!  We will need to retest in a few weeks to confirm anyway, but the symptoms are so similar it's hard to tell.  It's pretty obvious we have an oxalate issue to resolve now though.

GFCFSFEF and low oxalate pancakes!!

These rock!  Going on the LOD and being free of every baking ingredient known to man-kind makes it a challenge to find a good pancake recipe.  I am big on avoiding rice whenever possible too, so these are actually rice-free too!!  I have been tweaking this recipe to make it hold up to good old fluffy boxed pancakes.  Sorry, these aren't quite as easy to make though.

We like a lot of flavor in our pancakes. These are hearty and flavorful and they fluff right up when cooking even without eggs or gluten!  We like the flavor enough to just grab one in our hand and eat it up.

They are nice and fluffy and they even cook just like boxed pancakes, if you leave the batter thicker.  No uncooked gluten-free goo here!

When I am batch-cooking pancakes, I like to make my batter a little on the thin side, because I like our pancakes thinner, to stretch further.  I usually will triple this recipe and freeze enough for three to four more breakfasts!  I just toss them in the toaster and voila, done in seconds.

Wisk the dry ingredients into a medium bowl
-1/2 C. black eyed pea flour (grind dry beans on grain grind setting in blender or food processor)
-1/2 C. pumpkin seed flour (grind in blender or coffee grinder)
-1/4 C. water chestnut flour (you can get this at Asian markets very cheap, it's a must for volume)
-2 Tbs chestnut flour (this gives an awesome hearty flavor to the pancakes)
-2 Tbs coconut sugar (or swap and add coconut nectar into wet ingredients)
-1 Tb garbanzo bean flour
-1 tsp baking soda
-1 tsp cream of tartar (I rotate this out by swapping it with apple cider vinegar occasionally, but I prefer the cream of tartar)
-1/2 tsp salt

In a smaller bowl, wisk the wet ingredients together
-1 C. water (I usually start a little less and add more as I need it so I have a desired consistency)
-1 Tbs vanilla
-2 Tbs oil of choice (we like macadamia nut)
-Add any substitute liquids (ie - coconut nectar or apple cider vinegar)

Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and wisk until smooth.  Let this sit for a good 15-30 minutes until the consistency thickens up enough, it WILL thicken over time!  This is usually when I turn the griddle on and let it slowly heat up to temp so it's good and hot when I start.  You will have flat flabby pancakes, if you try to cook them on a less then hot griddle.  I should have taken THOSE pictures so you can see how many times I have rushed and ruined the whole first batch, lol.

This is the finished product without doctoring, thick and hearty!  They can be used as bread, topped with ghee and/or VCO and fruit or even eaten just like they are.  My kids have had them each of those ways and they NEVER get bored of them.  With a diet so restricted, that says a lot.  We have only three breakfast options that we rotate and they always look forward to their pancake days!  They love to make sandwiches out of mango slices and their pancakes.

Want to see the vitamin cabinet?

So here it is, our FULL vitamin cabinet.  Grayson said it looks like store shelves, ha ha ha.  He must enjoy organization as much as I do, because he thinks this "looks nice".  Only another organizing nut could appreciate the beauty of this cabinet, hahaha.

I'm slightly anal, I think the proper technical term for it is OCD, hehehe.  I like to have multiples of everything so that as we run out, I just grab another from the cabinet.  Considering there are three of us on this regimine now, we go through some of these bottles pretty fast.  For instance, the zinc picolinate which is 60 22mg capsules per bottle.  The kids use 5 a day between them and I use 6 a day!  I am opening a new bottle every couple of days!  The biotin too, we go through those really fast, but at least I can get 120 count bottles of that.

Within this organization, there is even more organization, the lazy susan is the kid's daily supplements, the step organizer to the left is full of my daily supplements, plus I use the kid's stuff, our Bach Flower Essences are in the middle, with some things that we all use behind them.  The second shelf has our illness supplements to the left and all of our unopened back-up bottles on the rest of the shelf.  The third shelf is all things that are used much less frequently, but always manage to come back to for some reason.

If you could see the inside of the doors, you would see pages and pages of notes, lol.  I type up lists of what supplements we use and where we buy them, lists of what to use for what and when.

