Today was the start of my work week!  Had good productivity, so I actually finished up early.  Yay!

The day started with our Sunday bagel and paper reading:

No exercise today since it is a complete rest day for me.  Still hard for me to do these days.

Here is the granola recipe that I talked about yesterday.  It’s quite good, not super sweet and I think it actually does better as a topping than with milk.  I might tweak it a bit:

Ingredients:

• 3 cups rolled oats
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 tablespoons of flax meal
• 1 ounce of chopped walnuts
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 cup maple syrup (the real stuff, please)
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 40 grams of chopped dates

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.  In a small bowl, combine the vanilla, maple syrup, oil, water and brown sugar and mix to dissolve the sugar.  In a large bowl, mix all dry ingredients except the dates.  Add the liquid mixture and stir until it is all absorbed into the dry.  Spread onto a baking sheet and cook for about 45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes or so.  I found the granola was not quite crunchy right out of the oven, but it crisped up as it cooled.   After cooling, stir in the dates.  I actually also added some chopped dried cranberries later.

Stats:  31 grams (scant 1/2 cup or generous 1/3 cup):  141 calories, 4 grams of fat, 3 grams fiber, 4 grams protein.   Pretty good for granola!

Had a somewhat boring eating day, but thought you might like to see the coffee roasting process from earlier.  We had run out of all coffee in the house (thanks Susan!) so it was time to roast some.

We purchase green coffee from either Sweet Maria’s or Coffee Project.

Here are the green beans.  They actually smell a lot like legumes, or like dried peas.

Green coffee

I have a large roaster, but we have not gotten the wiring done (need 220 boosted) to set it up, so I have gone back to my good air popcorn popper.  Please note that you do need the lid on it, but I took it off to catch some action.  You just fill with about 1/2 cup of beans and plug it in.  You can see the chaff flying off, which is the outer skin of the bean.

As the beans heat up, they start snapping at the water is forced out of the bean and it expands.  You can stop the roasting from this point on and have a light roast.  Not sure if you can hear the snaps or not.

Coffee all done, super hot and smoking.  This has reached the 2nd crack stage and is considered a dark roast.  This bean is Sumatran, which takes a dark roast nicely.  You can hear the beans still snapping.  Roasting coffee is smoky, so you either need to do it outside or have an understanding spouse 😀

I am going outside quickly here LOL! After the beans have cooled and set for a bit, you can grind them up and have the freshest coffee you have ever had!  It takes about 5 minutes or so to do a 1/2 cup of beans, which is around 3-4 ounces.  I do 3 batches in the popper when I roast.