Gothic Granola

 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?

On Saturday, we took a road trip to the highest incorporated town in North America: Alma, Colorado .  

Music of the moment:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl3vxEudif8

If you have known and corresponded with me for any length of time, at some point you will receive a picture of a written page instead of a typed message. In the case of my dear friend KJC, I sent her fourteen-page letters composed over several days and Metro rides last fall, pretty much every week. Writing is more efficient for me than typing, though I type faster than I write. Not all efficiency is speed, however. Writing with pen and paper satisfies me physically, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally more than typing (though there of course are times where my graphomania requires digital paper and ink, and much of it). Nay, while I may seem to undergo Luddite fits in which I shun technology, generally I am amenable to the shiny devices (phone, compy, iPad, iPod, camera) and the connectivity they provide. I just make them work for me.

They really do. I served over 250 squares of cacao goji hemp protein bars on Wednesday for Foodie Call. This week's theme was Whole Body, the supplements department. I modified this superfood bar from Earthsprout , having bookmarked the idea when Eleanor included it in her newsletter earlier this year.

Four Pieces of Advice What did my mother teach me how to do? What didn’t my mother teach me how to do?! Let’s not go there. We are spiritual beings having a material experience, and material experiences have limitations. Meta-discussion out of the way (not sorry, as a religion scholar, I must always make such concessions), here’s a recipe and the advice.

Instead of chocolate chips in your breakfast, have some raw cacao nibs: crunchy, tasty antioxidants!   Instead of riding the white sugar roller coaster from some cookie-lookalike cereal, enjoy a chocolate-oat-nut mélange that will power you through the morning or the rest of your workday, if you’re like me and enjoy granola for lunch a few times a week.

You can burn peanut butter.  I was melting peanut butter for the granola I made last weekend and while assembling the rest of the granola, I had it on the burner over high heat, and I burned it.  Oh well, char adds flavour!  Besides, the peanut butter was showing its true Goth nature by showing up to the granola party wearing black.

Part II of III for food involving vegan and GF beer. For when you have the munchies or need the hair of the dog.

This is Pants

I am officially no longer defined by my secondary education!  Says me.  Only while driving home from school on Tuesday after graduation did I realise that I have the rest of my life ahead of me.  Yes, I realise there are a tonne of linguistic and logical pitfalls in that statement and I have my education to thank for recognising that.  Sigh.  Three clichés: the mind is a terrible thing to waste/too much education can be a bad thing/ too much work and too little play makes Q a dull cat. Train Wreck Granola Like the great train crash at Crush , I ran three granola recipes together since I wanted to make granola and to use up some two-year-old candied ginger.  The ginger is as old as the length of time I’ve worked at my former student job; it’s been frozen more or less continuously since then. Works consulted: Erin McKenna, “Granola,” in Babycakes Covers the Classics: Gluten-free Vegan Recipes from Donuts to Snickerdoodles (New York: Clarkson ...