Crispy Quinoa Granola

The last full week of summer vacation and I am simultaneously dreading and craving the return to school, the way you feel about an old friend you haven't seen in a while — eager for the reunion, apprehensive about the effort. Teaching is effort. Beautiful, exhausting, unreplaceable effort. I have done it for forty years and I will do it for a few more and then I will stop, and when I stop, something essential in me will change, but that is a problem for future Ruth. Present Ruth is ironing blouses and organizing binders and reviewing the list of new students with the professional curiosity of a woman who is about to spend nine months trying to convince 150 teenagers that Emily Dickinson is relevant to their lives. She is. They will learn this. I will make sure of it.

I made a zucchini bread this week — two loaves, because the neighbor's zucchini plant has achieved the terrifying productivity that zucchini plants achieve every August, and Mrs. Berman appeared at my door with six zucchini the size of baseball bats and the expression of a woman who has been defeated by a vegetable. I accepted the zucchini. I made bread. Zucchini bread is the diplomatic solution to agricultural surplus: you take the excess, you add sugar and cinnamon and oil, you transform it into something people want, and everyone is happy. I brought a loaf back to the Bermans. Mrs. Berman said, "You're a miracle worker." I said, "I'm a teacher. Same thing."

Marvin was quiet this week — not confused, not agitated, just quiet. There is a version of Marvin's quiet that is peaceful and a version that is absence, and I am getting better at distinguishing between them. This week was peaceful. He sat in his chair and read the newspaper — or held the newspaper, I'm not sure he reads it anymore in any meaningful sense — and ate what I put in front of him and thanked me, and the thanking was real, automatic, the reflex of a man who was raised to say thank you and whose manners have outlasted some of his memories. Manners are stored deep. I'm grateful for that.

Once the zucchini bread was in the oven and the kitchen smelled like cinnamon and warm sugar, I didn’t want to stop — that’s the thing about baking, it has its own momentum. With forty years of September mornings behind me, I know better than to start the school year without something ready to grab from the pantry, and this crispy quinoa granola has become exactly that: a batch I make during the last slow days of August so that the first chaotic Tuesday of the semester doesn’t also have to be the morning I skip breakfast. It keeps well, it makes the house smell almost as good as the bread did, and it asks very little of you at a time when you’re already giving quite a lot.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 30 minutes | Total Time: 40 minutes | Servings: 10

Ingredients

2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup uncooked quinoa, rinsed and thoroughly dried
1/2 cup roughly chopped raw almonds
1/4 cup raw pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds
1/3 cup honey or pure maple syrup
3 tablespoons coconut oil, melted
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
1/2 cup dried cranberries or raisins (added after baking)

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Preheat your oven to 325°F. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
Combine the dry ingredients. In a large bowl, stir together the oats, quinoa, almonds, pumpkin seeds, and sunflower seeds until evenly mixed.
Mix the wet ingredients. In a small bowl or measuring cup, whisk together the honey, melted coconut oil, vanilla extract, cinnamon, and salt until combined.
Coat the granola. Pour the wet mixture over the dry ingredients and stir thoroughly until every oat and seed is well coated — take your time here, even coating is what gives you the crispiness.
Spread and bake. Spread the mixture in an even layer on the prepared baking sheet. Bake for 28 to 32 minutes, stirring once halfway through, until the granola is golden brown and fragrant. Watch it carefully in the last five minutes; it goes from golden to burned quickly.
Cool completely. Remove the pan from the oven and let the granola cool on the baking sheet without stirring — this is how it forms those satisfying clusters. Resist the urge to move it for at least 20 minutes.
Add the dried fruit. Once fully cooled, break up any very large clumps if you like, then stir in the dried cranberries or raisins.
Store. Transfer to an airtight container or jar. Keeps at room temperature for up to 3 weeks — though in my experience it never lasts that long.

Nutrition (per serving)

Crispy Quinoa Granola — Something to Make While the Zucchini Bread Cools