I was reading a recipe for homemade granola on Passionate Homemaking when Lindsay, discussing her own motivations for making granola with soaked grains (for optimum nutritional benefits), mentioned an article by Sally Fallon called Dirty Secrets of the Food Processing Industry.

The article is extremely eye opening and more than a bit horrifying, as most things that force us to action tend to be. Sally discusses a litany of processes that are standard in food processing, including one called extrusion that is used to make every single type of dry cereal (even the ‘healthy’ ones) and manages to destroy any and all nutritional value. Hence the make-your-own granola recipe!

It’s so important to know what we’re putting in our bodies. We, as Americans are so removed from our food sources and have ‘learned’ that food comes in boxes, shrink wrap and plastic. It isn’t entirely our fault - we lead fast lives in a fast culture where convenience is king. Brands tell us they’ve done the hard work for us and that we can trust their product, food lobbyists have affected FDA regulations and family farms and food artisans just can’t compete with the industry machine. Often times we can even think we’re feeding our family a healthy diet but the pre-made, processed and packaged versions of food we pick up at the store are often completely depleted of the vitamins and minerals that our bodies and minds need to thrive and grow. While it’s convenient, it isn’t healthy.

But enough of my soap box pontifications! I’m off to add granola ingredients to my shopping list, a juice press to our wedding registry and to visit realmilk.com to find a local source for unprocessed milk (you have to read that part of the article)!

And along the same lines, I just learned that I could MAKE brown rice cereal [imagine that!] instead of buying the processed flakes in the baby aisle. Seriously, it never occurred to me that the rice cereal flakes were once rice AND that I could feed my baby not only unprocessed rice porridge but super duper healthy BROWN rice porridge. BD and I eat brown rice, why wouldn’t we want Wyatt to have it to? It’s crazy easy and crazy cheap! Thank you Super Baby Food for all of your wisdom and enlightening genius.

Just grind up a couple of cups (2 minutes straight in your blender – it makes nasty noises but your blender is built to do this!) of organic brown rice and then refrigerate whatever you aren’t using for up to a month and cook up each batch as you need it.

Boil 2 cups of water and as soon as it boils turn your burner down to the lowest possible setting, slowly pour 1/2 cup of the ground rice in while you stir with a whisk. Set the timer for 10 minutes and stir [near] constantly, or as much as needed to keep the porridge from sticking to the bottom of the pot. Refrigerate for up to three days! Easy, nutritious, cheap and made right at home :)