There are countless variations to granola. This one had besan flour and craisins instead of raisins!
INGREDIENTS:
2 1/2 cups oat groats, coarsely ground
1/2 cup besan
1 Tablespoon dry coconut flakes
a handful of pecans, chopped
a handful of almonds, chopped
1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup water
1 Tablespoon maple syrup
a few Tablespoons of ghee
a handful of craisins or raisins
PREPARATION:
Combine the oat groats, besan, coconut, nuts and cinnamon in a bowl.
In a saucepan combine the sugars and water and boil until the sugar dissolves. Cool.
Add maple syrup and ghee to the sugar water.
Stir the sugar water into oat combination and stir thoroughly
Bake mixture spread on a couple baking pans. Deep cast iron pans also work well.
Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minute intervals, stirring in between to make sure the granola evenly browns and does not burn. Can take about 30 minutes tops.
Stir in the craisins when granola comes out of the oven.
Offer to Krishna with fresh milk and lots of love and devotion. Hare Krishna
Unfortunately, as do all things in this world, the pads wear out pretty quickly. Others use things like Bar Keepers Friend and Ajax etc, all of which carry warnings not to breathe in. No thanks. And baking soda just doesn't do much in this case.
But then there's something I learned in India. People cleanse their stainless with sand. Luckily, we have areas of fine sand where the soil is washed away by continuous rains. Couple that with the homemade sponges mentioned earlier and you will learn how Indians keep their pots so shiny. Or use any terry cloth or sponge, etc. that can be used to rub on the sand.
4 Tablespoon ghee
1 cup besan (chickpea flour)
2 cups water
1/3-1/2 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon cardamom
Chopped cashews and or pistachios
a few strands of saffron (opt)
Preparation:
In the ghee toast the besan, nuts and cardamom until it turns a couple shades darker.
Meanwhile, bring the water to a boil with the sugar.
When the water is boiling and the besan hot, carefully pour in the boiling sugar water while stirring out the lumps. Stir until thickening enough to begin pulling away from the edges of the pan.
Pour the results into a greased pan or mold to cool and or cut into pieces.
Garnish with saffron strands if desired.
VARIATIONS:
For more crunch, toast the nuts ahead of time and set them aside to be added at the end.
Also the besan can be toasted first without ghee and then add the ghee (or butter) very close to the time when the boiling water will be added or even add the ghee to the water instead, when bringing it to a the boil.
Our family is divided, so here is my take on the topic of leftovers. At least we don’t make a week load of food and freeze it for eating all week, which is something we’ve seen on the web. No, thankfully we aren’t that lazy.
In my experience, however, unless one is poverty stricken, leftovers are not a good idea for various reasons..
When we eat leftovers, usually Krishna has to go hungry; there’s no new offering made for that meal.
Leftovers take up space in the refrigerator. And there’s the risk that the bhoga will touch the leftovers and then become unfit for offering to Krishna..
Leftovers are wasteful because if we are eating leftovers then the good bhoga that’s in the fridge has to sit another day or so and it just gets less nutritious and not as nice to offer to Krishna .
According to Ayurveda, leftovers are not so healthy to eat. Especially as a habit. that’s because leftovers become very heavy food and therefore harder to digest. And digestion is one of the most important factors for good health.. Without proper digestion, toxins develop that over time can create havoc for the body.
Solution? Prasada is meant for distribution. Guests, friends, neighbors, drop in visitors, homeless on the street and the hungry person. Cows and birds and other animals will benefit too. Finally, there is the compost bin to nourish your plants.
Also it’s helpful to cook smaller amounts of a certain dish but accompanied by a variety of other dishes. Or if you run out of something while serving, have another option available that can be prepared quickly.
It all started with Figgie. Figgie is a fig tree that came into our life last year late in October 2019 after being dug up from the spot where a playground was being built. Figgie has more than tripled in size since then. Fig trees do especially well in this area, making a good fit.
Parijata, a pear tree,
and Phalla (Sanskrit for "fruit"), a peach tree.
Meanwhile, after the above were being planted, a neighbor had offered some blueberry runners we could dig up and also plant. We got a couple (Nila and Syama), and then bought two other blue berry bushes (Tippie and Prema) from the nursery because blueberries do best when there are different varieties growing nearby.
Another thing about having different varieties is you can choose ones that produce at different times of year to extend the harvest.
Not long afterwards we acquired another pear tree when we found out pears do best in pairs. Of differing variety. Paramahamsa is a pineapple pear from a Walmart nursery.
Para is still very young but did an amazing job growing not one, not two, but three new lower branches, thanks to a method taught on YouTube called "notching". That's because Para had branches missing on one side but now more balance has been created.
And note how the young branches have weights hanging on them and Pari above has branches tied down. This is called "training a tree" to grow outward for easier access to future fruit because pear trees have a tendency to grow straight up. And training is the gentler method compared to pruning or actually cutting a tree. But it's not that we don't want to prune; pruning is also a way for shaping a tree. And also for taming its growth, perhaps similar to training children to behave a certain way rather than let them grow wild and only do what they want.
