When we’re not busy dreaming up new Grizzlies Granola recipes, you can often find us in the kitchen, putting our delicious products to work in classic recipes. For a healthier take on breakfast scones, try this version with Grizzlies Organic Harvest Porridge, loaded with walnuts and delicious nectarines. This is a great recipe to make in advance, and serve warm with butter, jams, and honey on a busy morning.

What you’ll need:

• 1 ½ cups pastry flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 to 2 tablespoons brown sugar or honey
• 1 cup Grizzlies Organic Harvest Porridge
• 2 tablespoons cold butter
• 1 ¼ cups buttermilk at room temperature

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F

Dust a cookie sheet with flour

Sift flour, cream of tartar, salt and sugar (if you use honey instead, stir it thoroughly into the buttermilk). Mix in Grizzlies Organic Harvest Porridge. Grate the cold butter into the mixture and blend with a pastry cutter or with your fingertips until the mixture is like oatmeal flakes. Stir in the buttermilk and mix gently and quickly until barely blended together. Immediately turn out onto the floured cookie sheet and pat into a circle about ¾ inch thick, 8 inches across. Cut the circle into as many pieces as you would like and place immediately in the hot oven. Bake about 20 minutes.

We hope you enjoy another good recipe made better by Grizzlies! Do you have any favorite recipes using Grizzlies products? Let us know and we’ll feature it on the blog!

When I pay the bills at Wildtime, it seems like its almonds, Almonds, ALMONDS! Almonds are, by far, our biggest single cost, so it’s important for us to know something about the people from whom we buy them. Several weeks back, we highlighted Zinke Orchards, our source for unsprayed almonds. This time, we will tell you something about Elk Ridge Almonds, our supplier of organic almonds.

The Almond Operation

Elk Ridge Almonds is located near Madera, California. When I visited them this Spring, I saw neither elk nor a ridge, but I did see a truly impressive almond operation. Most almond growers send their almonds to a processor to have the nuts dried, hulled, cracked and packed. Not so Elk Ridge. They process their own almonds in their own facility which gives them direct control over quality.  That quality is obvious when you look at and taste their nuts. Jane Pitman and her husband, Bill, own Elk Ridge; Jane’s son, John, is their science and quality “guru”. It is truly a family operation.

Growing Organic Almonds

With almonds, it starts in the orchards. You can see the difference between Elk Ridge’s orchards and others’ immediately. Most non-organic operations keep the ground beneath the trees bare, either by mowing or with herbicides or both. This makes it much easier to sweep the nuts off the ground at harvest. Elk Ridge takes a different approach. They allow the grass to grow between rows of trees. This is better for the soil and provides habitat for a whole and vibrant living community. Their trees are healthy and strong. As much as I support organic farming, I am struck that trees in most organic orchards look noticeably less robust than their neighbors in conventional orchards. Not so with Elk Ridge. They realize that trees need good food and plenty of it – just like we do – to produce good nuts. It is clear at a glance that Elk Ridge almond trees are well cared for. The trees are strong and well pruned.

From Harvesting to Processing

Once the nuts are harvested, the action takes place in the processing facility. Elk Ridge’s is clean and modern. John (remember him – he’s the science and quality guru) is a quiet man, totally dedicated to quality in every aspect of Elk Ridge’s processing operation. Pasteurization is the law when it comes to American-grown almonds. Elk Ridge uses a gentle steam process – the Delta H Pasteurization System – that causes no degradation in nut quality. It also pre-conditions the almonds for the roasting, enhancing cell integrity and shelf life. What you will notice is a perfect roast with a great crunch and no burned taste. Ask us about Elk Ridge’s roasted & salted almonds; you will be amazed that an almond with just a bit of salt can taste so good. It is simply nothing like the canned salted almonds you get in the grocery!

Only the Best Almonds

An important part of nut processing is what’s called sorting. That is the step where shell parts and other debris are removed from the nuts before packing. Pretty important when you consider that a tiny pebble can cause major problems if you bite down on it unknowingly. Remember, the nuts are swept off the ground so it is inevitable that pebbles, twigs and other foreign material will be present before sorting. Elk Ridge uses a highly-tuned combination of high-tech laser and hand sorting to give us the cleanest nuts we’ve seen. Also, nuts are sorted to minimize broken and chipped nuts. These lesser nuts are fine for some uses, but not for Grizzlies mixes. Finally, the pasteurized, sorted nuts are packed into twenty five pound boxes and packed on pallets for shipment to Grizzlies in Eugene, Oregon.

The last step is ours – to mix the almonds into granolas, mueslis and trail mixes with the name,“Grizzlies”, proudly emblazoned on the label. Thanks to Jane, Bill and John at Elk Ridge Almonds, you are getting the best almonds California (or the world) has to offer.

