Best Infused Lemon Cranberry Granola Recipe

Marge (00:00:05) - Welcome back gang. Glad you stopped by. This week we're doing a lemon cranberry granola. Welcome to Bite Me, the show about edibles where I help you take control of your high life. I'm your host and certified gonger. Marge and I love helping cooks make safe and effective edibles at home. I'm so glad you're here. And thank you for joining me today. Hello, friends. Thank you for being here. I really appreciate your listenership. And before we get into this week's episode, number 225, if you can believe it, we are doing, as I said at the outset, a lemon cranberry granola. The recipe gifted to me from Costco Connection Monthly magazine. And I do actually like to look through some of those recipes to find something interesting on occasion. And this one spoke to me. It leapt from the page and said, Marge, you really should be trying to make this. And so I did. But as always, before we get into it, I have a little housekeeping to take care of and sadly, there's no reviews this week.

Marge (00:01:05) - So of course, if you would like to leave me a review, I'll put a link in the show notes so you can find a spot to do that, or just do it on your favorite podcasting platform, because they really do help and I love reading those out. Maybe that's to feed my own ego, but sometimes that ego needs to be fed, and my life right now is a little bit topsy turvy. If you hadn't heard, I am selling my house and separating from my spouse and it's a lot of shit to manage. And thankfully I have edibles to help me get through and a lot of really caring people in my life. I feel very fortunate. To be honest. I'm pretty excited about what this next chapter holds because I feel like there's lots of adventures before me. I don't have a review. Like I said, I'm not doing a cannabis fact or the things you can make with hemp, because I feel like I've covered all the interesting stuff. As far as that goes. There are so many things you can make with hemp, but some of it's pretty fucking obvious because they've been making clothing and paper and sales and ropes at a hemp for a long time.

Marge (00:02:04) - So a lot of the nitty gritty on that kind of thing is. Not particularly new or exciting for my dear, dear smart listeners, but I did want to mention that thank you to Luxembourg. I was number 28 in Society and Culture on the Apple podcast charts recently, a fact that was brought to my attention through some of the stats that I get that I'm able to collect or review. They get sent to me by email every. So I think it's once a week, but most of the time there's really nothing new to report. But number 28 in Luxembourg society and culture, I'm not really sure what prompted that or who's listening over in Luxembourg, but if you are listening from there, thank you so much for helping me rise the ranks, rise through the ranks. It was pretty exciting to see that anytime a small, independent podcast like myself makes it to any chart, in any position, in any place in the world. And while Luxembourg does seem kind of random, I think they are on the brink.

Marge (00:03:08) - Actually, I think they did legalize recently, so perhaps we have some people who are now interested in dabbling in a little bit of the edibles now that they can do so freely without fear of prosecution, and I am happy to help in that regard. If you're listening from Luxembourg. Feel free to reach out, follow me on Instagram or email me. Podcast hotline. All the usual stuff. I'm always happy to talk cannabis and edibles and whatever with those who are interested. And of course, even if you're from Luxembourg, you can also join the Bite Me Cannabis Club. Lemon cranberry granola. Now, if you are also a recipient of the exciting Costco connection. Then you will know that this recipe was actually a lemon blueberry granola, which sounds amazing. It really does sound good. But alas, I tried to find dried blueberries. Now I have to admit I did not look in Costco. I'm sure if they're putting out a recipe like this that they would most likely. I can't assume that they're available in every warehouse, but they might have been available in the one nearest me, but I didn't even check.

Marge (00:04:22) - And I'll tell you why. Mostly because they're probably really expensive. And two, I don't need a Costco sized bag of dried blueberries or dried any fruit. Really. I have made the mistake of buying Costco sized bags of figs, only to find out that.

Marge (00:04:42) - Figs.

Marge (00:04:45) - Even if you only eat a few of them really make you have to go to the bathroom. If you didn't know that, if you were suffering from any kind of inability to have a movement, then I highly recommend you go and pick up a bag of figs because I found them very effective. But that was quite some time ago. I have not returned yet for any dried fruit of any kind. And again, if you're buying it at Costco, it's going to be the large sized format, and I just don't really have a place to store that stuff right now because again, I'm selling my house. And what does that mean? Everything has to look as though I don't live there. But we manage, of course. And something like this granola was pretty simple to put together and create a very little mess as well.

