Gathering Granola

I’ve learned that if you write a food blog for long enough, people will start offering to send you food. Some of it is good. Some of it is not so good. Some of it is peculiar. Some of it is absolutely vile. But all of it is free.

We don’t talk about the ones that are vile. What’s the point? Likely these aren’t even food items on your radar. Nothing is to be gained by punching the gift horse in the mouth. And it’s not like I’m running out of topics to write about. On the contrary. If I ever had the time (or an incentive to maximize pageviews) I could easily bang out a second post every day.

Luckily for all concerned, I’m not at that point yet.

But I did get a package of granola from Gatherer’s recently. Actually, it was probably some time ago now. Did I mention the backlog? I promise that the Tap House maple syrup was sitting around even longer. Anyway, Gatherer’s included all three of their flavors. So naturally I put them into a competition with themselves to see which flavor came out on top.

For those who don’t know, Gatherer’s is one of our local granola makers here in the Capital Region. Their hook is using organic and local ingredients in their product. And I love that. Especially when it comes to things like honey. Seriously, whenever you see honey on a food label, you need to give it a hard second thought. But the fact that this honey comes from within 50 miles of Schenectady is very comforting.

Even their local maple syrup is organic and they mostly use expeller pressed organic canola oil.

The Contenders
The three flavors we had at our disposal were:
1) Squirrel Bait – Pecans, Maple Syrup & Toasted Coconut
2) Chipmunk’s Choice – Almonds, Peanut Butter & Maple Syrup
3) Fox’s Fancy – Apples, Spices & Honey

Round one
This was based solely on appearance. I have to admit to a prejudice of liking my granola chunky and toothsome. Otherwise I might as well be eating any other kind of breakfast cereal.

Naturally I gravitated towards the Chipmunk’s Choice with its copious load of almonds and clusters of oats bound together by peanut butter. It just looked hearty and solid.

Fox’s Fancy also was a well loaded granola with lots of dehydrated organic apple pieces. Its oats were also darkened with sweet spices, and that was visually appealing.

Squirrel Bait looked the least enticing with a very loose texture that had nothing binding the oats together, and only an errant pecan peeking up from the bowl.

Round Two
But how do they taste? For this round the cereals were tasted on their own without any accompaniment. What can I tell you? Looks can be deceiving, because Squirrel Bait turned out to be the best of the bunch. The texture may be loose, the pecans might be crumbled, but it had a great balance of flavors, where every component could be tasted, each worked together, and none outshone the others.

All of those almonds in Chipmunk’s Choice? While they added a crunch, they also added the power of their bitter almond skin. And that dragged down this top contender.

And the cinnamon and allspice [you’re sure it was allspice?] of the Fox’s Fancy really overpowered everything in that bag when eaten on its own.

Round Three
Sure, some people eat granola plain, but serious granola lovers eat it with plain Greek yogurt. Clearly that has to change how these taste.

Well, yes and no. The order of preference remains the same. However, the cold, creamy, and tart yogurt did take the edge off the bitter almond skins in the Chipmunk’s Choice. It also provided a lovely counterbalance of texture to the crunchy nuts. The presence of yogurt moved this granola into a much closer second place.

Fox’s Fancy was still overshadowed by its classic apple spice profile. But I thought there must be some good way to enjoy this flavor. Fortunately, I remembered a little bit of grade school science.

Hypothesis
Fox Fancy would taste better as an ice cream topping

Testing the Hypothesis
Poured Fox Fancy over a bowl of Philly Vanilla

Conclusions
The cold toned down the spices and crisped up the oats. Plus the ice cream provided a good contrasts for the dried apples. Vary from these instructions at your peril.

All fun aside, if you care about organic food made by local producers, this is the granola to get. I would be remiss not to mention the other local granola made by Our Daily Eats. It’s not organic, but it is delicious. Which local granola you choose probably will depend on what you are optimizing for.

Just whatever you do, don’t skip breakfast. Second breakfast isn’t quite the same without it.