As you may know, Grizzlies recently launched a gluten-free cereal, Gluten Free Cinnamon Nut Granola, that we’re very excited about. We’ve already received feedback that this new granola will be a real treat for our customers who, whether because of gluten intolerance, celiac disease, or other dietary restrictions, are eating a completely gluten-free diet.

With Thanksgiving less than a week away, we’ve been thinking about the holiday and the challenges that our friends on gluten-free diets may face when trying to prepare this traditional menu that features so many gluten-laden dishes. Traditionally, Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks for a bountiful harvest, but for someone struggling to figure out how to avoid gluten in stuffing, dinner rolls, pies and more, gratitude may not roll off the tongue quite as easily.

Fortunately, there are some fantastic bloggers writing about eating and cooking gluten- free for life. Whether you’re just beginning to research a gluten-free diet, or you’re looking to add some variety to your trusted gluten-free recipes, these bloggers have extremely useful tips, recipes, and guides to make gluten-free cooking fun. We found their most recent posts that offer complete menus for a gluten-free Thanksgiving that we would like to share in our first Grizzlies Great Links posts.

The Gluten-Free Girl and the Gluten-Free Thanksgiving

The Gluten-Free Girl blog is a fantastic resource for recipes and information about cooking and living gluten-free. Her latest post, “The Gluten-Free Thanksgiving” has answers to questions like, “how do I make gluten-free stuffing? Is there such a thing as gluten-free pumpkin pie?” An older post includes a fantastic discussion about creating new traditions at Thanksgiving, rather than longing for the taste of childhood recipes. Featuring plenty of recipes and links to additional resources, this is a must-see site on your path to eating gluten-free.

Elana’s Pantry Gluten-Free Thanksgiving 2010

The Thanksgiving menu featured on Elana’s Pantry is not only gluten-free, but a truly inspired collection of unique recipes. According to the author, the menu is also “CrossFit and Paleo friendly” for anyone on these very specific diets. With recipes like “Chestnuts and Brussel Sprouts,” “Rosemary Crackers and Goat Cheese” and “Tart and Tangy Cranberry Bars,” you’re sure to find something new to try this holiday season.

Gluten-Free Dinner Rolls

Perhaps the most difficult thing to imagine making gluten-free is the beloved dinner roll. A classic part of every Thanksgiving meal, dinner rolls don’t have to be tossed out just because you’re on a gluten-free diet. Here are a few links to recipes:

Bay Area Bites Dinner Rolls

Gluten Free Girl Dinner Rolls

Gluten Free Mom Crescent Rolls

Gluten Free Holiday Pies

With recipes for gluten-free pie crusts and fillings, you can have your pie, and eat it too. From a vegan walnut pie recipe to a classic pumpkin, gluten-free bloggers have the dessert-front covered:

Classic Gluten-Free Pie Crust

Walnut Pie (Gluten-Free, Vegan)

Vegan (Gluten-Free) Pecan Pie

Tabitha’s Gluten-Free Pumpkin Pie

We hope these resources will help make your holiday meal a success. We’d love it if you share this post with your friends and family. And if you decide to experiment with any of the recipes, please come back to the Grizzlies blog and let us know how they worked out. Happy Thanksgiving!

What business conference would serve 250 attendees the following dinner, topped off with dessert and belly dancing?

• Began Bhatha (eggplant curry)
• Coconut Rice & Basmati Rice
• Kofta Meatballs
• Vegetable Korma
• Masala Spiced Cauliflower, Potatoes and Peas
• Indian Spiced Greens & Carrots
• Coconut Rice Pudding

The 2010 Provender Conference, of course. The annual Provender Conference, held this October in Hood River, Oregon, is the highlight of the year for Provender Alliance members. What is the Provender Alliance? In the words of its executive director, Susan Schecter:

“Provender Alliance is unique. Nothing like our organization exists anywhere else in the U.S. Our membership includes manufacturers, brokers, distributors, co-ops, corporate entities, and sole proprietors. Our geographical area includes Alaska, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, northern California and British Columbia. Our commitment to sharing our experience in an open forum has never wavered.”

The Alliance focuses on educating its members and the public at large on food issues — issues that range from sustainability, to building a local food movement, to personal issues in a co-op, to hot topics such as genetic engineering and the impact of the concentration of power in just a few food corporations. Its countercultural roots are unmistakable!

As someone who has attended the last six conferences, I think this year’s was the best yet. Raj Patel’s rousing Thursday morning keynote, “The Value of Nothing,” analyzed the impact of the concentration of control of the world’s food supply by just a few corporations. In it, he made a rousing call-to-action. Raj Patel is the author of two recent books, Stuffed & Starved and The Value of Nothing, both of which challenge us to think about the interplay between corporations and society. Friday’s keynote by Ana Sophia Joanes, “Finding Our Place — The Sustainable Foods System as a Metaphor for Our Life,” was gentler but challenged us to consider how the decisions we make regarding the food we eat affect us and the world we live in. Ana recently released a documentary, Fresh, that celebrates farmers, thinkers, and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system.

