I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this to you before, but I love breakfast. Like seriously love. And while I wish I had the time to leisurely make delicious breakfasty foods like french toast and frittatas every morning, weekday mornings can be hectic enough that I’m lucky to make anything at all. Luckily for me, I will eat literally anything for breakfast. Anything. Like remember my post last week on that delicious spinach and chickpea curry? What do you think happened to those leftovers? If you guessed that it became the next morning’s breakfast of champions, you would be correct. Leftover pizza? Stir fry? Chili? All wonderful breakfasts in my book. There are few things, in my mind, that would in fact NOT make a good breakfast.

My husband, however, falls into the category of those who believe that only certain ‘breakfast’ foods should be eaten at breakfast time, and all other foods should be relegated to lunch or dinner. While I feel that he is missing out on some wonderful breakfasts (he would strongly disagree here), I do agree that sometimes a more, shall we say ‘normal’, breakfast is a good way to start the day. For example, a big bowl of granola and yogurt is a pretty fantastic breakfast we can both agree on. Not to mention, once said granola has been made, throwing breakfast together is a snap.

Now granola and I have had our differences over the years. I’ve never been a huge fan of cereals in general, mainly because I can’t stand when the milk makes them soggy. NOT cool. So this left me for many years simply eating dry cereal out of the box. When I finally thought to eat it with yogurt, it was a revelation. Yogurt, being slightly more solid than milk, takes longer to infiltrate the cereal, thus leaving your cereal crispy longer. The other problem was that I could never find a storebought cereal that I was completely sold on. So I started making my own granola, and have never looked back. It’s miles ahead of the storebought stuff, and if you spend as much time in the dried fruits and nuts section of Trader Joe’s as I do, you probably already have at least 90% of the ingredients on hand to whip up a nice batch of granola at any given time.

You can make almost an infinite number of different kinds of granola, depending on what kinds of nuts and dried fruits you happen to have on hand and feel like using. This time, I whipped up a batch using dried apricots, pistachios, golden raisins, almonds, honey, and cinnamon, and I was not disappointed. It’s great with vanilla yogurt and pomegranate seeds. Or just eat it plain, you really can’t go wrong. No matter what, you’ll be starting off the day with one fantastic breakfast.

Apricot, Pistachio, and Honey Granola

makes about 6 cups

The egg white in this recipe acts as a binder for the oats so that you end up with nice granola clusters. If you’re not a fan of clusters, you can omit it. Likewise, if you want even bigger clusters, add another egg white.