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The best granola and love poems for Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day guys. 😀 I hope you have the best day.

I’ve had several of you ask about my super healthy granola recipe and so here it is, mixed up with three of my most favourite love poems, because, Valentines!

Poem 1 is very personal and just for you to keep in your pocket.
Lorna Crozier from her book Sex Lives of Vegetables

Onions

The onion loves the onion.
It hugs its many layers,
saying, O, O, o,
each vowel smaller
than the last.

Some say it has no heart.
It doesn’t need one.
It surrounds itself,
feels whole. Primordial.
First among vegetables.

If Eve had bitten it
instead of the apple,
how different
Paradise.

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The best crunchy gluten-free granola as adapted from the original recipe from my wellness centre

-4 cups rolled oats
-1 cup quinoa flakes, I use plain quinoa and not the flakes because I like the crunch.I usually mix the black and the sprouted. (If you’re avoiding oats, feel free to use all quinoa flakes, millet flakes, or buckwheat flakes)
-1 cup sunflower seeds
-1 cup chopped almonds
-1 cup chopped walnuts
-1/2 cup sesame seeds
-3/4 cup melted coconut oil
-1/2 cup maple syrup (or honey when you’re on a gut bacteria cleanse) I always use raw honey.

TO ADD AFTER IT’S BAKED:
-1 cup pumpkin seeds (they explode if they’re baked in the granola. Seriously! Actually, it’s kind of fun and silly to have exploded pumpkin seeds 😀 )
-1/2 cup – 1 cup flax seeds
-1/2 cup – 1 cup Raisins, dates, goji berries or other dried fruit. I use dates and goji berries.
-Shredded Coconut

Actually, there have been batches where I forgot and added all the ingredients together at the beginning, and nothing happened, (except the goji berries become crunchy and the pumpkin seeds explode…lol). Actually, it was just as fantastic.

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Directions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees, but some days I need the oven at 350 degrees because the granola isn’t toasting. No idea what that’s all about.

Combine the oats, seeds, and nuts in a large bowl. In a small bowl, melt the oil in the microwave, stir in the honey and add to the dry ingredients. Mix thoroughly.

Spread on the baking sheet and bake for 30 -35 minutes. You can let it go for about 15 minutes safely, but then you MUST watch it and stir every 5 minutes to prevent from burning. Seriously! The edges like to brown fast so make sure you mix them into the middle.

Then I mix in the last three ingredients and put it into the hot oven and let it warm up for another five minutes.

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Poem number 2 for all of us who understand love is so much more complicated than red roses and chocolate.

Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy from her book Love Poems

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.

Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

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I know! So true! Wipe that tear away and go reread that poem, I’ll wait.

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The third poem I have is a love poem to YOU, and is from one of the most amazing poets in my world.
I know you probably read it a million times, but I know you will want to read it again.

It’s Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese because you CERTAINLY ARE good enough for the world. I know! I know! You’re welcome for the reminder.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

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Oops, look, one more. For the true love. For your true love. For my true love. For Robbie. A very personal love. Pablo Neruda:

“Of everything I have seen,
it’s you I want to go on seeing:
of everything I’ve touched,
it’s your flesh I want to go on touching.
I love your orange laughter.
I am moved by the sight of you sleeping.

What am I to do, love, loved one?
I don’t know how others love
or how people loved in the past.
I live, watching you, loving you.
Being in love is my nature.”

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Happy day my loved ones. 😀

Comments: 9

  • Robert Frank Gasch

    February 14, 2016
    reply

    Astonishing!!!!

  • February 14, 2016
    reply

    Thank you for sharing your recipe, some favorite poems and, always, your talents.

  • February 14, 2016
    reply

    What a beautiful post, with some of my most favourite poets too! Have a wonderful Valentines Day today!

  • February 14, 2016
    reply

    What a truly lovely post. 🙂 Filled my heart up. <3

  • February 14, 2016
    reply

    Loved this. Can’t wait to try the granola.. Happy Valentine’s Day!

  • February 15, 2016
    reply

    Veronica! The best gifts ever. Beautiful poems and great healthy food. Thank you so much. I love Mary Oliver, yet somehow had missed that poem and Neruda knows how to love. Hope that you had a wonderful day. Love to you and yours <3

  • February 16, 2016
    reply

    what perfect poems/recipes … and Neruda … be still my heart

  • February 19, 2016
    reply

    What a lovely post, Veronica! The granola looks perfect; the poems are, too. Somehow love poems and granola will be forever linked in my mind! xoxo

  • February 22, 2016
    reply

    Being in love is my nature! Oh oh I just loved that. Wonderful poems, poetry, pics, recipes everything … magic

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