I stocked up on three back-up bottles of Lugol's iodine recently, because of the risk of not being able to get it, due to the radiation exposure in the US from Fukushima.  People are scrambling to get their hands on it to help prevent radiation damage.  The problem is that prevention is the key, you can't erase radiation damage and considering radioactive iodine - 131 has already been found in the drinking water in PA among many other states and in foods in CA, it's probably a bit too late to be trying to prevent.  Perhaps it will help with all of the domino effects though, like how the rain water will feed the plants, how the grasses will feed the animals, and the half life of radioactive iodine in humans is 100 days, whereas it's half-life outside of a person is 8 days.

Sorry to get off track, I have a habit of doing that!

How many hats do YOU wear?

Mothers across the globe have worn multiple hats for centuries, each culture holding it's own special and unique roles.  If you asked me ten years ago where I pictured myself in ten years, biomedical mother would have been the furthest words from my lips.

I always knew I wanted to be a stay at home mother, but this isn't exactly what I had in mind.  I expected to wear the hats of caregiver, lover, homemaker, peace keeper and role model, for sure, but my current list of "hats" far exceeds my wildest dreams.

My personal role as biomedical mother includes many hats of distinction that are often acquired by education, but I have earned mine the hard way, good old experience and old fashioned learning by reading.  To add to the list a mother typically carries, a biomedical mother is also an educator, spokes person, scientist, doctor, chef, nutritionist, pharmacist, homeopath, researcher, politician, frontline-man, chemist, master herbalist, psychologist, psychiatrist, writer (wink) and the list goes on!  We've been forced to break into the medical realm by necessity and it opens more doors than we even knew existed before our children were born.  We often learn more about ourselves in this process than we ever dreamed imaginable. 

I wear my hats with pride.  I'm a better person, because of them, not just in terms of being wise, but also because my own health was brought under scrutiny in the process of identifying our children's deficiencies.  I'd like to think I share the wealth too.  I look forward to guiding other parents who are new in their journeys.  Some just want a little direction and they hit the road running of their own accord, others prefer more hand holding and still others just bounce back to me occasionally looking for reassurance.

Thinking back to my first days of this journey, while I wish I had a person to hold my hand and walk me along the path I am on, I think I am also the kind of person who needs to feel the road under her, regardless of how bumpy it might be.  I believe that experience develops character and it solidifies my choices. 

I am who I am, because of where I have been.  My shoes may be a little big some days, but I walk in them proudly.

Cauliflower....cookies???

Let me explain first, hahaha.  Our boys are on a low oxalate diet and carrots are high oxalate, so when I found a simple carrot cookie recipe, I decided to use something similar in consistency and loved the idea of sneaking a veggie into the cookie, which is something I try to do frequently!  These are not very sweet, but you could increase the sweetener, if you would like.  They are very tasty like they are though and feel free to swap out ingredients (like carrots for the cauliflower or a different flour), if you would like.  You don't taste the cauliflower at all.

Dry ingredients
1/2 c. black eyed pea flour (I just use the grain setting on my Blendtec to turn these into a flour)
1/2 c. garbanzo bean flour
1/3 c. arrowroot or tapioca flour (be aware that tapioca is corn-based)
1/2 tsp cream of tartar or 1/4 tsp unbuffered vitamin C crystals
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon (we eliminate this ingredient since it's high oxalate)
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 c. cauliflower pulsed in a blender so it looks like small kernals, like rice (or substitute grated carrots)
1/3 c. raisins or dried cranberries

Wet ingredients
1/4 c. coconut nectar (you could substitute agave or honey)
3 Tbs oil
3 Tbs apple or pear sauce
1 tsp vanilla (optional)

PREHEAT OVEN TO 325 degrees
Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper

Mix wet ingredients in one bowl and dry in another then
combine.

Fold in cauliflower and raisins/cranberries.

Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto the prepared baking sheets.

Bake for 15 minutes or until light brown then move to a rack and cool.

Store in a paper bag and use within a few days.

Pumpkin seed milk

Being faced with the fact that the low oxalate diet (LOD) is probably a good step for us has forced me to rethink "healthy" foods.  Who doesn't think eating a salad full of spinach, carrots, strawberries and beets topped with nuts is healthy?  (raises hand)  In my past life, this would be high on our list, in fact, there were many spinach and strawberry salads garnished with nuts, doled out to my kids.  But when it is determined that a food, any food, is hurting the body, the previous conception of healthy goes out the window.  It was so hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that spinach and nuts can be harmful!  To a child like Grayson, who tested as having triple the safe amount of oxalates, that is so.

