Granola — In Chip Form, Plus a Food Gal Giveaway
The folks in Oregon have gone and given granola a new look.
Willamette Valley Granola Company has eschewed the usual clusters for chips instead.
Yes, its new Granola Chips offer the crunch of granola, but in bite-size chips a little larger than a quarter.
They’re made with whole grains, including oats, barley, amaranth and quinoa. The chips get their sweetness from milled cane sugar and barley malt syrup. A 28-gram serving is 110 calories.
There are four varieties: Honey Nut, Vanilla Bean, Butter Pecan, and Wild Berry.
And they are plenty sweet. In fact, the Butter Pecan will remind you very much of butter pecan ice cream because it’s almost candy-toffee-like. My favorite was the Wild Berry Crunch because the sweetness is tempered by the slight tang of the cranberry and blueberry powders used, along with the black cherry, chokeberry, black currant, lemon, blueberry, hibiscus and apple juices.
The granola chips would be ideal to toss into a bowl of tangy, thick Greek yogurt. Or to nosh out of hand on the go.
The resealable 6.2-ounce bags are available at Sunflower Farmers Markets in the Bay Area for about $4 each.
Contest: One lucky Food Gal reader will get a chance to try bags of each of the four new Granola Chips flavors. Contest entries, limited to those in the continental United States, will be accepted through noon PST July 23. Winner will be announced July 24.
How to win?
Just tell me what goal you are “chipping” away at, whether it be slowly and surely or quickly and amazingly. Best answer wins.
Here’s my own response:
“Little by little, I’m getting more well versed in wine. In fact, I am just about to complete a week-long wine immersion class taught by a Master Sommelier. One of my goals has always been to be as comfortable describing and identifying wine as I am about food. But of course, the food part has always been easier, given that it got a 21-year head start over the drinking part, if you know what I mean. I may never become a sommelier, but if I can master some of the finer points of that profession, I’d surely drink to that.”
Little by little, I am teaching myself to be a master gardener. Over the seasons I’ve learned where my dahlias thrive, where my blueberry bushes shouldn’t live, and that lavender is a wonderfully drought resistant plant. I hope to have “that garden” one day…you know the one…where people walk by in awe. The one you can smell from a block away (in the good way). The one where the honey bees thrive, the hummingbirds twitter, and butterflies flurry. I will get there, and for now, I revel in the meditative activity of pulling weeds.
I have been “chipping” away at living with less.
Less of everything to simplify and make my life easier.
I have a large shopping bag by my door that I try to fill and drop off at goodwill at least once a month. I’ve tackled cleaning out my closets (plural ! ), dressers, kitchen cabinets, linen closets, candle drawers, office supplies, shoe collection, scarf collection . . . some months I am on a roll and make more than one drop off; some months I ‘miss’ a drop off. I keep the cycle going as I still have lots of possessions that I do not use regularly; I just have to find the right time to part with them – and I will! I have many conversations with myself about this all the time . . . again, chipping away at having fewer ‘mes’ to have these conversations so that I can live more simply!
I am chipping away at my fear of working with yeast. I have been trying out 1 new bread recipe per week to get used to it and comfortable with it.
How fun that you are learning so much about wine. My husband is slowly learning about wine too. The chips look terrific. Our goal has been to cut out “processed” foods and only eat ‘whole’ foods. It has been such a positive journey. I see that those chips have taken out the bad processed sugars really well. They would be interesting to try!
I am chipping away at being lazy at dinner, foregoing the easy, frozen stuff for putting time into a meal I can enjoy and which will either put a smile on my face after a very lousy day, or will cap the day, also putting a smile on my face. Food, after all, is the ultimate constant pleasure in life: dependable (like a pet), gives unconditional love (like a pet), and is always there at the end of the day. Sigh…
These look great! And good on you for improving your wine knowledge-you already seemed very knowledgeable to me! 😀
Those look delicious! I am chipping away at writing a book. It is large and daunting but as long as I do a little on it everyday and don’t think about the whole thing, it is slowly getting there.
I still need to learn a lot about wine 😀