Gothic Granola

Greetings, earthlings, Robert Munsch and Michael Kusugak's A Promise is a Promise , based on the  legend  of the qallupilluit, stuck with me from when I was four or five and Mrs. Burns read it to the kindergarten class.  Since I was six, I used play out the story with various dolls of mine ( Princess Gwenevere  and Inuit Playmobil ) every time it snowed or we had an early dismissal. Without further ado, please enjoy Mice, Ice, and the Not Very Nice . Mice, Ice, and the Not Very Nice For more stories of the Gillian children, see also: 2007's greeting Holiday_Happenstance 2008's Halloween Slideshow "Trick or Treat, Trick or Treat, the Bitter and the Sweet" Blessings on you in 2013!

I am American: my heritage is 5/8 Italian, 2/8 Finnish, and 1/8 Armenian.  One year, when visiting my dad’s side of the family as we do every New Year’s, we were introduced to dolmades at a Mediterranean restaurant called The Black Olive  (since closed) in Tewksbury, MA.  Dolmades consist of blanched grape leaves filled with rice and sometimes meat or nuts and raisins (trail mix?) which are then steamed to tenderness.  Last year, I made sushi for Christmas. This year, I made dolmades with the help of my mom and grandmother.  My grandfather took all the photographs of the assembly.

For the last two years, I've ended Christmas with a pile and a half of cookies in January of which I'm bored by Marilyn Manson's birthday (5 January).   There are, of course, worse problems to have. I read this op-ed today in the New York Times where a Catholic priest gives his view of the world. "One true thing is this: Faith is lived in family and community, and God is experienced in family and community," Father Kevin O'Neil writes. We live in this earthly plane.  We regularly experience reality as earthly beings.  "I really do believe God enters the world through us," Father O'Neil said, and "[w]e need one another to be God's presence." How do we show love to one another?  How do we show kindness to ourselves, our loved ones, our friends, our enemies, and our environment? There is no one right answer to this question.  It's up to you to ask yourself and listen hard to the still voice in your heart.  That voi...

For the last two years, I've ended Christmas with a pile and a half of cookies in January of which I'm bored by Marilyn Manson's birthday (5 January).   There are, of course, worse problems to have. I read  this  op-ed today in the New York Times where a Catholic priest gives his view of the world. "One true thing is this: Faith is lived in family and community, and God is experienced in family and community," Father Kevin O'Neil writes. We live in this earthly plane.  We regularly experience reality as earthly beings.  "I really do believe God enters the world through us," Father O'Neil said, and "[w]e need one another to be God's presence." How do we show love to one another?  How do we show kindness to ourselves, our loved ones, our friends, our enemies, and our environment? There is no one right answer to this question.  It's up to you to ask yourself and listen hard to the still voice in your heart.  That voice has the...

A cool, dark, yin-tastic mint cookie complements a cup of ginger tea while surviving the Virginia DMV and driving late on Solstice.  Interstate 70 East makes for a lovely late night drive because of its relative emptiness, with the lights of Baltimore polluting the sky to the east.  Spending Solstice with friends--and making new friends--truly welcomes the light to the world and helps me commit to allowing more light into my life.  Light, grace, positive energy--whatever you call it--is always available to us.  We work on letting go of all that we do and think that blocks its presence in our lives. I modified the melty mints to make them a more balanced, stable cookie with dates and coconut sugar. Sure, they could probably replace a cup of coffee with the caffeine from the cocoa and chocolate, but they're rich enough to satisfy with just one cookie.

Soup is a tradition for Solstice (OK, so, fine--a tradition of two years).   The wife of one of my spiritual mothers makes a delicious vegan bean soup for their Solstice party.   It’s fortification for the late-night labyrinth walking and firepit gathering. I brought the soup described below to new friends’ house and one of them suggested I bring it to their Solstice party.  It’s a bright, sturdy soup to celebrate the return of the light.

“I am my own leader” read one of the affirmations I received this week from  The Virtues Project .   On Sunday when I arrived home from my walk, my aunt’s copy of  Watchmen , the graphic novel by  Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons , caught my eye.  I began to read it, knowing that it’s one of those comics I should probably have read because of the gaming/sci-fi/geek/artistic circles in which I rotate.  One slogan graffitied on a wall in an early frame stuck out: “Who will watch the Watchmen?”

