Today I made my last batch of granola. I almost cried with joy. I hate granola. When Brant and I first got married, I found a fun "Homemade Cherry Almond Granola" recipe and it was so yum and so much fun to eat for 2-3 days until the tiny batch ran out and we went back to eating Grape Nuts and Cheerios and frozen waffles.
There are no Cheerios or frozen waffles on our side of the ocean, so I make homemade granola because eating plain oatmeal every day gets boring and you can't make eggs last for months at a time, no matter how fresh they are when they pop out of the chicken. Do you know how much work it takes to make enough granola to feed a family of 5 for four months solid? Let's just say I am not a fan. There is no way we could afford all the almond extract and dried cherries to 100x that original recipe I found years ago, so we go with plain boring cinnamon and shredded coconut with some peanuts thrown in.
When we go out to town, I usually take advantage of the duel kitchens and huge ovens (3!) at our mission guest house. I can knock out granola in about 4 hours that way and turn on some fun "House Hunters: Alaska" to watch while I am stirring and mixing (yes, no commercial cereal here, but plenty of cable TV!) This past week, I was inventorying all our food stock and figured out I had all the ingredients to make granola in the tribe and it would be cheaper to use what I had here than buy all new ingredients in town. So, with my tiny oven, one cookie sheet at a time, I made batch after batch of granola to stretch our last 3 months in the tribe. It took all day, BUT I WILL NOT MAKE ANY MORE GRANOLA FOR A YEAR.
I also made my last batches of spinach pesto - again, normally a town task, but gotta use up what I have on hand. These pics are from when Brant's parents were here in December; I normally cook and process about ten pounds of fresh spinach to make enough pesto for 3 months.
Town time is fun for me, but it's a TON of work. I take advantage of the extra time and big kitchens to prep a ton of food so that meal prep is a faster in the tribe. After almost two years of living in the tribe, I have my system down - here's the freezer at the guest house after all my chopping/prepping - frozen pineapple (10!) bell peppers (9); 5 pounds of ground beef, cooked and seasoned and measured into 1 pound bags; 5 pounds of shredded beef, cooked and seasoned and frozen in its broth. A lot of the tribal wives do the same, so we sit around and chat and chop and help each other. Sometimes friends will come over and we'll clean spinach (no bagged spinach here - it comes with stems and roots still attached!) and have coffee and catch up. To get all my food prep in, it takes 3 solid days of work once every thing's bought. No "one hour freezer cooking" sessions here. :)
We head out to town next week for the boys to test at the international school and I am so thankful that I will not be chopping or cooking (or baking granola!) We're in the "use up" mode trying to clean out the fridge and freezer over the next 3 months. Going to be a tad tricky - I can't run out to the store if we run out of something in May, but I don't want to store food for a year and invite rats in to sublet our house. :)
