Dining with the Bloggers - March 16th

It seems of late that many Blogger food-bloggers are taking matters into their own hands and creating some much needed "categories" or themed archives of their own. I keep hoping that Blogger will see the light and add support for categories, but deep down I know that I too will soon be setting up some sort of make-shift arrangement here at my little kitchen.

As I prowl about the constantly expanding food blog universe in search of good-tasting recipes, I am increasingly grateful for both the official and unofficial forms of these helpful indexes. Amy Sherman of Cooking with Amy has a particularly nice one. It sits right at the top of her home page and provides quick access to 76 different recipes (wow!) under six headings.

Quite conveniently for me, one of those headings corresponded with our Dining with the Bloggers theme this week - "Breakfast". I had been looking about for a granola recipe and was happy to find that Amy's granola sounded quite good and didn't have an extravagant amount of butter in it.

Until I started thinking about what to make for this week's Dining with the Bloggers, it had not occurred to me to make my own granola. But it turns out that homemade granola is as easy to make as it is delicious. It is also, as Amy points out, something that lends itself to improvisation. You can tailor it to your liking in so many different ways. I didn't venture far from Amy's recipe as written for this go-round, but look forward to being a little creative the next time. For this occasion I used the recommended oats, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and walnuts and then added the optional raisins and cinnamon.

I'd recommend that you definitely include the optional cinnamon. I tasted the granola before and after adding the cinnamon and I think it makes all the difference. This granola is not as sweet as most store-bought, but I found the more subtle sweetness to be just right - particularly if you're adding some fresh fruit. I've been eating it with cold skim milk and banana and enjoying it tremendously. I'll bet it would also be good stirred into some yogurt.

OK, time to go see what Zarah is serving for breakfast. Her weekend waffles will be a hard act to follow!