Gothic Granola

This year, I avoided my annual crying jag while driving down I-95 for one reason this T-gives & X-mas of 2013: I didn't go home. Why?

I love carbs. Probably because I'm exhausted most of the time (work hard, play hard). This will soon change when I have a stable schedule, about which I am more excited than Samhain and Winter Solstice combined. To make a new routine that revolves around a stable work schedule will help me get grounded and stay grounded. For I know I can jump to higher creative heights when I have a stable base from which to jump. Speaking of jumping:  a spot of exercise with your dear blogger.  This is how I checked my form on one of my favourite moves from INSANITY. Exercising late at night obviously has its effects.

My assignment: Go maketh something tasty with the One-Day Deal item, strawberries. I wanted Mexican food, so yesterday I made strawberry salsa, which included avocado at the behest of the marketing team leader. Mango and pineapple salsas are a thing, so why not strawberry salsa? Aguacates y fresas son frutas tambien.

Rather than quote a lot of Shakespeare, or speak in meta-voice about how much I struggled to write this post (I didn't...I just began writing), I begin at the beginning. What is in a name? As I served this dessert that met the  Health Starts Here  standards for Wednesday's Foodie Call, I refined my description. "Sweet hommos" was a turn-off to a lot of people. Come on, foodies, you'd try garlic ice cream, right? Roasted garlic ice cream would actually be pretty tasty, methinks. "Cookie Dough" confused many people into thinking it was actually raw dough. Nope, it's the flavour. Kind of like "Birthday Cake" ice cream from Coldstone Creamery. It ain't cake; it tastes reminiscent of the real deal. I could go on, and I don't intend to insult the patrons' intelligence. I'll pacify myself with the platitude, "genius is usually misunderstood," wink wink. Anyway, I didn't scale up the dates enough when I used an ent...

The Sticky Rice Saga In winter 2012, my aunt visited a friend of hers who is Thai. The friend made sticky rice for dessert and served it with bananas. My aunt and I tried recreating it with sushi rice and then with genuine Thai sticky rice. By the end of our experimentations, we had about ten pounds of Thai sticky rice in the house and no satisfactory results from the recipes we had.

Sacrifice II My mother would be proud of me. This recipe contains chocolate chips. In the words of one of my fellow team members, “Is it going to be healthy, or good?” when I described the recipe I was going to present for yesterday’s Foodie Call. I remade the cereal bars I made last year for my friend Liz’s Fourth of July shindig . Calling them “Sacrifice to the Gods of Freedom and Democracy” would probably turn off most folk. Here is my recipe for the huge batch (three sheet pans!) of “Trail Treats.” You can customise the crunchy bits and trail mix to your heart’s content.

Seasonal Switch Cliché: when faced with a challenge, go with your strengths. Thinking: when faced with the unknown, what’s in your toolbox?

Stocking the Freezer: Blueberry Cheezecake Blueberry Un-Blues Part II of III Don't you like my academic-style headings of late? The formula is "Gerund Phrase COLON Nouns Nouns Nouns." Or something like that. Add an "OF" phrase and you have it made. "Gothic Granola: Deconstructing and Rebuilding the Nature of Reality" since 2011. This recipe represents another must-do, like every vegan food blogger out there, to make raw cheezecake at some point, primarily using cashews and fresh fruit. Done and done.

Tofu shirataki noodles and I have a contentious relationship. At 20 calories per serving (40 calories in the entire bag), what's not to love, you ask? (If I may put words in your mouth...)