joe bennett

In an uncertain world our staunch southern man has decided to selflessly provide some succour by sharing his sustainable homegrown muesli recipe

Idon’t know how many times I’ve been asked for my sustainable homegrown muesli recipe. And I’ve always said no. Politely but firmly no. Go invent your own sustainable homegrown muesli recipe, I’ve said.

But not any longer. For now the geopolitical horizon is turning the colour of Indian ink and we can all hear the thrumming of the drums. Something’s coming and it may not be pretty and we’ll all be in it together. So now is the time for me to relent. Now is the time to share my recipe with a darkening world. As the old prayer enjoins, “let me do it now and not defer it, for I shall not pass this way again.”

And, though I hope it doesn’t come to this, maybe, just maybe, this page, torn out, folded and refolded, worn almost to illegibility, will be passed on during the months, the years ahead and will supply beleaguered people with the sustenance they need, both literal and spiritual.

At the heart of my sustainable homegrown muesli are 10 or so cups of rolled oats. To make your own rolled oats you need a small arable farm, a seed drill, a header, a drying shed, a threshing and/or hulling machine and an industrial grain roller. In the light of which I concluded several years ago that it was more sustainable to acquire my homegrown rolled oats from the supermarket and to recycle the plastic bag in which they came.

The same was true for the pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds that go into my muesli at the rate of approximately a fistful of each. For they too needed drying and hulling and as I hadn’t bought the drying and hulling gear for the oats it made no sense to do so for a few seeds.

And besides, I’d expended a fixed amount of energy and fuel in travelling to the supermarket, so any further products I bought came at no environmental cost and were effectively homegrown. Indeed, once I’d added a bag of roasted almonds to my trolley and another of coconut chips (the climate here in Canterbury not being conducive to coconut cultivation) I was able to watch my carbon footprint melting into the sands of invisibility. And you can too.

Having assembled your homegrown ingredients, heat a cup of vegetable oil in a saucepan. To obtain that oil you can either press it from a selection of homegrown veges using a mangle from a 1950s washing machine, or do as I do and use the bottle of vegetable oil already in the pantry. Then add a cup of honey from your home hive.

My home hive arrived behind my house one springtime around the end of last century, courtesy of Arthur the beekeeper. A couple of months later Arthur returned to teach me how to work the bees. He reluctantly lent me a suit and helmet but drew the line at gloves. “You can’t work bees with gloves,” he said.

At the medical centre later that evening they gave me some fierce antihistamines, but advised that the swelling would still take days to go away. Which is longer than it took to instruct Arthur to remove the hive. Since when I have had to use supermarket honey.

Pour the hot oil and honey into the dry ingredients and mix through thoroughly. Then bake in a low oven for a couple of hours until it is the colour of ripe horse chestnuts. Allow to cool and then serve your sustainable muesli with milk, cream, a sliced homegrown banana, and Vera Lynn on the radiogram.

And remember, the hour is darkest just before the dawn.