Marge (00:05:29) - So it was easy to clean up the traces of my project without anybody knowing that I was in the kitchen. So if there was a showing sometime soon thereafter, I was able to tidy my space quickly and efficiently and of course, not only am I selling my house, but I am sure all of you are entering into a very busy time of year. You may be celebrating with family, different holiday traditions, and that typically means people start to get really busy. We just had the US Thanksgiving and the Black Friday, so if you're like me, you've been inundated with emails regarding all the deals that you can get. Out there, and I don't know about you, but the only thing that I really bought for Black Friday. Was a bunch of Swedish sponge cloths, because I think I went on about those for a little bit too long last week. If you haven't heard that episode yet. And but I do believe there been enough that I purchased a bunch of them. So I'll have them for cleaning and all the fun things that come with selling a house and entertaining at Christmas time.

Marge (00:06:38) - Because let's be serious, what are the odds that the house that I'll be moving from this house before Christmas? We are doing a Christmas here actually, because everything's rather amicable for the most part. Let's get into the recipe because I feel like I'm rambling a little bit, and it's probably because I am all kinds distracted. I've got so many things on my plate right now, and my schedule and routine has been essentially disrupted quite a bit then, more so than usual. I have another. My best friend actually is also moving and leaving the country, and she has to be out of her apartment by tomorrow. And I have been. Helping her with a lot of moving as well, because she needs some support and she needs my help and I have it to give. So a lot of change happening for a lot of people that I know right now. And maybe that's you too. And I hope you get a little solace from this podcast and some simple edibles recipes that you can use to help you manage a busy time of year.

Marge (00:07:43) - This lemon blueberry granola. I used cranberry instead of the blueberry because I didn't want a Costco sized bag of blueberry. And I will admit, I went to a couple other places. I went to a bulk food store. They didn't have any dried blueberries. And then I went to a health food store that's near me that I really like. And they also had blueberry powder, but not blueberry dried blueberries. So I just went with the classic cranberry and I forgot cranberry and lemon is also a nice pairing. And I just bought a bag that was big enough for this particular recipe. Now, having made it once, I know that I will likely make it again. But the beautiful thing about something like a granola is that you can tailor it. Perhaps you already have some dried fruit. Raisins would work, in fact, or all kinds of different dried fruit would work in this particular granola. So you can customize it. And you know how much I love a recipe that you can customize? Blueberry or this granola requires some pretty basic ingredients, and I bet you have many of them on hand already.

Marge (00:08:38) - We need old fashioned oats, unsweetened coconut flakes, chopped almonds, brown sugar, sea salt, maple syrup. You know how much I love that? Coconut oil. Uh, lemons, lemon juice and your dried blueberries, cranberries, raisins, whatever it is that you have, and you are going to preheat your oven to 325, you're going to combine the dry ingredients all together, and then you're going to combine the wet ingredients altogether. And then you pour them over the dry ingredients. You mix it really well. And then you put it on a lined parchment paper lined baking sheet. And then you bake it for 30 minutes until it's nice and toasty. And then you remove it from the oven. And that's when you add your dried fruit. So it's a pretty it's not a no bake recipe, but it's a pretty simple one. And of course, you could use here not only the infused coconut oil, but you could use infused maple syrup. And you have to melt, I should say, have two calls for melted coconut oil.

Marge (00:09:40) - So you could also conceivably use olive oil if you wanted, or another infused oil too. It doesn't have to be coconut oil, although the coconut oil would pair nicely with the unsweetened coconut flakes. Now I will mention the old fashioned oats because as someone who's been long interested in nutrition and health, and I do my best to eat healthily most of the time, I mean, the two servings of ice cream I had earlier today might suggest otherwise, but most of the time. And was I possibly eating my feelings? Who knows, maybe I don't know. But anyway, the old fashioned oats. I've been, you know, interested in health nutrition for quite some time. I am a Precision Precision Nutrition certified nutrition coach and have been for quite some time. And even though I don't really do a whole lot with that certification, I do maintain it because I have, like I said, this interest and oatmeal or oats is one of those foods where people say that they should be soaked prior to using them, because it really helps to make them easier to digest.

Marge (00:10:48) - I think there's something in the oats. I forget what it's called. Off the top of my head. I was reading about it just the other day. Fitbits or something, I don't know, I can't remember, but they can be difficult to digest because of the nature of the food. So I was looking this up and I and I was like, you know what? I'm going to do this. I'm going to soak my oats before I make this granola to make it even healthier. So why should you soak your oats? This article that I found and this sort of explains. Why you should do this, the nutritional reason before it. And it's a traditional method of preparing grains used by our ancestors to make grains easier to digest. And I have read many places that would suggest that you should soak a lot of your grains and legumes before you consume them, because it does make them easier to to digest. All plant seeds naturally contains substances called anti nutrients, and these protect the plants from predators and also prevent the seeds from sprouting too soon.

