It was the Fuller Brush man who introduced us to granola, when we were living in San Diego in the late sixties and the hippie culture was in full roar. Tad's base was San Francisco; none of us was anywhere near radical. He was a button-down traveling salesman, selling brooms to make money for launching a business of his own – publishing travel guides and directories of West Coast antiques dealers and restaurants. I was a freelance artist and writer. Before long, Tad hired me to work with him in his publishing endeavors.

One day, Tad brought us a wondrous concoction from a natural foods store he had come upon in his travels up and down the Pacific Coast Highway. It involved a big scoop of strawberry-flavored yogurt topped with a ton of a toasted, nutsy-grainy substance called granola. What a grand thing!  

Who among the activists and protestors of those days knew that various granolas had been developed and promoted in the 1870s by Kellogg and Post and gone nowhere, until the health food movement of the 1960s seized the day and brought it back, in all its raisins and sunflower seeds? Who but me would find it weirdly charming to discover granola paired with crapola in the dictionary, as examples of words formed by adding "an ending of no precise significance" to an existing word?

Good old granola has continued to be of particular significance in my life, ever since our brush with the Fuller salesman. But I do not buy granola. I must make it. This great recipe I received recently from one of my subscribers is about to overtake my formerly favorite granola:

Linda's Granola Goodness

4½ cups old-fashioned rolled oats (not quick)
1 cup slivered almonds
¾ cup chopped walnuts
½ cup golden raisins
½ cup dark raisins
1/3 cup pumpkin seeds
¼ cup sunflower seeds
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 Tablespoons molasses
1/3 cup real maple syrup
½ cup peanut oil
2 teaspoons cinnamon
½ teaspoon grated nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 350°. Lightly grease a cookie sheet or jelly-roll pan. In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients, stirring really well. Spread the mixture evenly on the pan and place it in the oven. Bake for 20 minutes, stirring every 7 minutes. Serve with milk; or over yogurt, surrounded by sliced kiwifruit.

Karyl Bannister writes and illustrates the newsletter Cook & Tell, published ten times a year.