Squaremeat’s Rectangleoats.

SURPRISE! I INVENTED THE GRANOLA BAR!

Rather, I figured out how to make granola the lazy way. Now, I am going to sort of share my recipe.

• 2 cups of rolled oats or oat-like flakes, such as barley and spelt. I use organic multigrain flakes because I’m living large.
• 1 cup of whatever nuts you like, preferably raw.
• maybe some raw pepitas too? Say… 1/4 cup?
• 1/8 to 1/4 cup dried cherries. Or not.
• 1/8 to 1/4 cup chocolate chips. Or not.
• a vague amount of salt.
• 1/3 cup of adhesive. I use liquid honey.

You’ll want to use parchment paper, unless you want granola permanently embedded in your baking pan. Size of baking pan? 13″x9″, give or take. You also must have an oven, otherwise you’ll just end up with a pan of sticky muesli.

I dislike when food bloggers ramble about their boring lives before sharing the actual recipe. On the upside, most of them are fantastic food photographers. In order to compete with them, I have applied chintzy filters liberally.

Preheat oven to 350°. Fahrenheit, of course. If your oven is capable of going up to 350° celsius, are you smelting iron or something?

Aggressively dump 2 cups of flakes in the pan. Yell while you do it: the soundwaves will give it extra flavour.

Deposit your raw nuts in the pan. Why raw nuts? Nuts are typically roasted with oil (eg. sunflower, vegetable, olive), which I’ve found to produce a not-as-delicious outcome. DIY dry roasting is the way to go.

Joining the nuts are some raw pepitas, about 1/4 cup worth. Pepitas are good for prostate health, and benefits postmenopausal women. I simply like how they taste.

Next, use your grubby meathooks (or a spatula, or a spoon, or a stick) to mix the contents in the baking pan.

Ovenize this stuff for 10 minutes. What’s happening here is the ingredients are warming up. Kinda roasting, but mostly being prepped for a coating of bee barf.

I forgot to mention that you also need a bowl to transfer the pan’s contents into. Bowl size? Big enough to fit over your head.

Now’s the time to introduce some dried fruit into the warm mixture. I like dried cherries because they’re expensive and I’m an aristocrat.

Next, you eyeball the amount of salt. We all grew up with a salt shaker at the dinner table, right? I trust that by now most of you know how to achieve your preferred level of saltiness. If not, this is a good practice.

Following that, ooze 1/3 cup of honey over the concotion and use your mingling utensil to combine it all.

Line your baking tray with parchment paper and dump the clumpy goop in there.

This is where the chocolate chips come in: I add them at this stage so that they keep their chippy form. If you’re really smart like me, the chocolate chips will have come from the freezer, hard as soft rocks.

Use your smooshing utensil to compress the mixture into the pan.

Time for oven re-entry. Baking time? 15 minutes or however long it takes for it to reach that light golden standard.

When the oven phase is over, let the pan cool a bit before popping it in the fridge or freezer. Only when it’s chilled, will you be able to extract your granola, in a perfect rectangle. Wow.

You may break it down into pieces, but think about all the attention you’ll get when you pull an unusually large granola bar out of your backpack and then proceed to eat it on the bus, wiping your sticky fingers on your seatmate’s lap as you go.

Seriously though, this is ultra-edible and easily customizable.