Gothic Granola

Most days, I ride my bike to work. After a few months, I figured out something... Rules for wearing a skirt (of any length) while riding a bike: 1) Don't. 2) Bring safety pins--both to pin up a long skirt before and to fix the inevitable rips afterwards. 3) Lose sense of shame. 4) Wear cute undies because you will flash people. 5) See Rule #1. Especially because of the cold, I've given up on skirts for a while. Soup! Because it's cold outside. There's probably 1,001 variations on some vegan, gluten-free, roasted butternut squash curried soup because it is brainlessly easy to prepare. Even a zombie could make it.

Happy Boxing Day! Because Audrey, Jr demanded sacrifice, the sourdough starter ended up in the traditional Christmas morning breakfast: Mile-High Cinnamon Roll Bread. Coincidentally, my friend from Colorado enjoys the Mile High Cinnamon Roll bread immensely (the capital Denver is the Mile-High city). He chooses to violate it with cream cheese while I like it with Earth Balance. Whatever floats your boat, man. I like my green juice from a pilsner glass; some people prefer mason jars. All together, now...

Happy Solstice! Wishing you a delightful return of the light on the year's longest night, Q Please perform all sacrifices responsibly. :-)

Starter Start-up: Flatbread It was like having a pet. Or a vampire in hibernation. I had to go home every day at lunch, mix water and teff flour, and feed the starter. Methinks I should name it Audrey, Junior.

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 !  

Cooking with Gas | Penne alla Vodka Considering how I grew up on this dish, you might wonder why I needed a recipe. Rules are nice, sometimes. As my high school Honors Biology teacher said, "Rules were meant to be followed." 'Cept when veganising and deglutinising recipes. Then rules are meant to be broken and rebuilt from their component parts into new arrangements. Kind of like proteins/amino acids. Penne alla Vodka modified from  http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ree-drummond/penne-alla-vodka-recipe/index.html 1 pound GF penne pasta (I used brown rice rotelle and lasagne since I had kind of old boxes of each) 1 teaspoon olive oil 1 onion, diced 3 cloves garlic, grated dash sea salt 1 cup vodka (my mom used Stolichnaya; I used Luksusowa, a potato vodka, because I'm not taking chances with grain-based alcohol. 1 14- or 28-ounce can diced tomatoes (I went for the 14 but the 28 would be better) 1 16-ounce bag frozen peas, ...

Part II of Cooking with Gas, a series on recipes featuring hard liquor. If there's half a cup of water to replace 2 eggs, and the recipe is supposed to have alcohol, then that half cup of water is going to be alcohol. 'Nuff said. Had I been pulled over while driving to an appointment with The Local Massage Therapist in Arlington, I probably would've registered above acceptable blood alcohol content after having a maple bourbon donut this morning. Not that I was driving recklessly--these donuts are just particularly alcoholic. The glaze contains a teaspoon of whiskey and the donuts taste like alcohol, most definitely. They're good that way. The people who know these things keep telling me the GF alcohol I find is milder than the conventional types. I guess that's good for me since extremes (salt, sweet, etc.) do a number on me. It was too late last night to figure out an alternate glaze that didn't involve sugar, but I have ideas and 2/3 of a bottle of Queen Jenn...

Cooking with Gas, Part 1B This series is about cooking with hard liquor. The  vodka quinoa muffins  were the first post. This recipe is related by virtue of being alcohol. I used the last of the crappy (for this beer cannot be mentioned without being ridiculed) Redbridge I bought in April that sat in a cooler behind the Abbey for several months in a loaf of beer bread about a week ago. Then I fed the bread to my coworkers and GF friend. Talk about curse reversing...or dispersing. They all said it was dry, and I do not wonder why (besides the obvious, that teff is a very thirsty flour) . Dead hypotheses' dessicated limbs, to use a little William James terminology, break under the weight of live friends. CryptiQue will keep these things in their crypts.