My daughter Isabelle has already told you her side of our story. She wrote about hiding candy wrappers in her brother’s room, counting 13 and a half teaspoons of Frappuccino sugar into a bowl, and growing up with a mother she affectionately calls "FBI Agent Sarah."
She tells a good story. And most of it is true.
But I remember those years a little more gently, so I thought I should tell you my side.
It Started at My Own Mother’s Table
I grew up in Australia, where my mother cooked dinner from scratch every night. She is the person I credit with giving me my love of real, whole food.
Our family had a weekend property called Plein Air at Merricks, a seaside town on the Mornington Peninsula about an hour from Melbourne. Here, we had a small herd of cattle and Mum and Dad planted a raised vegetable garden complete with herbs and fruit trees. We would cook with whatever was ready to pick - and supplement it with fresh local produce. Years later, Merricks would give our company its name.
My father’s specialty was porridge. On cold winter mornings, he made it with whole grain rolled oats, water and milk, and we ate it with golden syrup and sliced banana. Very Australian!
I think that’s probably where my lifelong love of oats began.
I wasn’t raised to obsess over food labels. In fact, nobody taught me to read them. I have lived with environmental and food allergies my whole life, so I became very aware of how food made me feel and eventually taught myself what to look for.
Once we had children, I paid even more attention, but I also didn't want my kids to feel deprived or think certain foods were forbidden. They had cake and candy like everyone else. But I would explain why I made the choices I did, and as they got older, I let them make their own decisions.
So when Isabelle ordered a Grande Caramel Frappuccino as a teenager, I didn’t tell her she couldn’t have it. We looked up how much sugar was in it together. She measured the 13 and a half teaspoons into a bowl and was dumbfounded.
She was a rower at the time and cared a lot about performing at her best. She never ordered another one.
What I Found on the Back of the Bag in California
We moved to California when Isabelle was 13. By then I had been making my own granola and muesli for years, and I was genuinely surprised by what I found in many of the granolas here.
Salt. Seed oils. Sugar substitutes like erythritol and stevia. “Natural flavors,” which is a term I’ve never been particularly comfortable with and multiple sugar sources.
One bag really stuck with me: KIND Healthy Grains Oats and Honey with Toasted Coconut.
It has “healthy” right there in the name. The front talks about 100% whole grains, fiber and being gluten-free. All good things. Then I turned it over.
The ingredient list includes canola oil along with five different sweeteners: tapioca syrup, cane sugar, honey, molasses and brown rice syrup. A 2/3 cup serving has 11 grams of added sugar, or 22 percent of the FDA Daily Value for added sugar.
That was exactly the kind of granola I didn’t want to make - or feed my family.
Making my own also taught me something about salt. When a granola gets very sweet, salt helps balance that sweetness. Brekky Mix only has a small amount of maple syrup, so I don’t think it needs salt in the first place.
And as I’ve gotten older, sodium is something I pay more attention to. If an ingredient doesn’t need to be there, I would rather leave it out.
We wrote a full post on sodium in granola if you’d like to know more.
Jars for the Neighbors
Merricks Kitchen really started during Covid. I was making Brekky Mix at home and began putting it into jars to give to friends and neighbors. One neighbor told me she had stopped eating granola because of all the sugar and had basically accepted that she had to choose between something healthy and something she actually enjoyed eating.
That stayed with me because it was exactly what I was trying to solve.
I didn’t want to make a granola that was just a little healthier than the bag next to it. I wanted to make something genuinely good for you that you would also look forward to eating in the morning.
Friends kept telling me, “You should sell this.”
Eventually, I listened.
I started selling Brekky Mix on a small scale in 2022. When Isabelle graduated from college in 2025, she joined me, and we decided to do this full-time together.
Getting the Recipe Right
Low sugar was part of the recipe from the beginning.
Instead of adding more sweetness, I used Ceylon cinnamon and Madagascar vanilla powder to build flavor. Neither is inexpensive, but I think you can taste the difference.
The oil took much longer to figure out.
I started with coconut oil because I loved the flavor, but, over time, I wasn’t happy with the amount of saturated fat. Then I tried avocado oil. Nutritionally it made sense, but I just didn’t like what it did to the taste.
About two years ago, I finally tried extra virgin olive oil.
