Granola

I keep reading about these toddlers who just love helping their parents.  They happily clean up, fold laundry, and set the table.  For the most part, this is not true of Baby M.  If I say, "Hey, do you want to help me with something" he will most likely answer "No" and go about his business.  If I leave an unfolded basket of laundry out it will soon become an upside down laundry "cake" in the middle of the floor.  However, there is one place where he does love to help, the kitchen.

The minute I start prepping something in the kitchen he is there shouting "I want to help yooouuuu!"  Of course, when I suggest that the best way for him to help me would be to pick up the crayons all over the kitchen floor, he is not interested.  He wants to crack the eggs, saute the veggies and chop the carrots.  I don't want to discourage his culinary aspirations so this lead me to seek out safe activities that he could help me with.  We ended up doing quite a bit of baking, which is fine, but we really don't need another batch of cookies in the house, even if they are the healthy oatmeal ones from Alicia Silverstone's cook book (which I must note are my favorite oatmeal cookies EVER).  So I was happy when I came across this recipe for homemade granola at wholeliving.com.  I feel a lot better about letting Baby M snack on granola than cookies, especially granola made with flaxseed meal, egg whites and natural sweeteners.  I love this recipe because we can easily customize it with different fruits and nuts and most importantly, Baby M can help with almost all the steps.  There is lots of measuring and stirring and not much contact with a hot stove.  He still fights me over cracking the eggs, but I win out most of the time.  Hope you enjoy it too.