Normally i get by on a big green smoothie for breakfast each morning. I'll have one at 9:30 or 10am and then another one in a couple of hours. After 2+ years raw, my body gets everything it needs from those smoothies. But during the winter, i really notice the need for a higher caloric intake. So on crispy, frosty winter mornings, sometimes i have a small bowl of sprouted buckwheat granola with nuts, fruit, and freshly-made hemp milk. It's a perfect "comfort food" and goes well with a smoothie when i need to eat more for breakfast. This also makes a great late-night snack, although if i am eating after 8pm, i use more fruit and less granola because i find that i sleep better when i don't eat anything beyond fruit at night.
You need a dehydrator to make this granola properly, but it can be made in the oven with the door open if your oven has a very low setting. Most conventional ovens don't go below 170 degrees so it's not recommended. I am encouraging people to go in on the purchase of a dehydrator with their housemates or family members. The Excalibur dehydrator is by far the best on the market for the purposes of raw food preparation. It also can make yogurt and other cultured foods, and it has craft applications as well (i've dried my kids' paintings in there so they could be given as gifts right away). Please contact me if you are interested in purchasing an Excalibur dehydrator and i can advise you on the best one and the best place to buy it.
In order to make sprouted buckwheat granola, you need to buy raw buckwheat groats. I find them in the bulk section of my local natural foods store--be sure they are not the toasted kind as those will not sprout. The reason you want the buckwheat to sprout is to activate the enzyme inhibitors and release the full nutritional potential of the seed. I start with 2 cups of buckwheat (which, by the way, is NOT wheat--it's another grain entirely) and soak it in a large bowl of filtered, or even better, spring water. I add a splash of seawater which i keep on hand but you can use a pinch of celtic or some other natural sea salt. This is for the mineral content more than anything. You don't want to add too much salt as that could interfere with sprouting. You will need a rather large bowl as the buckwheat expands a lot. Just keep it covered with water for 12 hours or overnight. It will soak up the water and get kind of gluey. Dump it into a large colander and rinse well, stirring with your hands. I like to use the sprayer on my sink faucet. Then place the colander to drain over a bowl and set it somewhere with a light cloth over it for at least one day. You will need to rinse it at least once to wash off the goo and to keep it hydrated enough to sprout. After a day or so you should see little tails growing on the kernels. You can rinse again if desired, but leaving the buckwheat a little gluey will help the granola to clump together. If your buckwheat doesn't sprout after 2 days, it may be too dry, or it may have been irradiated. This is an increasingly worrisome issue affecting our food supply. If you discover this to be the case, please inform your natural food store manager and request another source. We need to pull together to stand up for our right to real, live, unadulterated food.
Transfer back into the large bowl and add whatever you like for flavor and texture. Here are some of the things i mix in:
1/2 cup sunflower seed which has been soaked in apple cider and water with 1/4 cup raisins and 1/4 cup dried cranberries. (i soak the fruit so when it dehydrates, it doesn't end up too crispy)
3T ground flax seed, which helps it to stick together (not necessary, but also adds Omega 3 oils)
1t salt, to taste
1/4-1/2 cup agave nectar, to taste (could also use honey or maple syrup if you're not strictly raw)
cinnamon, vanilla extract
shredded coconut
mix this all together and spread onto teflex sheets of an Excalibur dehydrator. This amount will fill 2-3 sheets. Spread to about 1/2 inch thickness and compress. Dry on the "living foods" setting overnight. Check in the morning. If the top is dry and underneath it's still moist, lay another teflex-lined tray on top and flip the two trays over. Then peel off the original teflex sheet and dehydrate another couple of hours. You will have to play around with the time and temperature. It should be totally dry and crispy and you should be able to break off chunks.
I know this may sound like a lot of work for some cereal but it is so filling that you won't need to eat very much, so it will last a while. It's a special treat for me and my kids love it. It actually tastes kind of like Grape Nuts cereal. You can mix in your favorite nuts and more dried fruit, if you wish, and store in a sealed jar. If it ever becomes moist, just dehydrate again. This granola is a good transitional food on a raw diet because it gives you the satisfying full feeling that you might be missing from cooked food or breakfast items like oatmeal. Pour on some homemade hemp milk and enjoy.