Twenty-five workshops in two days, plus a “Marketing Intensive” breakout session on Wednesday covered topics including:

• Therapeutic Use of Essential Oils
• New Pasture Legislation for Organic Milking Cows
• From Farm to Table: What the Heck is On My Food Label?
• How Will Health Care Affect Your Bottom Line?
• The Corporate Takeover of Organic Agriculture
• Managing a Multigenerational Workforce

The challenge was to figure out what workshops you could stand to miss, rather than what workshops you wanted to attend!

If you are in the natural foods and products business, or if you’re interested in food issues, Provender Alliance is worth checking out. Visit their website for information, or you can contact me personally. I serve on the board and I’m a true believer in the Provender Alliance.

I hope to hear from you! Better yet, I hope to see you at next year’s conference in Hood River!

We’re happy to announce that our new Gluten Free Cinnamon Nut Granola is ready to hit the shelves! We heard from customers on a gluten free diet that it can be challenging to find granola that contains only gluten free oats. With a little creativity, and gluten free oats from Bob’s Red Mill, we’ve succeeded in offering a gluten free version of our classic Cinnamon Nut Granola, with the same great taste, crunchy texture, and healthy natural ingredients. Ask for it at your natural foods grocer today!

Karakoram contribution. Say that three times fast.  At Wildtime Foods, we’re preparing to make our second quarterly contribution to the Central Asia Institute which is exciting news.  We were discussing this around the office the other day, and while we were all happy to see it happen, no one could seem to pin down exactly how it came to happen.

Our Grizzlies Karakoram Crunch Granola is a story unto itself.  Truth be told, we bought some awesome waffles from a little waffle shop here in Eugene and were inspired.  One of the waffles was perfectly flavored with cardamom and pistachios, and we sort of looked at each other and seemed to say at once, “This would be great as a granola!”  I guess that’s what happens when you work at a granola company.  Once Nicolette, our granola chef extraordinaire, got the recipe down we needed a name.  Being that cardamom has long been one of the worlds great spices, we thought about the ancient spice trade and how a granola named after it would be really cool.  “Ancient Spice Trade Granola” didn’t quite work, so we kept tossing around names without much luck.  One day our office manager Jenny Buckley and I were looking at a calendar on her wall and there was a picture of the Karakoram Mountain range in Pakistan.  We said, “Hey, that would be a great name for a granola,” and it wasn’t long before we settled on “Karakoram Crunch.”

Turns out, the calendar was a Central Asia Institute Calendar and here we are today.  Giving back to the organization that inspired us. CAI works to support community based education, especially for girls, in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  Its beginnings are told in the best seller Three Cups of Tea.  It only made sense to support the fantastic organization that helped give name to one of our most exciting products.  Every quarter Wildtime Foods donates 10% of the profits from Karakoram Crunch Granola to the Central Asia Institute.  So that’s how it happened, and we are glad it did.

*Image courtesy Central Asia Institute

You may have noticed that Wildtime Foods and Grizzlies Brand has recently joined Twitter and Facebook, and we’ve started a new blog! We’re excited about connecting with our friends and followers. To celebrate, Wildtime Foods is hosting a great giveaway.

Just by helping us spread the word, you can win a Grizzlies Brand canvas shopping bag filled with our best granolas and trail mixes! All you have to do is tell us which four Grizzlies items you’d like in your bag.

You can enter to win four times, in four different ways. Here’s how it works:

1. Become a friend of Grizzlies Brand on Facebook by “liking” us.

2. Become a follower of Grizzlies Brand on Twitter. (We’ll send a DM (direct message) to the winner.

3. Share your enthusiasm for Grizzlies Brand on Twitter with a tweet about us and  a link to our blog: http//grizzliesbrand.com/blog (Must contain @GrizzliesBrand for us to track it.)

4. Share in the comments below, the four items you’d like in your Grizzlies bag. Will you choose delicious Oregon Trail Mix, Aunt Maple’s Crunchy Granola, or perhaps, Wildberry Muesli? It’s up to you! You can find all of our products here.

Deadline for all entries is Thursday, October 7 at Noon PST. The winner will be announced on Friday, October 8 on the Grizzlies Twitter and Facebook page.

(A random winner will be selected from all eligible entries. Contest is open to residents of the continental U.S. only.)

Good Luck!

When we’re not busy dreaming up new Grizzlies Granola recipes, you can often find us in the kitchen, putting our delicious products to work in classic recipes. For a healthier take on banana bread, try this version with honey, whole wheat flour and Grizzlies Applenut Trail Mix.

