Livin' the simple life

I decided to try and do something profound and real with my kids today, so we made homemade granola together. The More with Less Cookbook is still one of my all time favorite cookbooks, both for it's chapters on food philosophy (use less of the world's resources, share with others, feed the hungery, etc.) and for the simplicity and genuineness of the recipes. No junk food there, but also no fancy shmancy "can't pronounce the name of this complicated ingredient" stuff. So, homemade granola it is: I used maltitol and erythritol to sweeten it, so I can eat it, too. Oats, flax seed meal, wheat germ, dry milk powder and cinnamon...those were my dry ingredients. Basically just mix seven cups of dry to about one or so cups of wet ( I melted a stick of butter and added some disolved erythritol and maltitol "honey"). Stir wet into dry and toast for about half an hour. The sugar alcohols cook faster, so next time I'll use less heat. The recipe called for 300 farenheit. It tastes pretty good. Just mildly sweet. And only somewhat burned. Sigh.

Then the kids wanted to take a walk to the dollar store today. It's a mile there and a mile back. The weather looked dicey but it was sunny, finally, when we walked out the door. I was wearing a pale yellow linen dress and a cream colored short sleeved shirt over, and my birkenstock sandals.

Deluge.

Wet, through and through. How mortifying. I ended up buttoning the shirt just so there would be two layers of wet stuff between the world and my bra, and the kids insisted that they couldn't see my underwear. I hope they were being honest. I"m thinking that pale yellow linen would look very fetching dyed BLACK.

Nothing so unpleasant as sitting dripping wet in an air conditioned store waiting for kids to spend a dollar, with nasty wet birkis on your feet. My one consolation is that I did not have racoon eyes from dripping mascara. No makeup today.

So, on the way home I decided to stick our necks into the new thrift store that's about half a mile from home. I wondered if I could replace my defunct hand mixer on the cheap. And, there it was: $1.95 vintage hand mixer. And the motor is not burned out...yet. We are hard on those things. And a dress with to-die-for fabric that I'll either keep as a dress or turn into a skirt. It's been ages since I've gotten anything from a thrift store.

Nice pot of herb tea and an absolute MOUNTAIN of laundry folded once I got home. I still have to clean up the kitchen, but so totally don't feel like it. Time to be a grown up and do it anyway.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I love granola. Especially as a cereal with raisins. Yum!

I also love thrift stores!
Alana said…
I don't get raisins any more, but they were yummy back when I could have them!
Ruth said…
I love the MWL granola recipes - our favorite is the one you made. Yum.