Gothic Granola

Ordering at Chinese Restaurants when you're Gluten-Free Pro Tip: Order the dish you desire without soy sauce or any sauce at all (steamed, you're even safer.) Do a little research, figure out how the dish is made. Understanding how certain dishes are prepared helps you understand possible sources of gluten-containing products. Finally, if you don't care about cooking, heaven help you if you're gluten-free. Or Maybe Not The continual availability of new gluten-free products hasn't ceased to amaze me. People with actual Coeliac disease make up less than 1% of the US population , yet the GF foods market is valued at >$10.5 billion (in 2013) . Since I pinpointed my gluten sensitivity in May 2011, I went from barely being able to find sorghum flour at ShopRite to being able to buy GF (and vegan) bread at Trader Joe's, Whole Foods (duh), Sprouts, and Safeway.

Long time, no blog. I was camping in California for Wasteland Weekend.        

The snow has me grounded at my grandparents' house after our Army-Navy game party, and I made breakfast/dessert in my cupcake pan which I left here. Since my grandmother bakes frequently, her pans aren't "safe" for me (years of baked-on grease and wheat flour). Her dessert for our "tailgate" party was the conventional version of cinnamon coffee bars .  Funny story, the last time I wrote about  cheesecake , I had just made  Chocolate-Covered Katie's Deep-Dish Cinnamon Roll Pie . The 2012 pie turned out tough because I was angry and tight. Tonight I made the pie again in cupcake format. The cupcakes baked up properly puddingy because I am happy and chill. There is substance to  Como agua para chocolate !  

I came home from work. I made soup. I ate it. I was calm.

Stocking the Freezer: Blueberry Cheezecake Blueberry Un-Blues Part II of III Don't you like my academic-style headings of late? The formula is "Gerund Phrase COLON Nouns Nouns Nouns." Or something like that. Add an "OF" phrase and you have it made. "Gothic Granola: Deconstructing and Rebuilding the Nature of Reality" since 2011. This recipe represents another must-do, like every vegan food blogger out there, to make raw cheezecake at some point, primarily using cashews and fresh fruit. Done and done.

Circle 'round the wagons and pull up a rock or log to the firepit, folks... While walking on Friday morning, that small, still voice said to me, There will be voices and they will tell me what to do. Let's take a step back and not breathe in the smoke from the fire too much. In the abundant sunlight as I was walking outside, I felt warm when I heard this. I was reassured. In recent memory, this is the second conviction I have had, have received. From whom or what, I can't tell you because I don't know.

They don't pay me to think anymore, so I tend to think hard anyway. When I'm speeding home from closing shift, downing 800 mL to 1 L of water in order to rehydrate while blasting Rage Against the Machine, my mind runs in high gear. It's time to write. It's difficult to be consistent in other areas of life when one's job is inconsistent. Let us begin with this premise. Being a cashier and having a standing sedentary job is no more healthy than being a desk jockey with a sitting sedentary job. The inconsistent hours, workload, and cast of characters is beginning to wear on me. When a job begins to impact my health negatively, in preventable ways, then it's time to go. This is a job, not my career.

Slow down or be slowed down.  Prophetess of doom that I am, I’ve learned this one a few times during this time of year the hard way (November-February).   At age 22, I’m sick of making myself sick by trying to raise my energy to the wrong vibration for winter.  For the past eight years, I’ve had midterms or finals in January during the rush-rush madness of the Thanksgiving to St Valentine's Day gauntlet, meaning I did a bunch of concentrative, intense, mentally loud work when the energy around me was quite expansive, hushed, and contemplative.  I ended up out-of-phase, out of sorts, and out of breath.

I am my mother's child; when she was in her teens, she reportedly made many a baked supper. According to Uncle Jimmy, it was usually something in a crust.

Clearly, I like cheezecake.

Not until a friend of mine informed me last year that I probably couldn’t judge the taste of non-dairy milk compared to regular milk did I really think about that issue.   The longer you stay off dairy, the less appetizing it really is.   Did these need cheeze?   Not really.   I had Daiya pepperjack in the freezer, though, so I used it.   I’m glad it freezes well since it’s $6 a bag at Whole Foods or Wegmans; needless to say, I don’t buy it often.

Post I of III on vegan and gluten-free beer Pizza and beer…well, for me, I’d like root or birch beer to drink with pizza, not the hard stuff.  However, beer-braised onions are one of the summer grilling season’s delights that I miss terribly.  This recipe would be a tonne of fun to make on the grill, but, alas, no outdoor grill for Q.  Nevertheless, there was about a cup and a half of Bob’s Red Mill All-Purpose GF blend to be used, and use it I would in a savoury application.

You may notice some changes around here.   It was time for a title change since “Screwfoot Q” means a lot to me, but it’s not an obvious name for a vegan, gluten-free cooking blog with a shot of shadow-side-of-life perspective.   “Gothic Granola” is also a personal reference (is it solipsistic in here, or is it just me? ).   Two labels that I would be fine having are “gothic” and “granola.”   Further explanation of these shall come when I re-do the “About” tab.   In the meantime, have a cookie.

Post III and final in the Cheeze Series As I walked to the Metro one day this week, I realized why I like short pants.  In a past life, I was a nineteenth-century boy who wore breeches.  Capris, cropped pants, pedal-pushers, Bermuda shorts, whatever you want to call them, I wear those and long socks.  Yep, though I haven’t yet undergone a past-life regression, I’m fairly certain I must’ve been a breeches-wearing boy in another lifetime; how else can I explain this affinity for capris?

Post II of the Cheeze Series Something at work got us onto the topic of macaroni and cheese, and I made this version a few weeks ago to fill the freezer.  My vegan coworker made  a version this week .  My schoolmate  Avolara  forwarded me this Post Punk Kitchen version in 2011 that I printed and have been meaning to try for ages.

Part I of a three-part series about cheese, cheeze, cream cheeze, and cheeze curds. Greetings, Earthlings. It’s been done before: vegans rhapsodising about cheese, missing the taste, texture, ineffability of cultured dairy.  Let’s not do what other people have done before, not reinvent the wheel, as a lot of people say.

Last week, my mom made chocolate cream cheeze frosting for chocolate cupcakes for my super-sweet sixteen (graduation) party, and the frosting never set.  She used blue-label Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese, which contains partially hydrogenated oils, tastes chalky, and weeps in the fridge.  

Got that Rob Zombie song stuck in my head, alternating with American Head Charge’s “Song for the Suspect.”  

Oh yes, very good.  I really like Crazy Richard’s unadulterated peanut butter, though Maranatha’s organic peanut butter is high on my list of “what food would you bring with you to survive the zombie apocalypse?”  I’ve been watching and reading  The Walking Dead  for the past few days.  Wonderful bedtime reading.

Today, besides thesis work and figuring out my operations here (laundry, organizing my food in the pantry and freezer), I made a big entrée to portion out and freeze for munching throughout the year.  I ate some soup on Thursday that I made in May, hence why I say that I will eat frozen entrees throughout the year.