Maximus, the male of my aunt and uncle’s pair of cats, likes to hang out with me when I meditate in the morning.  When I switched from exercising on the ground floor to the top floor of the house (gotta follow the WiFi, man), he became confused and meowed loudly at me.  Max caught on soon enough and knows to find me upstairs.

Thank you to those of you who attended the “Content, Conscious Celebrations” class at the Lawrence Headquarters Branch on Friday!  I enjoyed the seminar-style class we had and I hope I sparked your curiosity about vegan- and gluten-free baking.

It's gratitude season, folks. I am grateful for greens and the wonderful people who grow them, especially the farmers at the farmers market.

On Friday, when I left the house, I had Dropkick Murphys "Rose Tattoo" stuck in my head, and I considered, would I get memorial tattoos when my close family members die? I'd keep them skin deep. No, I laughed in the pale blue dawn as I walked to the Metro, I'd keep them six layers of skin deep, deep six them, keep them six feet under. The ridiculous number of views on the aforementioned music video? I'm partly responsible; I've been looping it as a playlist of one for most of yesterday and today. Last night, I called my grandparents to chat, and my grandmother informed me that my Great-Aunt Mary Crea died on Wednesday at age 87.

Nostalgia...comes in many flavours.  Nostalgia also features ellipses, and sometimes tissues, and, for the VGF among us, carbs. While tackling the rolls my grandmother makes for Thanksgiving to make them vegan and gluten-free will probably never yield a perfectly white piece of bread, I can make a bread that’s pretty darn close to the rolls served at the now-defunct chain restaurant Steak and Ale .  (By the way, you should donate to Wikipedia.  It’s worth your while to support the free sharing of knowledge.)  The molasses and buckwheat flour colour these rolls a pumpernickel brown, while I’m sure it was caramel colour and a heck of a lot more sweetener that gave the Steak and Ale bread its dark sweetness.

A few days ago, I found a MySpace survey I took when I was in high school, one of those series of questions designed to tell your followers/friends/lurkers a little about you.  Five years later, it made for a good laugh.  I had answered some questions as a real person and some as a vampire. Following that, I read Heather’s similar survey in October and decided I would like to add it on my blog, too, but with a twist (a turn of the screw, since we must be Gawwwwth).

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.

Skulls and tombstones.   Would you really expect anything else from a taphophile? Thanks to my aunt and uncle, I now bake in true undead style with the Lilli Vanilli in ‘A Zombie Ate my Cupcake!’ book and cake decorating kit.

Clearly, I like cheezecake.

Dear $(6,4)@#, What’s all this detox business about?  Can you give me some pointers? Sincerely, Cats on a Cleanse

In 2001, my brother and I invented Minapoo Mag , the official magazine of da cat family (of which there are 282 members with my acquisition of Jaeger). Meet Jaeger, named after the protagonist in Carla Speed McNeil’s Finder comic series. Anyway, all the cats collaboratively write Mina’s egocentric magazine.  The advice columnist is Mina’s son, Scamp, who recently turned 17.  Scamp’s not so good wit spellin’ (in the same way that da Ownie Q is not good wit crowds, srsly).  He’s one half of Da Inventor Brudderz—Scamp and Pepper—the kitties responsible for Seussian innovations in KittyWorld.

Kale donuts.   You heard it from Esther at A, B, C, Vegan first. Not only did I make shelf-stable breakfast treats for the work conference at which I will be working when this is posted, but I also made these to weather Frankenstorm!  The weather’s a birthday present, I guess.  The past six or seven years I have seen snow on my birthday; this year it’s a hurricane.

Thoughts on a thirty-minute lunch, drafted during such.  I’ll provide the recipe first so if that’s all you’re here for, you can have your bread and skip the pontification.  I’m debating whether to mention black beans in the title of this recipe.  Depending on your audience, you may want to omit it for bean-phobes.  There’s no need to worry about the beans’ indigestibility because they are obliterated in a blender or food processor before incorporation in the rest of the product. Bread atop carnival squash curry

This one’s a seasonal curry this time .   I think I’ve made something from almost every one of Chef Michael Kiss’s cooking classes I’ve attended at the Old Town Whole Foods.   I like his food philosophy: “An onion is an onion.”   Using what’s available to you will create a unique dish with your personal touch.   Since I’m just about incapable of following a recipe to a tee (I have opinions about what I put in my mouth.   Strong opinions.)—or a tea—I like that advice.

