Gothic Granola

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