Food Gift Idea: Healthy All-Natural Granola

Happy New Year! As per usual I’ll start with an apology for the sparse updates around here lately, which is a problem that I spent a lot of time over Christmast vacation pondering how to rectify. I now have a plan of attack. Sorta. I have high hopes for new and exciting content here on the blog and over at my main photography site www.jonathangayman.com.

I’m starting off the new year with a recap of some holiday food gift ideas that I came up with in December as a way to thank my wonderful clients for a great year. Why not post these food gift ideas before the holidays? Well, to be honest, a lot of my clients read the blog and I wanted my thank you gifts to be a surprise. So you’re getting to see them now. Bookmark them for next year.

I wanted to figure out a way to share my love of food and photography with my clients, and decided to develop five “products”, complete with logos, food photography, and a recipe card. Samples of all five of these food gifts were sent out in a simple, brown cardboard box via the regular old post office, kinda like gifts we used to get from relatives in the pre-Amazon days. The first in the series of holiday food gifts was a delicious all-natural granola which I decided to call Yeah!Crunch.

Granola is very easy to make and can be much more healthy than the stuff that you buy in stores. It is another one of those things where you can change up the ingredients based on your personal tastes (or what is on sale at the grocery store that week) and it is pretty hard to mess up. This recipe uses almonds, cranberries and raisins, but you can use practically any kind of nuts and dried fruit you choose. My recipe uses maple syrup, but my pal Stacy’s recipe uses honey and coconut oil. The possibilities are endless!

The only real downside to home-made granola is the cost of the ingredients. Just about everything is inexpensive except for the maple syrup, the nuts and the dried fruit. But if you buy in bulk you should be in good shape. I picked up most of my ingredients at Trader Joes, but your mileage may vary.

Not a fan of breakfast cereal? You can eat this granola straight out of the jar like a snack. Healthy food not your thing? This granola makes a great topping for ice cream, pudding, yogurt, or even gives less interesting store-bought cereal a boost. And of course, granola makes a great gift because you can make it in advance and it stays fresh (in a tightly sealed sealed container) for weeks!

Download the All-Natural Granola Recipe Card(.pdf)

Coming up tomorrow, the second installment: Food Gift Idea: Spice Rub.