What Would Jesus Eat?

I'm reading an interesting book about the way the French eat and why we're fat and they aren't despite a diet fulled with butter, real cream, delicious breads and wine at lunch and dinner. The answer, according to the author, is that they eat real food while we stuff our faces with faux food filled with: artificial colors, artificial flavors, preservatives, etc. Some pre-packaged foods aren't too bad. Take the Kellogs raisin bran I ate this morning. The ingredient list includes: whole grain wheat, raisins, wheat bran, sugar, brown sugar syrup and less than 2% salt and malt flavor. Compare that list to Post's Honey Bunches of Oats: corn, whole grain wheat, sugar, whole grain rolled oats, brown sugar, rice, high oleic vegetable oil (canola or sunflower oil), whet flour malted barley flour, salt, corn syrup, whey (from milk), honey malted corn and barley syrup...here's where it gets interesting...caramel color, natural and artificial flavor, annato extract (color), BHT added to packaging material to preserve product freshness. Read more here....

I don't know about you, but I'm really not interested in consuming BHT and products that have a large liquid content (like cheese) are the ones that tend to have BHT leach into the food. Maybe that means cereal (without fruit) is fairly safe with BHT packaging, but I'm not interesting in being anybody's guinea pig. Besides, you can make your own wonderful, healthy cereal without any artificial ingredients. I made an apothecary jar full of granola this morning that will provide us a healthy morning option for one or two weeks until I make a new batch.

Good Morning Granola

Preheat oven to 400 degrees 

Add to a flat baking dish (I use pyrex) 4 cups rolled oats and bake 15 or 20 minutes, stirring every few minutes until oats are lightly browned. 

Stir in one cup coconut and bake five more minutes stirring once or twice. 

Add 1/4 cup oil (I use coconut oil. If it's congealed I liquify it by heating the jar in a pan of simmering water.) and 1/4 cup honey. (When we get our beehives producing we will happily use our own organic honey from our hives.) Bake five more minutes. 

Remove from oven and place in a bowl. Add chopped dried fruit and nuts. I had a large assortment today so I put in chopped candied cantaloupe, apricots, cranraisins, regular raisins, dates, pecans, almonds, sunflower seeds, and peanuts.  

A bowl of this with milk direct from the cow to our table is one great start to the day!