stEVI(L)a, one splurge and two (three) granolas.

Of course I could have made the connection stevia/evil when I bought it...but a lot of bloggers out there use it as a sweetener and I am always up for trying new things. I bought some from Funkyraw, where I order all things that I can buy and have shipped over from the UK while still paying about half of what it costs here (sigh - why is that?). By the way, the huge benefit of Funkyraw as opposed to a lot of other UK webshops is that they actually charge a shipment fee according to the weight of what's in your parcel - a lot of places charge a flat rate of maybe 18£ for just sending anything at all. Eighteen! But regarding The Evils of Stevia... - I guess my question is how can anybody eat that? I tried it first in a smoothie, took two sips and promptly dumped it in the sink. Next up some protein bars, but I just cannot, cannot eat that - I threw out the whole batch, and I swear I only used the teensiest, tinyest amount of stevia. The taste is okay - at first - but then it turns evil and my stomach just doubles up on me afterwards. I threw the stevia out in my righteous cooking-anger as well, eliminating the risk that I'll leave it in the back of my cupboard, forget about it for a couple of months and - God forbid! - pollute a batch of cookies.

I ran out of coconut granola by now. I made the biggest batch ever, so I stored some in the fridge, some in the freezer. I have two more granola recipes up my sleeve that I like. One is from Elanas Pantry, and based on walnuts, mulberries and dried dates and apricots - soaking walnuts really makes them amazingly big and juicy! Why didn't anybody tell me this before? I didn't tweak this recipe at all the first time, so by now I'm getting frisky and thinking of adding some soaked and sprouted buckwheat groats. The other recipe has buckwheat groats already, and lots of seeds - the only thing I changed is that I used pre-dried apple in stead of fresh because I am using my oven to dehydrate and it is not as "drying" as a dehydrator would be, so I always try to put as little wet stuff as possible in there to begin with. The recipe is gRAWnola, by Ellen Allard from I Am Gluten Free. There is also an "ordinary" Gluten Free Granola recipe at her site, but I cannot eat oats and quinoa so I haven't tried that.

However, I've been busy the last couple of days of this week and there's been nothing like granola-making on my schedule, so when I came across raw, gluten free granola in the local health store on my way to work yesterday - yes, I worked on a saturday, maybe that helped me rationalise a bit of indulgence - I jumped at the chance. Well no, I squirmed over the price, then I jumped...It's a ridiculously small bag of granola, from Renée Voltaire, for far too much money. When I think about the gorgeous, luxurious gluten containing granolas I can get at that price...but I guess that's why I make my own granola. Most store bought gluten free granolas contain corn in some form, which I can't eat, and most of them are airy and tasteless, three times the price of any regular supermarket-granola and maybe not even half the crunch, satisfaction and pleasure. Raw granolas are often heavier, crunchier, tastier - but not always corn and gluten free. The brand is something new to me (even though it doesn't sound very Swedish it apparently is), and I haven't seen it here before - on the website there's a shopping option in English with a raw food section. I've seen Southern Alps, which has a line of granola that includes an awesome-looking gluten free version, but it has corn in it so again, I haven't tried. I wanted to draw a picture of my last scoop of homemade granola this time around but it would appear that I've eaten it without remembering to snap a photo first...

One last thing: I still haven't figured out if there's a difference between granola and muesli, but in honour of all things muesli: please visit this post from Green and Crunchy for some seriously mouthwatering superfood breakfast inspiration.