Ten ingredients and a lot of time are needed for my homemade granola. First up, why go through this much work to make my own breakfast cereal?

I have diabetes, but I still love a nice crunchy cereal from time to time but it’s near impossible to find healthy cereals, including the incredibly boring Keto-friendly taste-of-cardboard stuff. I said this takes a lot of work, it also requires a significant amount of time, 72 hours to be exact.

The reason for the long process is that I soak a number of the ingredients for 24 hours before I put the mixture into our dehydrator for 2 days until it’s finished.

Here’s the recipe:

• 10 ounces raw pumpkin seeds
• 10 ounces raw sunflower seeds
• 20 ounces whole oat groats
• 16 ounces raw almonds
• 12 ounces raw walnuts
• 13.5 ounces rolled oats
• 5.5 ounces whole flax seed
• 4.5 ounces hemp hearts
• 1 cup coconut oil
• 2/3 cup raw honey (I use Eucalyptus honey from HoneyPacifica)
• 2-3 tbsp vanilla extract (I make my own using vodka and vanilla beans that I age for as long as I can)

Using 4 mason jars (quart size) I soak the pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, groats, almonds, and walnuts for 24 hours. The nuts and seeds have to be covered with water at all times and I rinse them and refill with fresh water from time to time.

After 24 hours I start placing small batches of the nuts and seeds into a blender and grind them to a rough mixture that I place in a large bowl, and continue until the pumpkin, sunflower, walnuts, and almonds are ground. I do not grind the oat groats as they are already of a good size.

I add 1 cup flax seed, 1 cup hemp hearts, and 3 cups rolled oats (13.5 oz) along with the coconut oil, honey, and vanilla. After mixing thoroughly the wet, sprouted granola should look something like the photo above.

I divide the mixture onto 4 dehydrator trays that have the Teflon sheets on them, set the drying temperature to about 130 degrees, and allow it to dry for 48 hours. After about 12 hours I find I can slip the Teflon sheets out from under the granola which allows it to dry more evenly.

This concoction makes about 96 ounces or 6 pounds of granola at a price of $45 per batch. This equates to .47 cents per ounce while the cheapest big brand granola costs about .14 cents per ounce and specialty brands range from .30 cents to $1.00 per ounce. I know this sounds expensive but I’ll have a large bowl with 4.5 ounces of granola in it which costs us $2.12 per meal, which isn’t too bad compared to a bacon and egg burrito at Filibertos which costs $7.20

The nutritional value of this homemade granola is a magnitude different than commercially sourced cereals.

My recipe looks like this per 4.5oz serving:

• 52g carbohydrates
• 24g protein
• 13g fiber (more than 50% of daily requirement)
• 9g sugar
• 540 calories

In addition, the nutritional values per serving:

• 80% of Vitamin B-1
• 63% of Vitamin E
• 48% of Vitamin B-2
• 51% of Vitamin B-6
• 40% of Iron
• 140% of Omega 3
• 50% of Omega 6
• 122% of Magnesium
• 138% of Phosphorus
• 184% Copper
• 60% Zinc
• 171% of Manganese

I’m well aware I could cut out a lot of the coconut oil and eliminate the honey but then I have a bowl of nuts and seeds covered in soy milk and let’s get real, there’s got to be some yum-factor to our meals and as long as I can maintain good blood glucose levels, I’m good.