cooking healthy on the cheap: brown sugar granola

For the past couple of months my wallet has been getting significantly lighter while I have been getting heavier. My efforts at the gym are futile because I have completely abandoned "healthy eating" and it's time to get back on track. I've gained around 5-8 lbs.. boohoo, waaaah, first world problems.. etc.

I'm back in my kitchen (no more getting take out!) and trying to cook healthy on the cheap. When I say on the cheap, I don't mean shopping at Safeway instead of Whole Foods. I mean shopping at the mother of discount store of groceries, Grocery Outlet (a.k.a The G.O). A trip to The G.O. is always an adventure because you never know what kind of items will be available. If you are the type who is loyal to one particular brand, forget shopping there because The G.O. will switch up on you. However, if you are an easy hooker like me, you will take what you can get. The G.O has some really great brands that are cheap. For example, Blue Diamond Almond Milk is $1.49 as opposed to $3-4 at other grocery stores. Also, you can get make up remover wipes for $1.99 as opposed to the cheap Safeway or CVS brand for $3.50, and if you're a fan of Baby Phat, you can pick up perfume at the checkout counter for $7.00. Shopping at my local G.O. is also an adventure because the people that frequent the store are either homeless, dirty hippies (and sometimes it's hard to distinguish homeless from hippie), hipsters, young hip couples, young professionals and professionals (depending on the day). 

Here's a dish-- or topping rather that is quite delicious, versatile and CHEAP and EASY.

I picked up this box of Whole Wheat Berry Flakes and Flax Seed cereal for 99 cents and as you can see all the ingredients are good. Plus it's called Uncle Sam and it was saying to me, "I Want You [to buy me]." 

The cereal is not sweet and kind of boring so I turned it into granola. I was going to make brown sugar brittle but it didn't quite turn out that way.

What you need:

1 box of Uncle Sam's cereal

3 cups of brown sugar

1.5 cups of water

1 tbs vanilla extract

What to do:

Combine the sugar, water and vanilla in a pot on high heat and boil. The smell will be AMAZING. 

After it has come to a boil, turn the heat to medium and cover for about 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Let the sugar cook for about 5 minutes making sure you don't burn it then add the box of cereal and stir. The sugar will start to cool at this point, remove from the heat.

Spread the cereal on a non stick surface like a Silpat. Make sure you spread it out thin (thinner than this photo) or you will have to wait for it to dry for dayzzz.

I topped some fruit with the granola and it was divine.

The granola was a little chewy but had a great depth of sweetness from the brown sugar and vanilla.

You can save the rest of the granola to sprinkle on top of yogurt, frozen yogurt, ice cream or your lover if that's what you're into.

This dish is good for people on a budget who want to top anything with something sweet and crunchy.