Happy Birthday to my fashion-forward Aunt B! I did not make these cookies for her, though.  I made them for my Aunt A’s birthday last year.  Since both of them like chocolate, these cookies would be appropriate for either.

Let me tell you a public secret.

Rule number one of being vegan and gluten-free: always bring your own snacks.

The cookie recipe I present to you today included in its description the instruction to “[e]njoy with a glass of cold soymilk and dunk away without guilt [emphasis mine].”

Playlist: Evanescence— The Open Door , Fallen (must be something about this time of year ), Rammstein— Rosenrot , Marilyn Manson— Eat Me, Drink Me , Rob Zombie— The Sinister Urge , Clan of Xymox— The Best of Clan of Xymox To complement this musical mélange, I bring you a dessert, the base for which is a  mélange of breads.  I apparently took it upon myself to owe you all earlier this year .  I made something similar in April .

While watching the Navy-Penn State football game (go Navy!) a few weeks ago, I converted this recipe.   As I was telling my cousin who is currently in his high school's marching band, I watched enough football for a lifetime when I was in colour guard in high school.  

Sometimes, you just have to bring your own in order to make sure you’re fed.   As Hillel the Elder said, “If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” ( Pirkei Avot 1:14 )

This morning at 06:00 I ran to the Alexandria farmers’ market in hopes of securing two kinds of greens, two kinds of fruit, a carnival or acorn squash, and cauliflower.   No dice on the cauliflower.   In the early morning darkness, I looked from the hot peppers to the summer squash to the bell peppers at the Bigg Riggs tables and settled on an orange pepper to include in the curry I’m making later today.

Instead of chocolate chips in your breakfast, have some raw cacao nibs: crunchy, tasty antioxidants!   Instead of riding the white sugar roller coaster from some cookie-lookalike cereal, enjoy a chocolate-oat-nut mélange that will power you through the morning or the rest of your workday, if you’re like me and enjoy granola for lunch a few times a week.

Since I made these muffins for a protest today, I figured I better have the recipe up and running so I can direct attendees to the ingredients list.    These muffins and donuts fit well with today being Mabon, the Autumnal Equinox.

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.

Part III of III on vegan and gluten-free beer If it doesn’t have tomatoes, is it still chilli?  According to this needs-citations-article , chilli (yep, I’m using the UK spelling for a New World dish) involves tomatoes.

A note in the introduction to Kris Holechek’s   100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes   alerted us to the concept of salad dressing cake,   id est , cake made with mayonnaise. Breakfast of champions with a banana and coconut peanut butter.

These pancakes (now miniature waffles!) have been hits both times I’ve served them, Mother’s Day and fellowship after church.   Assemble the batter the night before the morning you plan to make them.   Alternatively, have pancakes for dinner and make the batter in the morning, then cook at night.   I bought the mini waffle pan as a reward/bribe for myself for surviving routine bloodwork.

Toppings.  Dips.  Sandwich Filler.  Sidecars.  The lifeblood of veganinity.  The bane of my existence when the only lunch option is hommos on bread since then it's probably gluten-contaminated.  Watch for dairy in prepared hommos.  Sentence fragments rock.  P'raps I've been influenced by fragment-speaking Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games .

You can burn peanut butter.  I was melting peanut butter for the granola I made last weekend and while assembling the rest of the granola, I had it on the burner over high heat, and I burned it.  Oh well, char adds flavour!  Besides, the peanut butter was showing its true Goth nature by showing up to the granola party wearing black.

Part II of III for food involving vegan and GF beer. For when you have the munchies or need the hair of the dog.

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.

Hey-o.

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.

