When we’re not busy dreaming up new Grizzlies Granola recipes, you can often find us in the kitchen, putting our delicious products to work in classic recipes. For a healthier take on breakfast scones, try this version with Grizzlies Organic Harvest Porridge, loaded with walnuts and delicious nectarines. This is a great recipe to make in advance, and serve warm with butter, jams, and honey on a busy morning.

What you’ll need:

• 1 ½ cups pastry flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 to 2 tablespoons brown sugar or honey
• 1 cup Grizzlies Organic Harvest Porridge
• 2 tablespoons cold butter
• 1 ¼ cups buttermilk at room temperature

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F

Dust a cookie sheet with flour

Sift flour, cream of tartar, salt and sugar (if you use honey instead, stir it thoroughly into the buttermilk). Mix in Grizzlies Organic Harvest Porridge. Grate the cold butter into the mixture and blend with a pastry cutter or with your fingertips until the mixture is like oatmeal flakes. Stir in the buttermilk and mix gently and quickly until barely blended together. Immediately turn out onto the floured cookie sheet and pat into a circle about ¾ inch thick, 8 inches across. Cut the circle into as many pieces as you would like and place immediately in the hot oven. Bake about 20 minutes.

We hope you enjoy another good recipe made better by Grizzlies! Do you have any favorite recipes using Grizzlies products? Let us know and we’ll feature it on the blog!

When I pay the bills at Wildtime, it seems like its almonds, Almonds, ALMONDS! Almonds are, by far, our biggest single cost, so it’s important for us to know something about the people from whom we buy them. Several weeks back, we highlighted Zinke Orchards, our source for unsprayed almonds. This time, we will tell you something about Elk Ridge Almonds, our supplier of organic almonds.

The Almond Operation

Elk Ridge Almonds is located near Madera, California. When I visited them this Spring, I saw neither elk nor a ridge, but I did see a truly impressive almond operation. Most almond growers send their almonds to a processor to have the nuts dried, hulled, cracked and packed. Not so Elk Ridge. They process their own almonds in their own facility which gives them direct control over quality.  That quality is obvious when you look at and taste their nuts. Jane Pitman and her husband, Bill, own Elk Ridge; Jane’s son, John, is their science and quality “guru”. It is truly a family operation.

Growing Organic Almonds

With almonds, it starts in the orchards. You can see the difference between Elk Ridge’s orchards and others’ immediately. Most non-organic operations keep the ground beneath the trees bare, either by mowing or with herbicides or both. This makes it much easier to sweep the nuts off the ground at harvest. Elk Ridge takes a different approach. They allow the grass to grow between rows of trees. This is better for the soil and provides habitat for a whole and vibrant living community. Their trees are healthy and strong. As much as I support organic farming, I am struck that trees in most organic orchards look noticeably less robust than their neighbors in conventional orchards. Not so with Elk Ridge. They realize that trees need good food and plenty of it – just like we do – to produce good nuts. It is clear at a glance that Elk Ridge almond trees are well cared for. The trees are strong and well pruned.

From Harvesting to Processing

Once the nuts are harvested, the action takes place in the processing facility. Elk Ridge’s is clean and modern. John (remember him – he’s the science and quality guru) is a quiet man, totally dedicated to quality in every aspect of Elk Ridge’s processing operation. Pasteurization is the law when it comes to American-grown almonds. Elk Ridge uses a gentle steam process – the Delta H Pasteurization System – that causes no degradation in nut quality. It also pre-conditions the almonds for the roasting, enhancing cell integrity and shelf life. What you will notice is a perfect roast with a great crunch and no burned taste. Ask us about Elk Ridge’s roasted & salted almonds; you will be amazed that an almond with just a bit of salt can taste so good. It is simply nothing like the canned salted almonds you get in the grocery!

Only the Best Almonds

An important part of nut processing is what’s called sorting. That is the step where shell parts and other debris are removed from the nuts before packing. Pretty important when you consider that a tiny pebble can cause major problems if you bite down on it unknowingly. Remember, the nuts are swept off the ground so it is inevitable that pebbles, twigs and other foreign material will be present before sorting. Elk Ridge uses a highly-tuned combination of high-tech laser and hand sorting to give us the cleanest nuts we’ve seen. Also, nuts are sorted to minimize broken and chipped nuts. These lesser nuts are fine for some uses, but not for Grizzlies mixes. Finally, the pasteurized, sorted nuts are packed into twenty five pound boxes and packed on pallets for shipment to Grizzlies in Eugene, Oregon.

The last step is ours – to mix the almonds into granolas, mueslis and trail mixes with the name,“Grizzlies”, proudly emblazoned on the label. Thanks to Jane, Bill and John at Elk Ridge Almonds, you are getting the best almonds California (or the world) has to offer.