Who doesn’t love a delicious oatmeal cookie? Whether you’re baking cookies to enjoy at home, to bring to a picnic or pack in your child’s lunch, oatmeal cookies are a great way to sneak healthy ingredients into a treat. This recipe uses some of our favorite Grizzlies products to add heartiness and flavor to a classic recipe. The result is a deliciously wholesome cookie that you’ll want to make again and again.

What you’ll need:

• ¾ cup butter or soy margarine
• 1¾ cups unbleached or whole wheat flour
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 egg or egg substitute equivalent
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• ¼ teaspoon baking soda
• 2 cups Grizzlies Divinely Organic Granola
• 1 cup Grizzlies Oregon Trail Mix

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375°F.

In a mixing bowl, beat butter or margarine with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add about half of the flour, the brown sugar, sugar, egg, baking powder, vanilla, and baking soda. Beat until thoroughly combined. Mix in remaining flour. Stir in Grizzlies Divinely Organic Granola and Oregon Trail Mix. Drop by rounded tablespoons, two inches apart, onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until edges are golden. Cool on a wire rack.

There you have it: good recipes made better by Grizzlies. Enjoy!

If you’re like us, you care about where your food comes from. Making food by hand makes it easy to see how important the quality of each and every ingredient is to the finished product that eventually lands on your table. That’s why we take pride in getting to know our suppliers.

We at Grizzlies would like to take a minute to tell you about our friends and almond suppliers, Harvey and John Zinke. Zinke Orchards is a family-owned, pesticide free almond grower in Chowchilla, California. The Zinkes provide us with almonds for our granolas, cereals, and trail mixes, as well as almond butters, roasted and diced almonds for butter machines, and bulk almonds for resale. We could tell you how the Zinkes grow some of the best almonds in the world, but that might be better left to Harvey:

Every attempt is made to grow the almonds as naturally as possible. We use no insecticides or miticides, but rely on beneficial insect predators to control the harmful insects and mites. By not spraying, a natural balance is established in the orchards and we supplement this with the release of predator insects as needed. Crop Monitor, a local company, provides this service to us. During the growing season, they check the fields every three to four days and release predator insects as needed.

In comparison, most almond growers will spray three insecticide sprays and several miticide sprays per season. These would be a dormant spray, a May spray, and a hull split spray, all of which kill the good insects as well as the bad, thus destroying the natural balance and requiring more insecticide spraying to maintain control of the harmful insects.

Not only are Harvey and John’s farming practices wonderfully sustainable, they usually result in less than half the insect damage of many conventional growers.

We feel great about the almonds we get from Zinke Orchards and hope that you will too.

At Wildtime Foods, we’re committed to building close connections with our customers. To be honest, we feel a little funny about using the word “customer” because over time, the people we talk to become our friends. We take pride in knowing our customers by name, not by number. And we love chatting about the little things in life — our families, our pets, our travels, and of course, food!

We’re excited to launch this blog to find new ways to connect with our friends. We have some plans for what we’d like to talk about, and we would also like to hear from you! You can send an email (info@grizzliesbrand.com), and find us on Twitter or Facebook.

Here’s what we have in mind for the blog:

• Food and nutrition topics related to local, organic and artisan foods.
• Info about Grizzlies Brand products, ingredients, recipes and more.
• A behind-the-scenes look at artisan food manufacturing (you’ve got to see your granola being mixed by hand).
• Our perspective on local agriculture and sustainable business practices.

At Wildtime Foods, we all like to have our hands in things. The authors of this blog will include:

• Brad Averill, Wildtime Foods owner, will write about topics related to our values and  mission, including sustainable business practices and nutrition information.
• Whit Hemphill, VP of marketing and sales, will write about new products, events, his travels, and even his kid’s love for Aunt Maple’s Crunchy granola.
• Angela Seits, online community manager, will write primarily on informational topics, news items and recipes.

We welcome you to join in the conversation! Comment, share your questions, your ideas and your stories. You can subscribe to the blog to get new posts delivered right to your inbox, too.