Granola nut

So, another entry in `phfina cookbook — granola:

• 2 cups old-fashioned Quaker oats (although Amish oats could work, too, I guess)
• 1 cup almonds, chopped
• ½ cup honey
  
• 1 cup (cran)raisins
  

1. Preheat oven to 400°F
2. Roughly, lightly chop almonds (if they are chopped too fine, they burn ... I know @_@)
3. Mix almonds and Quaker/Amish/Unitarian oats on a cooky sheet, toast in oven until toasted, not burnt (like my first time) ... 10 minutes or so should (over)do it.
4. While toasting the Presbyterian oats, heat honey in pan, bring to a boil (I'm fo' realz here: really boil it)
5. Remove almonds/oats from oven, remove honey from heat. Quickly mix in the toasted Heavenly oats (that you didn't burn the Hell out of, geddit? Heavenly/Hell? *sigh*) into the honey, add the (cran)raisins. Mix until completely assimilated (like the Borg, but not)
6. Press mixture into a pie pan. And when I say 'press,' I mean press! so that it's all smooshed together, smooth and completely flattened and fills the pie tray.
7. Let cool for a while. Eat, every morning, by slicing out a `phfina-sized wedge. Leave time, after, in your morning routine for ... you know ... because they keep you regular. *ahem*

You like? I could write my own recipe book. That way I'd sound all grown up. A grown woman: me! `phfina! :D

I do sound like a grown woman, don't I? Or am I not even fooling you? :(

I would wonder if grown women wonder if they are grown women, but I already know that isn't true. Grown women don't wonder that. They don't have time to: I've watched them, I've heard about them, ... but I don't see them in the mirror. Grown women sternly shepherd their children from place to place: soccer club, the Cornish Pasty shop, the Memorial Day parade in the (sun)burning hot sun, never thinking of themselves and their tired feet, but watching over their brood like hawks and rolling their eyes at their husbands. Grown women cook supper of matzo ball soup for their sick kids, vomiting all over the place, neverminding the fact that they want to puke too: they just bear down, cook the soup, clean up the messes, the puke, that is, and comfort their crying babies to sleep, then do the laundry before dropping of, heavily, to sleep next to their snoring husbands.

Grown women have exactly 2 minutes 37 seconds to have a microburst conversation with their friend on the phone, and all the while, their children are tugging at their skirts, moaning: 'Mo-o-o-o-o-om-m-m-m-m!' and rolling their eyes at their grown women mommies so embarrassing them and when can they play on their mom's phone is the real question.

Grown women don't wonder if they are grown women. They simply are. They aren't little babies pretending to be independent because they haven't (yet) been kicked out of their apartment, because they just made rent payment, again, and published a silly little recipe to show the world, "Look, mommy, I'm a grown woman, I can write a recipe that is just one step above 'cold cereal and milk'!"

I do wonder, sympathetically, if grown women ever wish they were little babies, like me, again. But I know that's not possible ... for either of us: grown women, all grown up and mature, handling everything the world throws at them with grace, dignity, and hard, hard work, just like my Nana did, to her last day,

... and little babies, like me.