Gothic Granola

Good grey, sir. Lord Earl Meow Grey Cat III likes a proper scone.

If a recipe has a superlative adjective in the title, I raise my eyebrows.  Calling something the "best," "last you'll ever need," "fudgiest," etc., is a matter of opinion. Crustuli delectamentissimus sunt. That photo couldn't be more staged if I tried (and I tried to take a neat photo for once!).

Much like my sourdough recipes, this recipe's usefulness is limited by the equipment you have on hand.  However, you could very well make this outside of a bread machine.  For the first time in three years, I don't have a gas stove, and a countertop bread machine bakes better bread than an electric oven.   The bread machine doesn't warm the apartment like the oven does, though!

It's only seventy-four days until Halloween/my birthday, and it's not too early for pumpkin muffins.  Snow is appearing on the mountains and it snowed (briefly, no accumulation) at 11,500 feet last weekend.  

Hello from 9,000 feet (2,743 meters) above sea level! In between this post and last post , I moved house from the Front Range to the Western Slope.  All TC wanted was muffins once we were in our new place, so I made these blueberry muffins, complete with crunchy sugar on top.

If you have ever read any Buddhist sutras translated to English, you will recognize the title structure:  "Thus I have heard..."

This is not a coffee cake in the sense of something that's covered in streusel. Sorry. This is a coffee cake in the sense of a cake that's not quite sweet enough for dessert but is perfect for a mid-morning or mid-afternoon caffeine break. Not sorry. I don't even drink coffee. I have no clue if this will "go" with coffee or not. Pairing sourdough with sour coffee doesn't make sense to me, but I don't make the rules, I just follow them . This is my first time participating in one of these link-ups.

OMG! It's a hippie lentil loaf! Miriam at Mouthwatering Vegan created this Epic Veggie Loaf . I have nothing to add other than my substitutions:

Regular Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal is not vegan and gluten-free. HOWEVER, Van's makes a reasonably close VGF alternative, Cinnamon Heaven . I reviewed this cereal last year. TC challenged me to make a coffee cake with cinnamon toast crunch. Pinterest yielded several recipes, precious few from scratch. For my junior paper on diets and religion, I picked up a series of essays on women and food, and I recall one that was elaborating on why women in the '50s felt pressured to "do it all": keeping the perfect house, dressing neatly, managing the children, and making dinners with all the new electric gadgets and convenience foods. That drive to use convenience foods is why I find some 1950's cookbooks gross (et tu, ridiculous Sunset cookbook in my grandparents' home library). I think the essay was from this book?

More strawberries and chocolate chips this week. My harshest critic was in town and TC asked me to make him a "moist" baked good (AKA: my other father-in-law, Bandit the dog's owner).

 I found this recipe years ago (2010) soon after becoming vegan. I brought home some agave nectar from the Whole Earth Center in Princeton since I had switched to natural and vegan sweeteners. The picture on the source website looks nothing like the finished product. Although, I suppose if you used the full 1/2 cup of canola oil, the cookies would spread. Did I mention I was also hypersensitive (mentally) about using too much fat in recipes in 2010, too?

Today's quote: "The ghosts you chase you never catch." --John Malkovich Source In looking for an image suited for this quote (or one of those pin-able quote images"), I found a metal song by the same name . Go watch it and support an emerging band with your views.

Every vegan and their mom has a recipe for a berry tart. Because vegan desserts have to be fruit and plant-based, right? Nope. By the way, I learned about this crust recipe from my mother, so there. She made it in December 2012 for a holiday desserts presentation I did for Lawrence Library . My mom made the same crust again as berry mini-pies in for Fourth of July in 2013. These are my fresh berry tarts.  

Mmm, this dessert made me realise how much I miss bread pudding-type desserts! I haven't made any "pain perdu" situations in a while because I have rarely had leftover baked goods, if TC has had any say. Father-in-law gave me two small bottles of Limoncello and said to make something. TC presented it to me as an Iron Chef Challenge. Evaluating what we had on hand, I quickly made a batch of vanilla cupcakes and set some cashews to soaking. Lemon Tiramisu it would be!

The second paleo recipe of late...what is this madness?! One of my neighbors gave me an entire bag of Nutiva coconut flour, and this was the first thing I made with it. The Wednesday farmers market is usually a little thin on goods, but one vendor offers an "all you can fit" bag for $10. I used zucchini in this recipe from the farmers market.

National Chocolate Chip Day is another one of those made-up holidays that must have been made just for bloggers. Actually, I'm pretty sure it's been around since before the Internet since most sites about it seem to reference the original chocolate chip cookie . NCCD is 15 May, and my post is a day late. I went to see Mad Max: Fury Road on Thursday (the other day I usually blog) and didn't decide what to bake for NCCD until yesterday afternoon.

TC kept quoting this line from  The Venture Bros. when I said I would make muffins on Saturday and ended up making them on Sunday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE8J413choE

What you label wheat flour in a half-GF household: POISON!

The Biotics from Mass Effect 2 say, "Take your probiotics!"  Art modified from  Andersoncathy on Deviant Art .  TC and I couldn't find our usual non-dairy probiotics at Sprouts this week, and he's been playing through Mass Effect 1 again, hence this picture. Today's recipe has nothing to do with Mass Effect, unless I said it was some ancient Asari cake recipe. LOL.

Whatever genius came up with this "cooking hack," it's now common knowledge. No less than four blogs (and many more than that) list the same darn recipe, and so, four sources = common knowledge = no need to cite. CAULIFLOWER CARNAGE!!