Gothic Granola

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.

For those times when you don't want to spend $4.99 (and up) for vegan mac and cheeze from a box, DIY.

Cake and smoothies, cake and smoothies...they're all I seem to have posted about lately, and they are amongst what I eat, pretty much every day.  Let's get real about energy drinks. While all the B vitamins, taurine, caffeine, and sugar in Monster give you a temporary boost (and a serious crash), energy drinks don't address the real issue(s) underlying fatigue. Don't want to go to sleep? Or do you just not want to wake up because of X, Y, Z happening the next day? Feeling powerless to solve a problem and so you can't sleep but lie awake worrying about it? Daily tasks not challenging enough so you have excess energy? Think about that the next time you find yourself reaching for that fourth cup of coffee or that Red Bull. Constricting your blood vessels with caffeine probably isn't the long-term solution to why you're feeling tired. I'm not you, so I don't know what's going on in your life. You know your life best; you have the power to adjust thin...

...For when you have cranberries, but sauce seems like too much of a project and pie or bars or muffins are really too much of a project. Juice is also a project. But you have to eat breakfast, right? Why not make a smoothie?

TC had surgery last week and has been drinking all the smoothies. While I haven't made this one for him yet, here is the pineapple-loaded smoothie I plan to make for him.     Why pineapple? Pineapple contains bromelain, an enzyme shown to reduce inflammation. Since post-surgery care involves keeping swelling and inflammation to a minimum, this smoothie is a good way to get some natural inflammation-reducing bromelain in your system. Feel free to add a scoop of protein powder if smoothies are all your "patient" will eat.

I learned a trick this week, and I'm going to extrapolate several explanations for why it works.[1] Then I came up with a tea drink, and a way to make my date-based chocolate syrup.

I was right about a rant brewing, but my prescient vision was off by a week. Yes, I finally finished reading Frank Herbert's  Dune .  

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...

Having your head stuck up your ass so far you can't see is the wrong kind of flexibility.