Pruning, however, should be a last resort for shaping a tree. It is best done to remove any dead or interior-growing rather than exterior-growing branches in order for sufficient light and sunshine to come in. Also before pruning nursery trees, they need to get established first, which means no unnecessary cutting until the first year after planting. And fruit is also removed prematurely, so the trees can focus on root development.
Young trees called whips or "bare roots" are a whole different story. For various reasons, they are pruned right after planting and rather shockingly, for the inexperienced (Which is why others prefer notching). We have yet to try raising a fruit tree from the whip stage of life.
As we learned more about proper pruning, we noticed, however, that all the trees from both the local nursery and the Walmart nursery had suffered from terrible pruning done to them while potted. Whoever pruned, did it either to cram the trees together to save space while being sold or didn't know what they were doing because the cuts were done in all the wrong places.
In any case, other additions to the yard have been three loquats and two avocados grown from seed and another loquat and a camphor tree given as gifts. Meet Lokanath, one of the loquats here, gradually rising over the horizon.
And this is Avadhuta, one of the avocados, still so very young.
It has been quite an adventure, with so much to absorb. Another thing is how Krishna made each variety of trees and plants with specific needs. And how especially when they are young and just getting established they need a lot of TLC. After that initial period, things should get easier. Over time we hope to post for future reference what we discover for each variety growing here, along with useful links.
To be continued...
And when there’s one Tulasi, there will soon be more!
First a word of caution. Glass is beautiful but not fun if it breaks. Ceramics, if available, are safer, but with an abundance of bottles that come from the grocery store that used to contain honey and the like, why not try to put them to good use?
And not break them.
Another challenge can be how to get the labels off of the jars you want to reuse? Not all labels are made the same. Some come off easily. Others require more effort.
As an example, what we did here was soak a nice looking bottle of mustard oil in a pot of water for about an hour to get the label off for the owner.
Then we learned the truth. It was one of those very stubborn, sticky labels that takes effort to get off.
But after encountering such labels over the years here’s some suggestions that have worked well:
After the soaking, use a stainless steel scouring pad to scrape the outer label off, leaving the sticky glue residue still there.
Next, some dish soap and the same scouring pad is used once again and the bottle rinsed well.
Repeat the oil and washing, if needed.
Wash again with soap and water until all traces of oil etc are gone. Dry well and you now have a nice bottle, as in this case, or a jar. This makes for prettier storage than if you used containers with the labels still on them. They especially look nice for storing spices and other bhoga for Krishna’s offerings displayed on open shelving.
Another place, as pictured, is for beauty products in the bathroom.
Another tip is to save bottle tops and jar lids because these can be mixed and matched. One of the bottles pictured above, for example, has a bottle top taken from a dish soap bottle. Now the bottle of oil, in this case olive oil, easily dispenses oil for a massage.
In the case of the bottle of mustard oil, we couldn’t find a matching top to likewise easily dispense the oil, so the solution was to gentle poke a hole into the top of the conveniently thin metal lid.
Now oil can easily be shaken out as needed.
Freshly ground oat groats are used in this recipe rather than factory produced steel cut oats for freshness flavor and purity.
Of course, learning to work with nature will take some trial and error, since we are conditioned to rely on quick fixes rather than nature’s plan.
In any case, this year we had what is called interplanting or more diverse plantings rather than beds of monoculture or containing one kind of plant only. One example is a bitter melon vine climbing upon an okra plant.
Besides being a natural extension to the trellis the okra was planted next to, this is said to confuse any bugs. But interplanting requires more planning. It isn't easy until you learn the needs of specific plants. Some don't mind a little shade growing next to bigger plants and some prefer dryer soil, so you have to be careful to group them with other plants with similar needs. Until then, crop rotation seems preferable. As for the okra, it gets very tall and needs to be bent a little to reach the crop above, which may strain the vines growing below. So far this has not been a problem.
Another thing is that we are gradually adding more flowers. This is not only for deity worship, but also to attract beneficials, creatures that pollinate the plants and flowers such as marigolds can also repel pest that attack your crops.
We have definitely seen a big increase in butterflies this season, but not sure if it’s always a good thing because butterflies mean caterpillars. Until more predatory creatures enter the ecosystem, they can be a challenge.
Also we hope to add more perennials such as this rosemary because they save a lot of time having to replant something each year.. 
Most notable was a broadened spectrum of creatures and beneficial insects that made their presence this year in the garden.
Birds come around at dawn looking for insects. Also on top of one of the trellises covered by leaves we found a bird nest where baby birds grew up and then flew away
A lizard is out and about looking for bugs.
Also seeing lots of spiders. Here is one spotted on a pear tree leaf.
Are you a total newb when it comes to drying foods for storage? Fear not; you’re not alone. The following have been a couple of ongoing experiments with preserving stuff grown on the farm here.
Drying foods makes perfect sense when we study Krishna's natural arrangements. First there’s wet and sunny weather, ideal for growing the crops, which is usually followed by hot, drier weather which is excellent for drying foods for storage. There’s a saying “make hay while the sun shines” which must have been originally said for that reason.
For starters, some carrots tops and celery leaves were dried. So far they’ve been shelved since early summer and still give a very nice boost of flavor reconstituted in soups, especially pea soup.
