Gothic Granola

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.