Projects

I have a few lists and piles: there’s a pile of scrap paper with topics and scribbles about poems that I want to write, subjects upon which I want to discourse, discuss, disgust, disguise.  To the cover of my notebook, I binder-clipped a list of places I’d like to visit, activities I’d like to do, and objects I’d like to own.  I also carry a list of food projects I’d like to attempt.  By attempt, I mean throw caution to the wall, throttle it until it turns blue, and release it in disgust that I ever had any truck with it, and just do whatever I was about to do.

Squirrel in my parents' backyard from 2011

Violent metaphors…hmmm, Q must be back at school.  How’d you guess?  I didn’t bake anything since Sunday, and today I simply had to bake else I would go a little kooky.  Did you know that “cookie” used to spelled “cooky” back in the day?  I learned this spelling when I was about ten years old while reading a book from the 1960s that my mom had read when she was ten.

Old glutenous cornbread, circa February 2011

Today I made cornbread, of course, since when I looked in my freezer, the only festive breakfasty item was frozen waffles.  I like waffles.  Waffles are delicious.  But I like food that I made, too.  I also have pancakes, but they’re for Tuesday suppers.  I began this tradition last year of eating bread for dinner on Tuesdays since it was consolation before an evening seminar.  Yeah, I know, using food as a reward or motivation can go veeeery screwy very quickly—trust me, I know—but I made it through the seminar every time.  This was last fall, before gluten and I parted ways, and it was probably a bad idea to have eaten wheat before class…I’m going to stop here before this gets too graphic.

Chococat says, "For me, Ownie?"

So today’s cornbread is my normal cornbread recipe, with pumpkin, raspberry applesauce, chocolate peppermint soymilk, hempseeds (the last of the bag), agave, and raisins.  I used cayenne pepper, cinnamon, and apple pie spice to, well, spice it up.

Current playlist, ’case you’re interested: “Voice of the Voiceless,” by Rage Against the Machine, “Get Your Gunn,” by Marilyn Manson, “Lacrymosa,” by Evanescence, “Bend to Squares,” by Death Cab for Cutie, “Killing In the Name,” by Rage Against the Machine, and “Pachelbel: Canon in D for Strings and Continuo,” performed by the Paillard Chamber Orchestra.  Welcome to my world of cognitive dissonance.  I'm now listening to the Sisters of Mercy album A Slight Case of Overbombing.

A weekend project: before my brother sent me a text—oh, hello, knocking in the radiator.  Life in an old dorm—anyway, before he invited me to dinner (prize-winning vegan chili), I was planning to make pierogi last Saturday.  Not being the remotest bit Polish, I was going to make a squash and tempeh filling.  Yeah, that’s not even Italian.  That’s North American and Indonesian, sort of.  So I went to the Alexandria farmers market and bought carnival squash.  They look like acorn squash with a marbled rind and I roasted the two squash, quartered, the same way I treated the acorn squash.  Carnival squash smells like challah (ooh, add that to my project list since I’ve already made vegan challah, I’m sure I could make a GF version) and candy while it’s baking; I highly recommend purchasing some.

I now have a bunch of frozen squash in my freezer since I did not make pierogi.  Sad.  Well, that’s what this weekend’s for. 

Another weekend project: pancakes.  I debated whether to show something that didn’t turn out quite right on this blog.  Blogs can tend to be escapist if things always seem to work out; at least, that’s what the author shows you.  This recipe’s not coming out quite right is, in the long run, false, since I’ve made it work before; I was just impatiently hungry in the morning after exercising.  I preheated the pan too hot, didn’t add enough oil, and ended up burning one or two before turning down the heat and watching carefully.  Forgive me, I get hungry.  End sarcasm.

I’ll post the recipe when I’ve tweaked it to my satisfaction; the source recipes I mashed up had too much baking powder.  Being used to denser pancake, I’m cutting the amount of baking powder back to 1 teaspoon and the water back to 3/4 cup and I’ll let ya know how that goes.

Here's a picture of this same pancake recipe when it's been done with a little more patience:

This is mysterious (and normal) dinner of pancake, vinegar-braised greens with onion and garlic, and black bean hommos.

I made banana pancakes on Saturday; these other instances I used pumpkin as a binder and egg- and fat-replacer.  That's a knife-ful of peanut butter on the right there.

It’s obligatory, I think, for a blog that deals with baking to address how to frost a cake at some point.  I’ll be posting on that in the near future.  My carrel-mate and I made a cake on Monday for a mutual friend’s birthday, and I took pictures of the frosting process.  

We made the chocolate cake described in an earlier post with the above-mentioned raspberry applesauce.  I bought raspberry applesauce because, as I told my carrel-mate, “I don’t buy [low-quality] applesauce,” low-quality applesauce being the kind with high fructose corn syrup.  No, I’m not one of those haters who banishes HFC from the house; there’s no need for applesauce to have chemicals in it.  Know what I’m sayin’?

Of course you do.

Q

P.S. It was my birthday recently, whereupon I acquired a cast iron skillet, a mini-donut pan, and a decent-sized saucepan, so look for adventures with those soon.