Goodbye, Stark Sisters Granola!
It’s been 25 years. A quarter century. It’s been a good run. But we’re closing the doors on my Stark Sisters granola. We were beloved in Concord, and distributed coast to coast!
Back in the day, we were the only granola to sweeten all five flavors with pure maple syrup. Back in the day, we stirred by hand back on Beharrell Street. I’d run back and forth between the store and our granola factory, and it was a grand adventure. At one point we were padlocked by a government agency because our label said, “pure vanilla extract,” which, as it turned out, was against the law. One had to say, “natural flavors,” or list all the sub-ingredients of vanilla extract.
Our granolas were visually gorgeous because we stirred by hand, slow roasted, and left crunchy chunks. The taste was, of course, delicious.
Over the years we outgrew our space on Beharrell, and moved to a co-packer. They were able to keep the taste, but we lost the chunks because the granola was mixed by machine. To keep prices affordable, we cut a few tiny corners. Almonds, for example, went from thick slices to small bits. No big deal, maybe. But when we received another letter this spring saying we had to cut costs again, in a big way, or raise our prices in a big way, we couldn’t justify it anymore.
Yes, those recipes can still be found in our cookbooks (in home-size batches) and we hope you have them all because we like talking to you through our recipes! Our first cookbook, which had four different publishers and four different titles like Cooking Around the World, and If Kalimos Had a Chef, is out of print. This one has our Nutty Maple recipe (Nutty Maple Molasses in the book). One of my brothers found a used copy for 39 cents on Amazon…
Still in print, Eat Well be Happy: A Second Bite (our second cookbook) has the other four: Chocolate Berry, Maple Almond, Maple Raspberry Blueberry and Peanut Chocolate.
Our third cookbook, The Blue-Ribbon Edition: From Our Kitchen to Yours has no granola recipes, but it does have some of my other faves. On the next page, you’ll find our recipe for Stark Sisters Maple Almond Granola. You can write me, and I’ll send you all five recipes.