Focus
on...
Three Flowers Granola
by Lisa Vines
Granola. What does the
ubiquitous wikipedia have to say about
granola? “Granola” as slang: “Granola” is also used as a slang term
(metonym) describing
a person who is hippie-like, a modern bohemian, environmentalist, or
leftist in
outlook. The protagonist of Neal Stephenson’s Zodiac delights
in the nickname “Granola James Bond.” Prop comic Gallagher, and
one-time candidate
for governor in the 2003 California recall election, uses the term in a
similarly pejorative manner — “California is like a bowl of granola;
full of
fruits, nuts, and flakes.”
Well, even a person who
is not “hippie- like, a modern bohemian,
environmentalist, or leftist in outlook” could recognize that the Bulk
section
in the Co-op offers a great selection of granola. The end-cap display
of the bulk
aisle presents several different kinds of granola: French vanilla,
almond, gingersnap,
maple cherry almond, hemp plus, maple almond, country pumpkin spice …
to
mention only a few. The focus for this article, however, is the granola
made by
a bakery in Virgil (NY) called Three Flowers. Judith Thompson is the
one-person
operation behind the Three Flowers Bakery. The family who sold her the
bakery
in 1990 had had named it after their three daughters. Thompson’s family
had
joked that they should rename it “Two Flowers and a Weed” to reflect
their two
daughters and very tall son, now all in their twenties and independent,
pursuing
careers in music and art.
Three Flowers Bakery
bakes bread for restaurants as well as
cookies and brownies that are sold in the vicinity of Virgil (near
Cortland and
Ithaca); the granola, however, is the biggest seller, and is available
in a
co-op in Lexington (NY) and in our own Honest Weight Food Co-op. The
bakery
produces two varieties of granola: the Three Flowers Granola and the
Three
Flowers Pecan Currant Granola. The Co-op carries the former, which is a
dark
and hefty granola, not too sweet. One of my daughters praised the
addition of
sunflower seeds, and I noticed a healthy number of whole nuts.
According to Thompson,
the ingredients are (in order of role in the entire mix): organic oats
(from Canada),
sunflower seeds, wheat germ, coconut, organic wheat bran, sesame seeds,
organic
raisins, and nuts: walnuts, almonds, cashews, filberts; nutritional
yeast, well
water, honey, canola oil, and molasses. She recognizes the importance
of
organic materials and chose those based on practicality — wanting to
create a product
that is as organic as possible but also affordable. The oats, as the
first
ingredient, should be organic. She wouldn’t feed her children
non-organic raisins,
so this mix had to have organic raisins. The second granola she makes,
currently
not offered by the Co-op, is a little sweeter than the Three Flowers
Granola,
with honey, cinnamon, and vanilla. Yet another cereal product
(currently not
yet available at the Co-op) is an organic Seven Grain Hot Cereal Mix;
this
sounds like something promising for the long, dark, cold winters of the
Northeast.
So, to all those granola
fans out there — try some of the Three
Flowers Granola, produced in New York State
by a one-woman operation.
Resources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granola
Phone conversation with
Judith Thompson
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