Maple Pecan Pumpkin Granola & a story.

Maple Pecan Pumpkin Granola

That’s a mouthful.  Of delicious flavors all mixed together in one crunchy bite.

This granola is not extremely sweet, but that’s just the way I like it. What rocks about this granola is the clusters. Hands down my favorite part. I usually eat my granola with Greek yogurt or almond milk. Both excellent choices in my opinion! 

The granola will not be instantly crunchy when you take it out of the oven. It has to cool first before it becomes crunchy!

Store the granola in an airtight container, preferably in a dark place. It should last up to 2 weeks.  I think… Mine didn’t even last a week because I ate it all. #sorryimnotsorry

You should all check out Minimalist Baker’s Sweet Potato Granola…just divine.

Story Time I do this thing..where I drink cup after cup of coffee in the morning completely ignoring the fact that sometimes it is before lunch or even late afternoon that I have had any water. Subconsciously my mind thinks liquid = water. False. I know this because dehydration is something I’ve struggled with a few times now and you don’t want to play games with it. On Monday nights I teach a 6:45 class at Corepower. My class is heated and high intensity. As an instructor I burn around 650 calories during that hour (and I don’t actually do the entire class), just to give you an idea. On my way to class, I realized…shit, I haven’t had any water today. I got to the studio and guzzled some water hoping that would do the trick.  hoping. I felt good the entire class (most of I should say). We did a tabata during the cardio section which was composed of plyometrics. I was feeling great during the bicep and pushup series and even squats. Thennnnn the 45 minute mark hit. I like to push myself to my limits during class because i know that challenges my students. But too much is too much. I was wrapping up my sculpt series when I bent down to grab my water bottle and WOOSH. My vision started going and it felt like my lungs collapsed. I new exactly what was happening because it’s happened before…just never when I was the teacher. The mixture of no water in my body, the humidity, heat, and high intensity exercise made me get so light headed I felt like I was going to pass out. Black out pass out. At this point, I think I was more scared of the fact that I was the instructor. If I go down, what the hell will happen to my class? What will they do?  How will they react? Thankfully I kept my cool. Kept my head above my heart and stayed in the room like I tell my class to do if this happens. I drank as much water as I had left and sat on my mat like a zombie still trying to coach my class through the core series. I focused on my breath and prayed to god I wasn’t going to puke my brains out in the middle of the studio. Thankfully a few minutes went by and I started to feel color coming back into my face. I knew this was a good sign because I could also see straight again. After class no one said a thing about my incident because they didn’t notice. Phew. My lesson has been learned. Drink the dang water. Drink drink drink. I don’t want to have to go through that petrifying experience again because it’s not worth it. It’s not worth almost being humiliated and it’s not worth the fact that I also felt like crap the rest of the night. So my words of wisdom to you: “Coffee is not water.”

Basic Ingredients

• 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
• 1/4 cup organic cane sugar
• 1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 2.5 cups rolled oatmeal, gluten free
• 1/2 cup dried cherries, unsweetened (dried cranberries will work too!)
• 1/2 cup pecans, chopped
• 1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
• 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

How to make Maple Pecan Pumpkin Granola

1. First, preheat oven to 350F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, cane sugar, coconut oil, pumpkin pie spice, sand maple syrup. Then, add in the rest of the ingredients. Make sure everything is evenly coated.
3. Spread granola onto baking sheet ( you may need to use 2 baking sheets) and bake for about 20 minutes. At the 10 minute mark, take the granola out of the oven and toss with a wooden spoon to ensure that everything bakes evenly. You know the granola is done with things start to turn golden brown.

LET’S HEAR IT. I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR ALMOST HORROR STORIES RELATED TO FITNESS AND DEHYDRATION! 

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