Gothic Granola

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]

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

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.  

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.

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.

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).

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

Cornbread, cornbread, always will be mine... Yeah, that was an attempt to play on And One's " Military Fashion Show ." "Girlfriend's girlfriends never could be mine," girlfriend = GF, GF also = gluten-free, get it? I made so much cornbread (like, a batch a week) when I first became gluten-free in 2011. My recipe then was heavily fruit-based , though I've made other variations since, including applesauce-really-fast , basil-beer , and blueberry . 

I actually don't have a sermon screed today, which probably means one is brewing. I finished Beachbody INSANITY for the second time this morning. Like a customer at WFM said last year, it's harder the second time around. Indeed. This time, though, I didn't go as extreme, and I don't think the absence of INSANITY will make me go, well, insane. I plan to finish September with Blogilates  and yoga. October I will do the Blogilates October workout calendar, and since I'm used to doing an hour workouts, I'll do all the videos each day. November I may do P90X all the way through since I exercise outside and I may have to move indoors, for which P90X is perfect.  

Before I get to my screed on this poorly-written original recipe I found for grain-free banana muffins, I will discuss other problematic bits from last year.

Greetings from Colorado! I've been busy accomplishing things since April of which I am proud, in no particular order:

Greetings from Colorado! I've been busy accomplishing things since April of which I am proud, in no particular order:

Part I of Cooking with Hard Liquor Vegan pica. That's all that justifies this recipe. I wanted to make

Carnival squash smells like candy while baking. It ends up being milder when baked in quickbread. These would make good muffins as the maple syrup isn't quite at dessert-level sweetness.

I really frickin' like muffins. I'm sure there's a double entendre in there, but I care not. When I first printed the recipe for these muffins, I picked it up at the printer in the Loughlin Hall basement and then sat by the laundry room to do my Biblical Hebrew homework. A dorm denizen was listening to some alternative rock over his compy speakers. After a few minutes, I raised my voice to get his attention and asked who was the artist. Surprised at being interrupted, he responded it was Arcade Fire. Being a Luddite or a traditionalist, I didn't have my compy for BH homework, and I scribbled the band name on the top of the recipe. Confession: I used most of my print quota for recipes since I printed two pages per sheet and double sided for most readings.

Avast! Happy International Talk like a Pirate Day!  Throwback Thursday, circa 2007, when I began celebrating ITLAPD by wearing my pirate shirt to school. I raise a mug of tea, stolen off a British schooner, to ye.

Blueberry Un-Blues: Blueberry Blue Cornbread Measure twice, cut once, as the adage goes. Measure once, make it, measure again, remake it, I say. Seeing blueberry cornbread “by the pound” at work made me want to make my own, with whole grain flours. In the first iteration, I used all coarse-grind blue cornmeal to make it truly blue.

Sing with me, to the tune of Greensleeves : What slime is this, quite chauvinist, into my lap is creeping? Whom cannot bear what is not square nor suffer sable clothing? This, this is vileness no tolerance for difference. Haste, haste to breed them out this slime, this fear of others. --After “What Child is This,” by William C. Dix,1865

“I am my own leader” read one of the affirmations I received this week from  The Virtues Project .   On Sunday when I arrived home from my walk, my aunt’s copy of  Watchmen , the graphic novel by  Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons , caught my eye.  I began to read it, knowing that it’s one of those comics I should probably have read because of the gaming/sci-fi/geek/artistic circles in which I rotate.  One slogan graffitied on a wall in an early frame stuck out: “Who will watch the Watchmen?”

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.