Gothic Granola

Another guest post by the ever-knowledgeable Ela Mirowski, creator of the naturally-scented, biodegradable Ticklepaks shoe deodorizers. Check out her site: Ticklepaks.com .  See her previous guest post here .   Source Diagnosis: Eosinophilic esophagitis Treatment:?   The matriarchal side of my family has been plagued with hereditary gastrointestinal (GI) issues. My grandmother died of an unknown GI disease (this was back in Poland around 1986). My mother was plagued with years of heartburn and then eventually the inability to swallow food as a result of her esophagus shrinking. By the time she had these severe symptoms, my mother was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and died when she was 65…this was 10 years ago.

Fun news in my life: I got food poisoning and have been having some ongoing nausea for the last week and a half, hence no blog posts. Digestive turmoil aside, other things I have been doing include working (open enrollment season! Aaagh!), listening to "new to me" music, instagramming my Halloween socks , following P90X Plus, sorting Legos, and writing. New Lego Halloween Monsters in some kind of metal music video setup that TC made:   These are not Breast Cancer Awareness Month cookies.  They just...I'm just going to stop here.  TC asked for maraschino sugar cookies and this is what I found.

For those times when you don't want to spend $4.99 (and up) for vegan mac and cheeze from a box, DIY.

This post may be best placed on my other blog, Cemetery Spelunking , but it bears mention here. [caption id="attachment_4359" align="aligncenter" width="169"] Stained glass window next to the front door in the narthex of Arlington Metaphysical Chapel; view from the basement stairs.[/caption] When TC and I went mountain bike camping a few weeks ago, one night we hung out with this older gentleman and his dog since they were the only other people at this remote camping spot.  The old man kept playing classic rock and folk that neither TC or I knew (I like Pink Floyd and that's about the extent of my classic rock knowledge).  He kept saying, I want them to play this song at my funeral, playing songs by Cat Stevens , JJ Cale, Jim Crochee, and Lobo. I don't know what song I want played at my funeral, but I did hear this song recently on Pandora, " Without Faith " by ThouShaltNot.  It's perfect for a scene where I plan to kill off a major

A fully cooked sweet potato pie! For once I didn't eat plain leftover roasted sweet potatoes. Instead, I baked with them and made a sweet potato pie.  I'm not Southern , so I made a maple-sweetened pumpkin pie with sweet potatoes instead of pumpkin and 1/4 cup of maple syrup instead of organic sugar.  Besides being out of organic sugar and coconut sugar, I'm running low on "white" flours; I used half buckwheat flour in the crust recipe from this pecan pie post .

Ginger Orange Booze Cookies, that is.  While I had real ginger in the house, and could have coloured them orange with real turmeric root, I followed TC's suggestion and made a ginger liqueur and triple sec chocolate chip cookie.  Sweetened with agave, vegan, gluten-free, slow-food, housemade, local... No, I'm not trying to up my SEO. I'm being ironic.