I had always thought of olive oil as something savory, so I wasn’t convinced it would work in granola. But the first batch surprised me. It added this lovely, subtle fruitiness and seemed to bring out the flavors of the nuts, seeds, cinnamon and oats rather than covering them up.
So we switched.
Our With Fruit variety probably took the most work. Finding dried fruit sounds simple until you start reading ingredient lists. So much of it contains added sugar, seed oil or sulfur dioxide.
It took a lot of searching to find the organic dates, dried blueberries and freeze-dried strawberries we use now, with nothing unnecessary added.
Today, Brekky Mix is made in small batches in a dedicated gluten-free kitchen in Costa Mesa, not far from us here in Orange County. We know the owner well, and Isabelle and I still source and order every ingredient ourselves.
Every Ingredient Has to Earn Its Place
That’s really how I cook, both at home and with Brekky Mix.
If something is in the recipe, I want to know why it’s there.
A couple of the ingredients are especially personal to me.
Oats are first on the ingredient list and probably first in my heart too, thanks to my dad’s porridge. We use organic gluten-free oats, which also means my husband, who is gluten intolerant, can eat Brekky Mix with the rest of us.
Walnuts have a different connection.
A number of my relatives have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, so brain health is something I think about. Nuts are included in the MIND diet, an eating pattern developed around brain health as we age, and walnuts are a source of plant-based omega-3 fat.
Brekky Mix is lightly toasted rather than baked into hard clusters. You get a gentle crunch from the oats, nuts and seeds, a little caramel warmth from the maple syrup, spice from the cinnamon and a softer background note from the vanilla.
It isn’t overly sweet. And that’s intentional.
Back home in Australia, we would probably call it a toasted muesli. Brekky Mix sits somewhere between traditional granola and muesli. We really took the best of granola and muesli and brought them together.
Brekky Mix Original and With Fruit each have 8g of protein, 6g of fiber and 3g of added sugar per 1/2 cup serving. Choc Chip has 6g of protein, 5g of fiber and 2g of added sugar per 1/3 cup serving.
All three have zero sodium and are Non-UPF Verified by WISEcode.
How I Eat Now
I’m in my 50s now, and the way I think about food has changed.
I still want food to taste wonderful. I just also want what I eat every day to give me something nutritionally.
Breakfast is easily my favorite meal, and most mornings mine looks something like this.
I keep a jar with equal parts chia seeds, hemp seeds and oat bran. I stir a few spoonfuls into 1/2 cup of Greek yogurt and 3/4 cup of kefir with a teaspoon of date powder and leave it for about 20 minutes.
Then I add 1/2 cup of Brekky Mix, blueberries, raspberries and, when I can get them, a peeled golden kiwi.
The yogurt and kefir give me protein and live cultures, the fruit brings fiber, antioxidants and vitamin C, and half a cup of Brekky Mix Original or With Fruit adds another 8g of protein and 6g of fiber with only 3g of added sugar.
And, just as importantly, I really enjoy eating it.
It also keeps me going until lunch.
For more ideas, see our guide to breakfasts high in protein and fiber.
What Customers Tell Us
One of the nicest parts of building Merricks Kitchen has been hearing why people make Brekky Mix part of their own routine.
George, a retired IT consultant, wrote:
“After retirement I researched my diet to improve brain health. Brekky Mix aligns with the whole grains and nuts components of the MIND diet, and delivers less sugar, more fiber, better oil (olive vs canola), and more protein. I look forward to breakfast more than any other meal now.”
And Peter C. wrote something that meant a lot to both Isabelle and me:
“You can feel the thought, intention, and love that Sarah and Isabelle put into every batch.”
I couldn’t really ask for a better description of what we are trying to do.
Try All Three
I don’t think granola needs a lot of sugar to taste good.
Give me good oats, nuts and seeds, a little maple syrup, great cinnamon and vanilla, and ingredients you can recognize when you read the back of the bag.
That’s the kind of food I want to eat, and it’s the kind of food I wanted to make.
If you haven’t tried Brekky Mix yet, our Brekky Mix Granola Variety Pack is an easy place to start. It has one 12oz bag each of Original, With Fruit and Choc Chip, costs 10 percent less than buying the three separately, and ships free.
I’d love to know which one becomes your favorite.
And before you go, I’m curious: what does your breakfast look like right now?
Sarah
