You often hear people refer to themselves as either a “morning person” or a “night person”. I often chuckle when someone asks me this question, because if I was to be completely honest, I would have to say that I am neither.

Most evenings I end up falling asleep on the couch while Josh either works on school work or watches tv. His standard line when we rent a movie is, “Are you going to stay awake to watch this with me?” I try. I really do. But when my eyelids start getting heavy, I’m a sucker for giving in and floating into dreamland.

Mornings. Don’t even get me started. I’m one of those people that has to set 5 alarms and hit the snooze button 5 times in between each alarm. My husband loves it. Not. I’m pretty sure he takes a severe disliking to me every morning. That is, until I decide to make a delicious breakfast. Because you see, the old saying rings true, “The easiest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

One of our favorite breakfasts is granola. And for the last few months I’ve been searching for the perfect granola recipe. The various recipes I tried were either too dry, too mushy, too many spices…you get the idea. I was looking for a simple recipe, with a short ingredient list of items I already had in my pantry.

Well friends, I’ve found a winner. I headed on over to one of my favorite blogs, A Couple Cooks, and found a simple recipe that checked all the boxes on my list. It only took a few minutes to whip up and just like that, we now have homemade granola on our breakfast table.

Vanilla Almond Granola

Recipe adapted from A Couple Cooks

Ingredients:

• 3 cups of rolled oats (I used Trader Joe’s gluten free)
• 1/2 cup of sliced almonds
• 1/4 cup of unsalted sunflower seeds
• 1/8 cup of vegetable oil
• 1/4 + 1/8 cup of honey
• 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon of sea salt

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. In a large mixing bowl, stir together the oil, honey, vanilla, cinnamon, and sea salt.
3. Add the remaining ingredients to the bowl and stir well to combine.
4. Spread the mixture onto the prepared baking sheet.
5. Bake for 45 minutes, stiring every 15 minutes. The granola should be golden brown when finished.
6. Remove from the oven and let cool. The granola will become hard and clumped together.
7. Break the granola into pieces and store in an airtight container.

Tips:

*Add in your own mix-in’s for a unique granola combination. I like adding dried cranberries and coconut to the granola once it has cooled. Josh likes adding chocolate chips.

Enjoy!

Lori