Final recipe: I attended a cooking class on Tuesday at the Whole Foods in Alexandria, and even if I hadn’t gone to the class, I would’ve had a successful WF trip.  I picked up this “Meals for Four under $15” flyer, and the Kale Pad Thai by Chrissy Bender made a perfect “this-is-my-real-work” supper after work on Friday.

So I may not have baked dessert, but I did bake anadama bread and muffins this week.  I love baking in cast-iron.

Thoughts from lunch break.  The sandwich opposed mindfulness in its first use.  The Earl of Sandwich wanted to do two things at once—eat and play cards, as the story goes.  “What Sandwich is having” facilitates speed of consumption.  Granted, combinations of food aren’t inherently unmindful, and one can eat a sandwich mindfully, focusing all five senses on the object.  Howeer, the sandwich is oft associated—as is the wrap and the Western sushi roll—with grab ‘n’ go fare, meant to be consumed while doing something else (driving, checking email, playing cards).  One’s attention is thus divided and weakened towards both tasks.  One does not appreciate the ingredients of the sandwich as individuals or in harmony when eating and doing something else.

Quick dessert—my aunt and uncle and I tore through the Boston Crème Cake Pie that I made from Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s and Terry Hope Romero’s  Vegan Pie in the Sky , 

This is Pants

"Muffin courier."  That's what I want my next job to be.  The muffins will be so deliciously valuable that I'll have to handcuff my Harry Potter lunchbox to my wrist.  As far as I know, this “breakfast dessert” does not kick back. 

Dear ones, I'm taking a Sabbath, as in *the* Sabbath, according to these principles at Sabbath Manifesto.org .  The only thing I'm not getting behind on this list is the "drink wine" part, and the bread I might eat will of course be vegan and gluten-free.  Longer postage will resume next week. Q P.S. Sabbath puts me in the mood for challah .

As Julia Cameron wrote in The Artist’s Way, paraphrasing another artist, when you’re out of the studio for three days, by that third day, you’ll do anything to get back to your art and nobody better stand in your way. I came home from my first week of work on Friday (a yearlong fellowship) and made muffinz. Zucchini muffins.

Zucchini…and tahini.  Oh yesh.  Last year I made a zucchini-tahini cornbread for breakfast.  I mentioned making tahinopita before, and it was a quickbread version .  This is my yeasted tahinopita variation.

For lack of a better term, I’m calling this next dish a seed butter.  Since I used mammoth zucchini and summer squash for the cake and pie, I scraped out the seeds because they would have added too much volume.  The internets didn’t have much in the way of a recipe for roasted  summer  squash seeds.  I sautéed the innards of a giant squash and a giant zucchini in the same pan as I used to saute the zukes for the Z-pie.  Then I Vitamixed them (“to Vitamix” has become a verb in my world, much like “to Google” something is a verb).

Since I made my cake and rushed to my cousin’s graduation party, I left it in the pan and frosted it at her house.  It received good reviews from high school seniors!

What do you do with a big zucchini What do you do with a big zucchini What do you do with a big zucchini Fresh from grandma’s garden? Bake it in a pie until it’s tender Bake it in a cake for sweet-tooth splendor Whirl it into mush in a high-speed blender Holy cats, I’m starving! Plentiful, prodigious zucchini, meet pie, cake, and pasta sauce or soup base. Zucchini Pie Modified from my grandmother’s recipe Makes one 9-inch pie Note: Crust and filling can both be assembled separately the night before baking. Crust: 1 1/2 cup walnuts 1/4 cup brown rice flour or sticky rice flour 1/2 cup cornmeal 2 tablespoons coconut oil, solid Filling: 1 teaspoon olive oil 1 large onion 1 medium zucchini 1 medium summer squash 12.3 ounces silken tofu (firm) 1 small clove garlic 7 leaves fresh basil (or 2 tablespoons of vegan pesto) 1 ½ teaspoons dry or wet mustard 1 ½ teaspoons apple cider or white wine vinegar Preheat oven to 375 degre...

On Tuesday, one of my bestest buds from high school invited me to a Fourth of July party in D.C. and she requested that I bring “some food or drink to placate the gods of freedom and democracy.”  However, I couldn’t use the stove since the gas burners have electric starters.  As with  this episode last year , I took the Metro to my brother’s apartment in order to sleep and make cereal bars.