What you’ll need:

• ½ cup date sugar or ⅓ cup honey
• 3 tablespoons oil or butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2 cups mashed bananas
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1½ cups whole wheat pastry flour
• ½ cup whole wheat bread flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cups Grizzlies Applenut Trail Mix

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease an 8″x4″ loaf pan.

Use a fork to beat the sugar/honey and oil/butter, vanilla and salt. Add the banana and lemon juice. Sift the flours, baking powder and baking soda. Mix the wet and dry ingredients together. Fold in the Grizzlies Applenut Trail Mix, reserving about 3 tablespoons to sprinkle on top before baking.

Spoon into the loaf pan and bake as long as an hour and a half until done. Depending on the bananas, this bread can be very sweet — sweet enough to stand in danger of burning on the outside before it’s done; if possible, place the filled loaf pan inside a second pan to protect your crust or cover toward the end with foil.

We hope you enjoy another good recipe made better by Grizzlies. Let us know what you think. We love hearing from you!

It’s no surprise that at Wildtime Foods, we love granola. Crunchy, chewy, loaded with almonds, walnuts or pistachios and infused with flavors ranging from vanilla to cardamon — we can’t get enough. But when you’ve been making the stuff as long as we have, you hear some funny ideas about what granola is, what it isn’t, and even who eats it!

We’d like to share what we’ve heard about granola over the years and debunk a few myths while we’re at it.

Myth #1: Granola grows on trees.

We wish we were joking about this one, but we did, in fact, hear this from a friend. Our products are all natural and nutritious, but they’re not quite THAT natural.

Fact: Grizzlies Granolas are handmade in Eugene, Oregon using fresh ingredients that come from trees, plants and other bounties of nature. Our granola is about as natural as you can get without falling off the tree.

Myth #2: Granola is fattening.

You can blame this myth on granola and cereal manufacturers who load their products with added sugars, trans fats, and many other fattening substances to make things stick together.

Fact: Grizzlies Granolas provide a healthy source of calories and fat. You won’t find genetically modified ingredients (GMOs), preservatives, processed sugars or grains, animal products (except for honey), artificial color, or hydrogenated oils in the granolas we make. On average, our granolas have 200-250 calories per serving and about 8g of fat that come from protein-rich sources such as nuts and almond butter.

Myth #3: Granola is for hippies

We’ve all heard “granola” used as slang to describe certain people, usually people who are environmentally conscious and interested in an organic and natural lifestyle. You know, people like us. Since the 1960s, granola has had a reputation for being the revered food of a health movement led by hippies.

Fact: Granola is for anyone and everyone. Just ask the UO Men’s Golf Team, a group not typically known for their “granola” qualities, about their love for Grizzlies products. Granola is a perfect food for anyone who wants a nutritious breakfast or a healthy snack on-the-go.

Myth #4: Granola is only healthy if you make it at home.

With the array of unhealthy granola options out there, it’s easy to see why making granola at home became popular with people who love granola and want to enjoy the healthiest recipes possible.

Fact: While we love the DIY crowd, making granola at home is not the only way to enjoy a delicious and healthy batch of granola. Just like at home, Grizzlies Granolas are made by hand, in small batches, using only the healthiest and best ingredients. And one of the great things about buying from Grizzlies kitchen is that your kitchen can stay clean while you enjoy handmade, artisan granola in a variety of flavors and recipes.

For a selection of handmade granolas that are sure to change the way you think about granola, visit our  online store and check back often because our artisan bakers are always coming up with something new.

It’s that time of year again. After a summer of sleeping in until noon, it’s time for kids to wake up early in the morning and head back-to-school. Time and time again, we hear that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but how do you squeeze in a healthy breakfast amidst the rush of a hectic morning?

As it turns out, the key to a healthy breakfast is actually a very simple nutritional formula that anyone can master. According to The Mayo Clinic, the core of a healthy breakfast is made up of the following components:

• Whole grains
• Low-fat protein
• Fruits or vegetables
• Dairy (optional)

Together, these core groups provide complex carbohydrates, fiber, protein, and a small amount of fat — a combination that helps you feel fuller longer while providing major health benefits.

With the right combination of nutritious foods, meal options are endless. Try these easy-to-assemble healthy breakfast ideas to get your morning started right:

• Oatmeal, flaxseed, blueberries and almonds
• Yogurt, granola and fresh berries
• Whole-wheat toast with almond butter and a grapefruit
• Protein shake with extras (berries, oatmeal, almond butter)
• Multi-grain waffles with nut butter and banana slices
• Swiss Style Muesli, served hot with a side of fruit
• Small whole-wheat bagel, almond butter and an orange
• Grizzlies Granola cereals with milk (dairy, soy, coconut) and strawberries

Do you have a back-to-school breakfast tip you’d like to share? We love hearing from you!