Our goal is to plan one meal, multiply the ingredients as many times as you would like to serve this to your family for the year. It is a great idea to have a number of meals planned and have all the ingredients purchased for the whole year. This makes it easy to store what you use and use what you store.
The Granola recipe below is one that we love to make at least once each month, so multiply each ingredient by 12. We store all the ingredients in canning jars and then remove the air and seal them as shown on the video below.
Storing ingredients for meals makes it much easier to build your years supply of food. Instead of thinking what can I make out of all this stuff I have stored, turn it around and store the items that you need to make a certain recipe. This way will make it so that you will always have something to make for dinner and you will have all the ingredients on hand. Granola also can be baked in the oven, in a BBQ grill or in the Sun Oven.
When planning your meals, remember that you can extend the storage life of pantry safe foods to be used in your meals, like tortilla chips for taco salad, or crackers for soup.
Best Ever Granola
½ cup oil
3/4 cup pure maple syrup
3/4 cup brown sugar
7 cups oats
1 cup almonds
1 cup pecans
1 cup raw sunflower seeds
1 cup ribbon coconut
1 cup chopped dates
½ cup wheat germ
½ cup ground flax seed
(raisins, dried cranberries or other dried fruit or nuts may be added as desired)
• Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
• Spray 2 cookie sheets with a cooking spray, set aside.
• Combine oil, syrup and brown sugar. Heat until sugar starts to melt, stir well.
• In large bowl, combine dry ingredients. Toss to mix well.
• Pour syrup mixture over dry ingredients and stir until well mixed.
• Spread evenly onto 2 cookie sheets.
• Place in oven and bake for 10 minutes.
• Remove pans and stir, then bake 10 more minutes.
• Cool to room temperature, stir occasionally.
• Store in airtight container up to one month.
• Makes 12 cups.
• Serve with milk or yogurt and top with a teaspoon of chia seeds for added nutrition