So what does this chatter about oxalates have to do with my heading you ask...pumpkin seed milk.  Well, hemp seeds and almonds are very high in oxalates, SO....out they go.  No more hemp or almond milk for the kids.  This leaves us with nothing but rice milk and BLECH, no thank you!  Rice is a high carb, feeds yeast and is super sweet.  What to do, what to do....we compromise!  And in the end, we have a healthy milk option available at the press of a button, my Blendtec button, that is!  Home made pumpkin seed milk, which is just as easy to make as the hemp seed milk we were making.


Why pumpkin seeds?  For one, it's safe for us LODers and two, it packs a nutritious punch!  With the added benefit of being an anti-parasitic.  How many foods do you know that are high in Magnesium, tryptophan, iron and zinc?  These among other nutrients like manganese, phosphorous, vitamin K, copper, and protein (over 9mg per 1/4 cup serving!) combined with it's omega anti-inflammatory properties make pumpkin seeds a powerhouse food.

I try to remember to sprout the seeds before making a milk out of them, it increases the bio-availability of the nutrients and enzymes and makes them easier to digest, so as long as I just think ahead and toss a handful in a jar of water at night, we are good to go for easy healthy milk!  This step is not necessary though.

I have been using a tablespoon of seeds to every 8 ounces of water, but you can increase or decrease depending on the flavor and/or creaminess you prefer.  Blend, strain, bottle and refrigerate!

The kids both had their home made granola cereal with pumpkin seed milk today and I got the thumbs up!  I tried some in my coffee and I think I even like it better than the hemp milk I have been using which makes it easier, because that means I don't have to make multiple batches of milks in the mornings.  We do also still use coconut milk, but I have been using so much coconut in the form of flour, shreds, oil and sweetener (coconut nectar), that I don't want to over do it, so that is reserved for recipes that have other coconut ingredients in them already. 

So there you have it, another "milk" alternative!

Make your own granola - does this make me "crunchy"?

Nothing could be easier or healthier!  Have you ever glanced at the side panel of a box of breakfast cereal?  Blech!  Sugar, sugar and more sugar, plus all sorts of other allergens like milk, nuts, soy and wheat.  You can make a variety of different cereals for every day of the week!  Put your base together, then add your favorite flavors to make all kinds of granola and not just to eat as cereal, top your favorite home made ice cream or eat right out of the jar as a healthy on the go snack!

Granola has a long shelf life, so this batch is a large one.  It will fill 3 - 2 quart Ball jars, as seen above. I will separate the ingredients below so you can make the base cereal, then you can separate the base into as many flavors as you want to experiment with.  Have fun, try anything! This could be a great activity for little hands....create your own cereal bar!

Ingredients for the cereal base

• 6 cups regular rolled oats (feel free to add depth by swapping some oats for rice crispy cereal)
• 1 1/2 cups shredded coconut
• 1 cup coconut nectar or honey (coconut nectar is low on the glycemic index, meaning it's safe for diabetics and doesn't feed yeast, not to mention TASTY!)
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/2 cup coconut oil
• 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp sea salt

Add about a 1/4-1/2 cup of any of these add-ins, if you add more than this, you may need to increase your wet ingredients above so it's not too dry, just play with it.  The freeze dried fruits will hydrate with milk, just like the boxed commercial cereals.

• chopped nuts (high oxalate)
• dried cherries (one of my favorites)
• dried cranberries
• freeze dried apples and cinnamon
• raisins
• freeze dried strawberries
• freeze dried mango
• freeze dried blueberries
• cinnamon (high oxalate)
• and if you want to really go all out, dehydrate shreds of pumpkin or anything else for that matter!

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F.
Combine oats, add-ins and coconut in a large bowl. Set aside.
Combine coconut nectar/honey, water and salt in a small saucepan.
Heat, stirring frequently, until ingredients are all melted together.
Remove from heat and stir in coconut oil and vanilla.
Pour over oat mixture and stir well.
Place granola into 2 greased 13x9x2-inch pans or 1-2 greased cookie sheets. If you made more than two flavors, you can separate them more.
Bake in a preheated oven for about one hour, until golden.
Stir/turn over using a wide metal spatula about every 20 minutes.
The granola will get crunchier as it cools. Store in an airtight container.