Marge (00:11:42) - So when that bird eats it and then shits it out somewhere on its flight and then it lands in the ground, it has more likelihood to survive as an example. But they also interfere with our ability to digest vitamins and minerals from these seeds. Phytic acid, one of the best known anti anti nutrients, can prevent our bodies from absorbing calcium, copper, iron, magnesium and zinc. By soaking the oats, we inhibit the phytic acid and other enzyme inhibitors present in the seeds. So the benefits of soaking include increases the protein, vitamins and fiber in the oats, which is half the reason why we're eating oats in the first place. It makes the oats easier to digest. It helps your body to absorb the minerals, provides anti-cancer benefits, lowers the calorie content, reduces allergens, and makes the oats more alkaline. Now, of course, if you're doing this kind of thing, you don't want to use any kind of quick cooking oats you need. They're just regular, regular oats. If this is something you decide to do, I will include this article in here because I found it really helpful.

Marge (00:12:45) - And they have like their own granola recipe that they do. But I just followed the part about soaking and I went through this whole process, and that actually added quite a bit of time onto the project of making the granola, because otherwise, as I just explained minutes ago, the granola itself is pretty quick to put together. You know, you're just mixing some ingredients, some easy to find ingredients. And if you missed last week's episode, there is the lemon juice hack that I discovered recently from a video on TikTok. Maybe I'll include the video on that. I rerecorded the video because I had such a bad double chin on the one that I posted in the club that I really didn't want to share that to the wider public for a lot of reasons, but hey, whatever. Um, but yeah, this is a pretty easy recipe to put together and you're just baking it for half an hour. But I went through this whole process of soaking the oats. What they said, which they suggest you should do for 12 to 24 hours to get these benefits.

Marge (00:13:39) - And then, of course, you have wet oats. So then it said, well, now you need to like dry them a bit in the oven. So I turn my oven on and I dried them. I forget how long that took, maybe half an hour or more. They weren't completely dry. So I was like, I'm going to use them anyway. But that also added an extra 15 minutes of baking time when I made the granola. Then I happened to look at the bag that had the oats in them and I haven't, I don't really, I used to love like oatmeal in the mornings. For years I ate porridge. I guess I learned recently that oats and oatmeal is the unfinished product, and porridge is the finished product. When you cook it up and you know, I don't know if that's true or not, that's someone just told me that recently, but I digress. Yeah, so it added a whole bunch of extra time onto my onto the cooking. And then what I did was look at the bag, and I had bought these oats quite some time ago, and I do use them for baking mostly.

Marge (00:14:35) - Sometimes they'll call for oat flour as well, or something to that effect. And then I just make my own instead of having to have oat flour on hand. You just have the whole oats and you can blend them up in your blender and voila, you have old flour, so they are a handy thing to have on hand. Even if I'm not making oatmeal all the time and eating it that way. But it was sprouted sprouted grain oats. I didn't need to do any of that. It was a bag of oats that I bought where they had sprouted it and soaked it already. And. I thought at a time when you're so busy, it's so distracted and you're just making more work for yourself. Why? But anyway, those two exist out there. I will look at the bag again and add the brand to the show notes. I don't know if this is something you can get outside of Canada or not, but in case and just know that there are companies out there doing this kind of thing.

Marge (00:15:27) - I think I've actually bought flour from the same company that was Sprouted Grain Flower, because, again, a lot of these same principles apply. You can tailor this particular recipe however you like. I've already thought next time it really does have a really nice, fresh lemony taste as well. The lemon did shine through, I could see. I mean, I've eaten this stuff just as a snack, but you can make it into a trail mix as well. You could add maybe some cacao nibs and I don't know whatever else people put in trail mix because you already have almonds in it, but I could see it easily enjoyed on yogurt. How else do people eat this stuff? I don't know, but it's a pretty nutrient dense, healthy snack. Is there a bit of sugar in it? Yes, but you can medicate it and I think enjoy the benefits. I encourage you to try it out and let me know what you think about it, and how you tailored it to make your own. As always, if you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with somebody else who is a granola lover.

Marge (00:16:26) - You can always talk to me by email, podcast hotline, Instagram. That's the social platform I tend to be most active on. You can stay up to date with news and events with the monthly email newsletter. And you know what won't come in too big a bag for you to consume in a reasonable amount of time. The products and services on the Marge Recommends page. Check that out for deals and discounts. I also have a couple of product pages on my website under the Hot Shop and Deals tab. So if you are considering some of these particular products, I give you sort of the lowdown of the pros and cons. I'm your host, Mark. And until next week, my friends. Stay safe and stay high.