This is an old recipe.  It comes from a book titled Natural Fibre Cooking by Karen Plageman.   It is a small book, only 61 pages and not a picture in sight.

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The book was published in 1978.  I bought it in 1979 or 80.  I was going through a wholefood stage (which is not a bad thing), as was almost everyone else I knew.

Anyway, I bought this little book which is amazingly good.  I have made a disproportionate number of recipes out of it – which is probably due to the fact that it was the only cook book I had at the time.   My! How things have changed.

This recipe is simple but good.  I remember eating it as a snack rather than as a breakfast cereal.

Ingredients

•  4 cups rolled oats
• 1½ cups coconut
• 1½ cups roughly chopped almonds
• ¼ cup oil
• ½ cup honey
• ¼ cup powdered milk
• 225g chopped dates
• 1 cup raisins

1. Combine the oats, coconut and almonds in a large bowl.
2. Put the oil, honey and powdered milk into a saucepan, heat over a gentle heat until well combined. (It only takes a few minutes.)
3. Cool slightly and then slowly pour the honey mixture over the oats whilst at the same time stirring the oats (2 people are good here).  Make sure all the oats are covered by the honey mixture.
4. Spread the mixture evenly over 2 oven trays or, if you have a 90cm oven, one large tray.
5. Bake in oven at 120˚ Celcius  for 45 minutes. Half way through, stir the mixture to ensure it colours evenly.
6. Let the mixture cool and then crumble any lumps.
7. Mix in chopped dates and raisins.  I didn’t have any dates (or rather, thought I didn’t) so I used dried figs.  I didn’t have any raisins so I used dried cranberries.  As I was still a bit short with my measurements, I added in a few glaced cumquats as well – any dried fruit will do.