The story of the granolas that I used to make at home turning eventually into a brand name goes back to the fall of 2011. Back then in a place out of paradise in Bördübet, Marmaris I remember attending my dear friend Hale’s detox program which had really changed so many things in my life. Hale had recently come from the United States and the granola that I learned about after my numerous conversations with her became a must-have food in our household.
What was this thing called granola? In short, granola is made by oven-baking oatmeal with nuts and dried fruits along with a natural sweetener such as honey until it gets crunchy. It came about as a healthy food in the United States in the 1960’s with the hippie movement. Although it moved away later on from being a heatlhy food option with such additives as refined sugar and soy and similar products in it, it has always attracted my attention since I have always been a person dedicated to having a natural diet.
The smell of the granolas I baked with honey and extra virgin olive oil in the oven the night before the morning breakfast used to encircle our home in such a way that my husband was almost never patient enough to wait until the morning and ate them up with organic yoghurt while they were still warm. We had now stopped buying cereals for breakfast from the market.
My homemade granola was both free of refined sugars and it was nutritious and very tasty. And it had turned out to be a practical food option in our fast paced life.
High amounts of fiber, vitamins and minerals that my granolas naturally had in them were their other advantages aside from their lovely taste…
It was very clear now that the only way to be able to avoid food additives, preservatives, aromas, refined sugars, strange oils, corn syrup, glucose and several other ingredients brought along with industrialization that we didn’t know much about but definitely knew were harmful was to cook certain foods at home by ourselves.
Our friends loved the granolas we baked as well! They used to ask for granola for dessert following the dinner we had together. My Pilates instructor also used to get recipes from me and bake granolas to her pleasure at home. My closest friend, who was also my yoga instructor, used to always ask for granolas from me and she would say, “I don’t have to think about what I should eat between my classes anymore.” Our assistant at home used to tell me that she ate the granolas I made during the morning supper at Ramadan and praised them for they wouldn’t disagree with her at all and that they gave her a feeling of fullness throughout that long period of fasting. In short, everyone was now bitten by this granola bug! Everyone enjoyed this new taste very much… People, who regularly did sports, people on all sorts of diets, pregnant women, children… Those tiny crispy things catered for everyone’s taste.
With my pregnancy and our daughter’s birth in 2012, having a healthy diet was even more important for both of us. After our daughter grew up to love our homemade granolas very much just like everyone else and when our friends encouraged us to turn this passion of ours into a business, we decided to give it a try.
“Mom, I want that crunchy food…” Oh, how many times have I heard this from my daughter!
Yes, this is the story of a mother: MOM’S Natural Foods…
We are in pursuit of additive-free, plant based food. We maintain a small batch oven baked artisanal process. We increased the richness of the oat with fruits, nuts and seeds. We used evaporated apple juice instead of refined sugar and added one of the most valuable foods in nature: wheat germ. We roasted our granola using extra virgin olive oil. We never use any preservatives, refined sugar, or aromas in our granola. You may prepare it with milk, yoghurt, ice cream, with fresh fruits of your choice or as we often prefer to do , simply eat it a with handful.