Rawnola Recipe!

In a recent 80/20 Plants video (I know, I know it's all I talk about these days! But it's truly informing all of my food choices, and this is a food blog so ...), Olympic athlete and health coach Julia Murray mentioned that she likes to make "rawnola" (like raw granola) to eat as a breakfast cereal. My friend Susan recently gave me a few cartons of Silk vegan yogurt because they were too sweet for her, so I figured I'd make some rawnola to eat with my yogurt.

Since the Silk Oatmilk and Soy Yogurts are loaded with sugar, I'm considering this in the 20% of my diet (the indulgent part), so I knew if I wanted to eat these for breakfast, I'd need to top them with plenty of whole foods. And rawnola (paired with fresh nectarine and blackberries) sounded like the perfect way.

I created a simple rawnola recipe with a few things I had in my pantry – chopped dates, rolled oats, dried coconut, walnuts, chia seeds, ground flax, and pumpkin seeds. This tasty combo gets sweetness from medjool dates and plenty of crunch from the nuts and seeds. It was perfect atop this Silk Oat Yeah Mixed Berry yogurt, but I think this would also be delicious served like cereal, with a bit of almond milk (or whatever plant milk you prefer).

Excuse my weirdly lit photos. My lightbox lights are broken, so I'm just relying on lamp light when I need to photograph meals before sunrise (I ate breakfast at 6 am today).

Here's my super-simple recipe!

Bianca's Rawnola

Yields about 1.5 cups

6 medjool dates, pitted and chopped

1 cup rolled oats

4 Tbsp. dried unsweetened coconut

4 Tbsp. raw, chopped walnuts

2 Tbsp. raw pumpkin seeds

2 Tbsp. chia seeds

1 Tbsp. ground flax seed

Stir everything to combine! Since the dates tend to stick together, I find it's necessary to get your hands into the mix and separate date bits, making sure they get good and coated with oat dust. That helps them stay separated. Serve over vegan yogurt or with plant milk.