For years I made the same granola recipe, one that my Mom got from a friend that I tweaked a little (of course). The past couple times I've made granola, though, I've done some more tweaking, and even tried a completely different recipe. This past run I went back to my original but made a few substitutions: left out the coconut (love it, but can do without all the saturated fat and extra sugar), added some spices, and left out the brown sugar that I had added to the original recipe years ago. I also changed the order of work a bit to try to make everything stick together better.

I would like to try Orangette's version, but that would require some different ingredients that I don't normally have on hand. Maybe someday.

3 cups old-fashioned oats
1 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup wheat germ (usually add a full cup, but I ran out! oops!)
1 cup sliced almonds
1/4 cup flax seeds, ground
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
dash freshly ground nutmeg
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup honey
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 300°F.

Combine oats, sunflower seeds, wheat germ, and almonds in a large bowl. In a measuring cup, combine oil, honey, vanilla, spices, and ground flax seed and stir together. Pour honey mixture over the oat mixture and mix well.

Spread in a 13x9x2 pan and bake for 45-50 minutes, until golden.

Spread in another pan to cool, stirring occasionally for the first few minutes to prevent clumping. Store in an air-tight container after completely cooled.

Ideas for next batch:
- add 1/4 tsp salt
- use half the amount of canola oil
- add about 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce (a small apple, peeled, diced, cooked, covered, with a bit of water and cinnamon for about 20 minutes. Then mashed.)