Gothic Granola

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.  

Flatbread,  pancakes ,  Welsh cakes --griddled breads give me problems. I either burn or undercook them. There is no middle ground. There is, however, old poetry from 2010.

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.

Clearing the table in one fell swoop often makes a mess.

Power, paleo, pumpkin, press, pensamientos . Reading is wonderful. As I'm not driving as much during the workweek, I read for news. I'm going to do what my grandparents on both sides fear about blogs: share my opinion! As if I don't any other week.

They don't pay me to think anymore, so I tend to think hard anyway. When I'm speeding home from closing shift, downing 800 mL to 1 L of water in order to rehydrate while blasting Rage Against the Machine, my mind runs in high gear. It's time to write. It's difficult to be consistent in other areas of life when one's job is inconsistent. Let us begin with this premise. Being a cashier and having a standing sedentary job is no more healthy than being a desk jockey with a sitting sedentary job. The inconsistent hours, workload, and cast of characters is beginning to wear on me. When a job begins to impact my health negatively, in preventable ways, then it's time to go. This is a job, not my career.

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.

Playlist: Evanescence— The Open Door , Fallen (must be something about this time of year ), Rammstein— Rosenrot , Marilyn Manson— Eat Me, Drink Me , Rob Zombie— The Sinister Urge , Clan of Xymox— The Best of Clan of Xymox To complement this musical mélange, I bring you a dessert, the base for which is a  mélange of breads.  I apparently took it upon myself to owe you all earlier this year .  I made something similar in April .

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.

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 .

Hey-o.

Thoughts from lunch break.  The sandwich opposed mindfulness in its first use.  The Earl of Sandwich wanted to do two things at once—eat and play cards, as the story goes.  “What Sandwich is having” facilitates speed of consumption.  Granted, combinations of food aren’t inherently unmindful, and one can eat a sandwich mindfully, focusing all five senses on the object.  Howeer, the sandwich is oft associated—as is the wrap and the Western sushi roll—with grab ‘n’ go fare, meant to be consumed while doing something else (driving, checking email, playing cards).  One’s attention is thus divided and weakened towards both tasks.  One does not appreciate the ingredients of the sandwich as individuals or in harmony when eating and doing something else.

With one baked sweet potato, I made sweet potato pie for a party on Sunday.  I made the pie a day in advance because the filling is unbaked. I made this pie for a potluck birthday party given in honour of the Buddhist nun who leads the meditation group I attend near school.  She’s originally from West Virginia, so I baked the pie in my purple Fiestaware pie plate (Fiestaware’s still  made in America, folks ).  When I brought her a slice, she said “This is pretty good!”

Organised another one of  these  last Saturday.  I took home the leftover white rice from the Indian food.

Two pies. Last week I made a pumpkin mousse pie using the Whole Foods pumpkin mousse recipe , substituting pecans and pumpkin for the cashews and squash (and using less coconut milk), in a raisin-oat piecrust .  ‘Twas mucho good.   Two words: black cocoa.

After I moved out of my dorm, I took stock of my fridge stash at my grandparents’ house and decided to make French toast with the bread odds and ends.  Like the bajillion-and-one vegans who have read  Vegan with a Vengeance , I call mine “Fronch Toast,” too.  However, I did not consult Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s book in the writing of this recipe. 

My toe-screws have been aching—and then there was a weather change.  I felt it yesterday and thought, oh, maybe running for five minutes caused a little achey-achey.  Yesterday was gorgeous blue sky and slight humidity in D.C.  Then today—bam!—dampness.  Bunion surgery is good for something besides removing bursae. 

Snowed in today.  Much thesis-ing, besides making sushi filled with a rice-and-lentil moosh, blending hommos, and baking & chilling coconut cream pie.   At this point, I still owe a "how to frost a cake" post and a "bread pudding" post. Good bring-to-work/class fare: I made these bars many times in spring 2011 since these are a convenient way to use up bananas fast going south or a third of a jar of apple butter or a bit of pumpkin...you get the idea.

Some very good vibes in the kitchen today on the last day of 2011.  I made Bonobo Bread (also known as Cinnamon Pull-Apart Bread), pumpkin quiche, and chocolate cake.  The  quiche  and the  cake  recipes are those previously mentioned on this blog.

Whew!  I feel like I’ve been putting my life on hold.  It’s still on hold 'til I write one more final tomorrow.  Until I can answer the call, though, here’s a recipe, which I ate with pumpkin bread.