Good For You Valentine's Day Granola

First of all I have to state how MAD I am at myself! I made this recipe about a week ago and it was a HUGE success. I pulled out a couple special props to use to do the pictures for THIS post. I had Parker help me (he actually took a few great pictures!) and the photos turned out really cute! I would venture to say that they were probably the most adorable photos I have taken to date of anything I have made. I loved how the final product turned out in my kitchen and on screen. I was super excited to share the recipe and pictures with you all! Fast forward to a few days ago when I am ready to do the blog entry. I pull out the memory disk to my camera and the pictures are GONE! I must have had a brain fart and thought I had downloaded, edited them and put them in my folder "Blog" on my computer. No such luck :-( This lousy picture off my camera with a picture of just ONE of the photos on it is all I got and I took this off of Instagram. Sorry ladies and gents :-(  

Now that I have expressed my announce with myself and confession to you all out of the way, I do hope that you give this recipe a go at it in your kitchen. It really is quite amazing, easy and good for you as far as granola goes :-) A few weeks ago I found these at Target and asked my online friends what I should do with them:

 



I had a few good suggestions for both, however the Red Velvet ones I ended up just eating out of the bag. I blame it on my monthly friend, but whatever....A few great suggestions came in for the bag on the top, but the one that really caught my attention was from my friend Kim. She recommended Granola Bars. Perhaps it was because of a guilt over eating the entire bag of Red Velvet ones or that that my daughter is a big fan of oatmeal in the morning, but I took that suggestion and ran with it. As I did my research on Granola I was really shocked and alarmed that a food that has a reputation as being so good for you is indeed terrible for you! Ingredients like sweetened condensed milk,  butter (I am a huge fan of butter and think it is way better than the fake stuff for so many reasons) and sugar were the main stars of most recipes. You probably would be better off eating an oatmeal cookie with the crap I discovered is put in it. I knew that none of those were going to work for my recipe -- not because I am a health freak, but because I wanted to come up with something that was good for the heart this Valentine's Day (after all it is national heart month and coming from a family that is plagued with heart disease that is near and dear to my heart). The M&Ms are used so sparingly that they make you feel more like you are indulging than you really are and they make it look pretty :-)

Valentine Granola

 

Ingredients:

 

1/4 C Coconut oil

1/3 C Honey

3 C Oatmeal

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 C Valentine Theme M&Ms

 

Directions:

 

-- Preheat oven to 300 degrees and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper

--In a medium heavy sauce pan melt the coconut oil on low heat

--Add the honey to the coconut oil and mix together on low heat for 3 minutes.

--In a large mixing bowl add the oatmeal and drizzle the coconut oil and honey mixture over it. Sprinkle the salt and mix well.

--Add the M&Ms and mix until thoroughly incorporated into the granola

--Spread the mixture on the prepared cookie sheet and bake in the oven for 12 minutes

-- Let it cool for an hour. Break into smaller pieces and store in an air tight container for up to a week.

 

Our favorite ways to eat this are over yogurt, with a little milk or just straight up out of the jar.