Granola for Beach Holidays
I know granola isn’t the food that comes to mind when you think of tasty, refreshing seaside delights, but it’s what I always make to take along on beach holidays. I love to enjoy a bowl with blueberries and yogurt when I’m sitting by the ocean with my feet dug in the sand—it’s then that I feel I’m truly on vacation.
It’s funny how you do things and don’t ask yourself why; I thought this as I automatically bought a sackful of ingredients to make granola before going to Nantucket this summer. It’s something my mother always made before we went on holiday when I was growing up.
She made granola because it travels well, is easy to eat anywhere and because, if you’re staying with friends, a homemade bag of it makes a perfect hostess gift.
For me, going to the beach in Australia means driving north to meet family on Stradbroke Island, where we eat breakfast around a large table in my aunt’s beach house before enjoying a day at the beach, just across the road. Or it might mean baking a batch to take on school holidays to Byron Bay, Australia’s most easterly point, which is hugged by some of the most beautiful beaches sitting just beneath a majestic lighthouse. If we’re lucky, we might catch a school of dolphins swimming by as we eat our daily bowls of granola along the pristine shoreline.
On this side of the world, I’ve made my ever-evolving granola recipe before going to Deer Isle in Maine, where the landscape is more mystical, rocky coastline than beach. And cellophane bags full of freshly baked granola have accompanied me all the way to the end of Cape Cod too.
My favorite beaches on this Atlantic coast are without a doubt in Nantucket, which happens to be America’s most easterly point. From where I sit eating my granola breakfast this morning, I can see in the distance another majestic lighthouse guarding the headlands off Quidnet beach. Although I am far from the shores of my childhood, this granola keeps me connected to summer family traditions.
Amy Chaplin
Amy Chaplin is an Australian living in New York City by way of Amsterdam and London. She grew up in rural New South Wales in a family and community of gourmet vegetarians; cooking and eating meals from her family’s biodynamic garden sparked her passion for fresh ingredients and hand-made food. It can be said that Chaplin’s career as a chef began while making bread with her father and peeling apples for her mother’s crumble. Chaplin’s upbringing also helped inspire her philosophy, that how and what we eat directly affects the world in which we live, as well as our own well-being. To this day the food she cooks features local, organic and plant-based ingredients. After 5 years as executive chef of the world-renowned vegan restaurant Angelica Kitchen, Amy now consults, cooks and teaches privately, her clients include Natalie Portman and Anna Devera Smith, among others. Chaplin finds herself dispensing recipes and answering queries about the health benefits of ingredients on a daily basis. This whole foods chef is always happy to share her passion for the natural culinary arts and loves inspiring others to cook and eat well too.