Pecan Pumpkin Maple Granola

Everything I said yesterday about being in soup mode, and salad season being over -

Strike that, Reverse it.

Breakfast:  Bed of spinach topped with salsa, a fried egg and avocado.

Lunch:  Spinach, carrots, tomato, blueberries, pecans, nutritional yeast, flax seed, cucumber & balsamic vinegar.

Dinner:  Spinach, carrots, cucumber, pecans and lots of Lime-Humus.

So basically I had THREE salads yesterday, and no soup.  Go figure!

In the process of consuming all those greens I decided what we really needed in the house was some granola.  

Pecan Pumpkin Maple Granola!

On-Hand for later:  1/2 C Pecans, dried Fruit

Dry:
5 Cups Old Fashioned Oats
Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Ginger Spice - approx 2T, 1T, 1T
Salt - approx 1t

Wet:
1/2 C Pumpkin
1/2 C Maple Syrup
1/4 C Apple Sauce
splash of Vanilla

Mix the Dry in a large bowl & the wet in a small bowl:

Pour the wet into the dry:

and mix, mix, mix - you want everything nice and covered:

Spread on a cookie sheet (I use a silicone mat to keep anything from sticking) and put in the oven at 325.

Bake for 30 minutes - Stirring every 10

Chop your pecans - I used my new $1Pampered Chef Chopper garage sale find!!

Then Gracefully transfer the nuts to the granola pan, or just spill them all over the place because grace is for ballerinas, not us real folks!

and cook another 10 minutes

After that just let cool and then put in an air tight container.  You can add dried fruit if you'd like.  I prefer to add the fruit when I serve it rather than adding it into the granola from the start. 

And how do you eat your granola?  Well there's the standard as a cereal, or on yogurt, but if you're making dessert maybe the best was is on some store bought Greek Frozen Yogurt!

Yep, that's the right way to end a day of salads!!