Gothic Granola

Pancakes, in general, are my culinary nemesis.

I just finished watching The Neon Demon , and I had the same squeamish feeling while attempting to eat a cherimoya as I have just now.  Spoiler alert: The Neon Demon involves human blood ingestion. [caption id="attachment_5324" align="aligncenter" width="223"] I'm afraid of blood, but I write about vampires.[/caption]

This is not sorbet.  You have been warned.

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

Cast iron pans: sign of a true DIY-er, in this day and age of convenience food and non-stick cookware.  Or a sign of someone who grew up in the Southern or Western United States.  Or the sign of a "foodie" poseur.

Pistachio buns, meet pistachio cake.

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!

Running with scissors is fun until you fall.   via GIPHY So is corporate wellness: it sounds like a tonne of fun, with stretch breaks on the clock, healthy snacks in the break room, employer-sponsored massages, health coaching, exercise classes...

The old woman nodded as she listened to the soft, bubbling words [of the spirit of the well].  Then she went back to the cottage, her eyes bright with resolve, her step firm with courage. She took water from the sieve and sprinkled it over the doorstep.  When she got inside she saw a cake, dark reddish brown and unappetizing to look at, on the table.  'They didn't even wait for me to come back with the water,' she said to herself.  'They were greedy as well as wicked.  But thanks to the spirit of the well I know what is in that cake.' Geoffry Palmer and Noel Lloyd, "The Horned Witches," Nine Witch Tales, ed. Abby Kedabra (New York: Scholastic Book Services, 1998), 13. There were a few magical things about this cake I baked for my birthday: I still had the book from which the above quote is excerpted and the cake actually  worked this time.  

I have been making the same carb-a-licious muffins  lately, so how about something different? Another exercise playlist , perhaps? Yes!   I miss my squirrel "training partners" (and I did bribe them with peanuts) and my outdoor exercise space sometimes.  

Hey, it's my birthday! I'm going to revel in my Early Onset Grumpiness . via GIPHY  

There are some cookies that just get down on their knees and beg to be rewritten.  Not such a tough cookie now, are you?! [caption id="attachment_5007" align="aligncenter" width="225"] MINE, says Poppet bun.[/caption]

My original favourite banana muffin is cornflake banana muffins , but VGF cornflakes are a treat at USD $7.99 a 26.4 ounce bag.  The below muffins I used to make all the time for my student job folks in a myriad of variations, including using apple butter, more or less banana, various types of nuts and dried fruit, in bars or in muffins.

It's time for another round of Into It/Over It , the High Altitude Edition.  The point of this type of post is to point out a negative and replace it with a positive (and sometimes just point out positives).  What does a picture of this awesome-yet-undisclosed location have to do with Gothic anything?  If you have ever read any Gothic literature ( Frankenstein ,  The Castle of Otranto ,  Carmilla ,  Dracula , et cetera), they can be read as travel journals, with significant chunks of text devoted to describing landscapes and characters' travels.  I re-read  Carmilla  on a weekend's camping trip, and the descriptions of Styria (region in modern-day Austria and Slovenia) reminded me of the critical angle of Gothic literature as travel journals.

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.

Fun fact, Gothic Granola isn't dead.  Neither am I.  I've been Instagramming my creations but haven't been blogging as I've been creative writing and working on other projects.  Since November 2015 , I have made several kinds of vice cream (vegan ice cream) including: Chocolate Rocky road Mint chocolate chip Pistachio Cherry chocolate chip Kind of whippy vanilla (that's a lot like coco whip )

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

Ginger Orange Booze Cookies, that is.  While I had real ginger in the house, and could have coloured them orange with real turmeric root, I followed TC's suggestion and made a ginger liqueur and triple sec chocolate chip cookie.  Sweetened with agave, vegan, gluten-free, slow-food, housemade, local... No, I'm not trying to up my SEO. I'm being ironic.    

...Because 99.9% of the food produced in this household befits the adjective "mysterious," to the uninitiated.