Say hello to my new morning companion: MixMyGranola granola. It’s delicious, all-natural and preservative-free, comes in sexy packaging and it’s made just the way I like it. Did I just say sexy? Can’t blame a girl for liking good packaging.

We love granola. Dan snacks on it, and I enjoy mine with yogurt. So we were more than happy to accept Raoul’s offer to try their product. Raoul, Andreas and Matt are the guys behind MixMyGranola.com, the hip new website that lets you customize your very own blend of granola.

The idea is simple: Choose one of the delicious organic, all-natural or low-fat granola bases. Then choose from more than 50 ingredients like fruits, nuts, seeds, and extras, including all-time classics like cranberries, blueberries, almonds and organic raisins, or unique ingredients such as hemp seeds, organic gummy bears and goji berries to create your individual granola mix – exactly the way You like it. Then, be creative and give your mix a name and check out.

Dan and I were like kids in a candy store when we created our own granola mixes. Go check out the website and you’ll see what I mean. I love that we could see the actual nutritional information (and cost) of our granola mixes as we added each ingredient.

Each personalized granola mix came in a (sexy) sleek 16-ounce recyclable tube that is similar to a Pringles container. And the labels look like these:

Each mix you create has a unique Mix-ID that identifies your particular blend. This allows you to re-order the same mix for faster check out next time if you want to stick to the same one. I like that a lot.

We were amused by the extra ingredient included: “lots of LOVE“. I kid you not, and you can see above for yourself. We also noticed that our mixes were prepared and signed by Andreas, complete with a happy face. I love all these small details. It is always a treat when you come across products made with love, passion and pride.

Now let’s move on to our MixMyGranola mixes! Show and tell time…

Joy’s Granola:

Pretty colorful, huh? It was a fantastic blend of salty and sweet, if I may say so myself. I picked the organic granola as my base and added goji berries (the red-orange that stands out), dried bing cherries (big dark dried fruit on there), amaranth seeds (the tiny bird seed-like seeds on the lower right corner), pistachios, sunflower seeds and cranberries. I absolutely loved MY blend — I mean, I was afraid that I would finish it in a day!

Dan’s Granola:

Dan’s mix is sweeter with the French vanilla granola as the base, combined with cranberries, roasted almonds, amaranth seeds, honey smacks, cocoa crisp bite. He loved his crunchy-sweet blend.

Do they really taste like they’re made with lots of love? You bet!

Dan and I love this great and excellently executed idea for custom granola mixes. My only problem is — Why didn’t we think of this first?! Haha. This is a perfect solution to our (obvious) differences in granola preference. I also think it would be great as a gift for the people who seem to have everything. For them, you need to create a need, and what better way than to introduce them to something healthy (and looks hip!) they didn’t know they’ve been deprived of.

We loved the granola so much that we thought YOU might want to try them! Soooo…

We’re giving away a $25 gift certificate to MixMyGranola.com!!! :-)

That would get you about two custom granola mixes, including delivery. Isn’t that great?!?!?!

Ok, there are several things you can do to enter the draw for this yummy prize:

1. (For 2 entries) Sign up for our brand-spanking new monthly newsletter. We’ll include index card-size printable recipes, cooking tips, household cleaning, organization, and productivity tips, featured ingredients, our favorite kitchen tools and gadgets, discounts and giveaways, and much more!

2. (For 1 entry each tweet) Tweet this:

Win $25 to create your own granola blends at MixMyGranola.com http://foodurl.info/18h3 from @gourmeted  #gourmetedMMG

** Don’t forget the hash tag #gourmetedMMG. That will help us track your tweets. ** [Max. of 3 tweets to be honored as entries per user to avoid spamming the twitterverse for a week.]

3. (For 1 entry) Blog about it. Link to this contest on your blog post. [Max 1 entry per blog]

4. (For 1 entry) Leave a comment with an answer to this question: What do YOU like in your granola? :-) [Max 1 comment per person.]

Winners will be randomly drawn. Contest ends next week, March 3, 2009 at 5pm PST.

Good luck!

** The giveaway prize was generously provided by MixMyGranola.com. Thank you, Raoul! **