Food / Make Your Own

Loosen the Grip of Industrial Food Production on Our Lives

Make your own stuff. Another case in point: Granola.

Do I have time to go into the benefits and drawbacks of the industrialised food production system here?

Probably not. So I’ll just start and end with the fact that we’ve paid for the benefits of the convenience and “security” of having an uninterrupted food supply with lengthy and increasingly tenuous supply chains and the environmentally harmful global shipping of food, permitting the use of chemicals, pesticides and preservatives that we have no understanding of to enter our bodies and giving our money to large corporations that have more interest in profit than providing healthy food.

On top of that, with inflation, we see our grocery store bills rising to untenable amounts.

And all of this is without talking about the amount of fossil fuels and plastic that are used to enable this and where all the packaging ends up when it is discarded.

The system we live in requires us to lead busy lives and the busier we are, the more disconnected from the provenance of our food we seem to be.

Ok. I think I’ve made my point. Glad that’s out of the way.

Where I live, in Jamaica, a lot of food that is available in stores is imported. As a result, this has an impact on my monthly grocery store expenditures, especially lately. But there is so much available here too, specifically in terms of fruits and vegetables that are locally produced.

We are going to have to open our minds and get used to making use of these things and my friend JM Riordan does a great job here describing how to use what comes out of the earth that surrounds her in delicious ways.

I would like to add something else to the mix. Granola. I like it in the morning with a bit of yoghurt (which you can also make quite easily, but that’s another article) or cold milk. I try to avoid mixing fruit in, having read somewhere in my Ayurvedic studies that it’s not a good idea.

I was shocked (and still am) by the amounts charged for a 500g bag of the stuff in the grocery stores, so I decided I could make it myself. Cheaper, tastier, without sugar, and with the knowledge of everything that was going into it.

Of course, it has to be said that unless you produce these ingredients yourself, they will still have to come from somewhere. But with a little bit of care and attention, you can ensure that they are all produced as close as possible to wherever you are.

Here’s the gear you will need: cookie sheet / baking paper / measuring cup / measuring spoons / mixing bowl.

Here are the ingredients you will need: DRY: 4 cup oats / 1 cup chia seeds / handful of cashews and almonds, chopped / tbsp cinnamon / ½ tsp salt / tsp grated nutmeg / handful of currants or raisins WET: 6 tbsp vegetable oil / 6 tbsp local honey / 1 tbsp vanilla

Here’s how you put it all together:

1. Get your oven going at 350 Celsius / 180 Fahrenheit

2. On medium heat on the stove combine the wet ingredients. Don’t let it boil!

3. In a mixing bowl, put together the dry ingredients.

4. Stir in the wet ingredients, ⅓ at a time, together with the dry.

5. Spread it out evenly over the cookie sheet, leaving some space in the middle. No idea why I do that, but there must be a reason for it.

6. Leave it in the oven for 30–35 minutes.

7. Take it out and let it cool and Robert is your dad’s brother. You should have about 600 grams of the stuff.

And that…is it. I took it one step further and I packaged it and sold it in 300g bags at my local artisanal market and it went like hotcakes. Hotter than hotcakes in fact.

I don’t know about you, but I felt pretty stupid the first time I made this. Stupid for all the money I had spent on granola in stores over the years, for something that is so easy to make myself. The man won’t notice it if it’s just me, I know that. But I will.

Let me know how it goes for you!

Interested in more? Here are a few other things you can make yourself quicker, easier, cheaper and tastier than anything you’ll find at the grocery store all the while doing your part to extending the middle finger to the industrialised food production industry.

I really do hope that you like what you have just read. If you want unlimited access to thousands of writers, consider a subscription to Medium. It will set you back $5 a month and if you use this link, then I get a slice of that and I will add it to my rainy day fund with the proceeds from the market. That’ll show ’em alright.