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]

This is not sorbet.  You have been warned.

Pistachio buns, meet pistachio cake.

Much like my sourdough recipes, this recipe's usefulness is limited by the equipment you have on hand.  However, you could very well make this outside of a bread machine.  For the first time in three years, I don't have a gas stove, and a countertop bread machine bakes better bread than an electric oven.   The bread machine doesn't warm the apartment like the oven does, though!

I have been making the same carb-a-licious muffins  lately, so how about something different? Another exercise playlist , perhaps? Yes!   I miss my squirrel "training partners" (and I did bribe them with peanuts) and my outdoor exercise space sometimes.  

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

...Because 99.9% of the food produced in this household befits the adjective "mysterious," to the uninitiated.

Tiny Carrot! All the kale is gone from the garden; it got eaten by bugs. And now the apartment is filled with ladybugs--where were you a few weeks ago? I also pulled up some tiny beets; clearly the root veggies need more time underground.

If you have some Italian in your heritage and you have two X chromosomes, you should know how to make sauce. And pizzelles...you should know how to make pizzelles , tiramisu , and cannoli.

Continuing the theme of "so basic it shouldn't need a recipe and I'd rather be writing" posts, here is the vegan and gluten-free fried rice recipe TC makes for me when we have leftover fried rice.

Ordering at Chinese Restaurants when you're Gluten-Free Pro Tip: Order the dish you desire without soy sauce or any sauce at all (steamed, you're even safer.) Do a little research, figure out how the dish is made. Understanding how certain dishes are prepared helps you understand possible sources of gluten-containing products. Finally, if you don't care about cooking, heaven help you if you're gluten-free. Or Maybe Not The continual availability of new gluten-free products hasn't ceased to amaze me. People with actual Coeliac disease make up less than 1% of the US population , yet the GF foods market is valued at >$10.5 billion (in 2013) . Since I pinpointed my gluten sensitivity in May 2011, I went from barely being able to find sorghum flour at ShopRite to being able to buy GF (and vegan) bread at Trader Joe's, Whole Foods (duh), Sprouts, and Safeway.

OMG! It's a hippie lentil loaf! Miriam at Mouthwatering Vegan created this Epic Veggie Loaf . I have nothing to add other than my substitutions:

Regular Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal is not vegan and gluten-free. HOWEVER, Van's makes a reasonably close VGF alternative, Cinnamon Heaven . I reviewed this cereal last year. TC challenged me to make a coffee cake with cinnamon toast crunch. Pinterest yielded several recipes, precious few from scratch. For my junior paper on diets and religion, I picked up a series of essays on women and food, and I recall one that was elaborating on why women in the '50s felt pressured to "do it all": keeping the perfect house, dressing neatly, managing the children, and making dinners with all the new electric gadgets and convenience foods. That drive to use convenience foods is why I find some 1950's cookbooks gross (et tu, ridiculous Sunset cookbook in my grandparents' home library). I think the essay was from this book?

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).

When Greek yoghurt became popular a few years ago (or to use my husband's phrase, it "blew up"), naturally bakers of all stripes put it in their products. Three tablespoons, though, is superfluous. It's not enough to add flavor or a preponderance of acidity to make a cake rise, especially when the leavening agent is baking powder, not the basic (as in pH, for all of you who failed chemistry) baking soda ( Na HCO 3 ). But I may just be an old vegan codger. Greek yoghurt does make good traditional cheesecake, and I used to eat a lot of it before I became lactose-intolerant. Anyway, strawberries were on sale at Lucky's.

Today's quote: "The ghosts you chase you never catch." --John Malkovich Source In looking for an image suited for this quote (or one of those pin-able quote images"), I found a metal song by the same name . Go watch it and support an emerging band with your views.

Not much is new around here. Last weekend we hiked at my husband's stepfather's family property and we just returned from camping at said property this weekend. Pants and Pomely had fun!

The "recipe of the week" is another Meowlex request. I was watching the episode of Alton Brown's Good Eats where AB makes cinnamon rolls, a citrus ginger ring, and monkey bread. TC asked for monkey bread, aka: monkey brains, bubble bread, or pull apart bread.  

National Chocolate Chip Day is another one of those made-up holidays that must have been made just for bloggers. Actually, I'm pretty sure it's been around since before the Internet since most sites about it seem to reference the original chocolate chip cookie . NCCD is 15 May, and my post is a day late. I went to see Mad Max: Fury Road on Thursday (the other day I usually blog) and didn't decide what to bake for NCCD until yesterday afternoon.

Vegans go to some extreme lengths to make food that resembles animal products. Just challenge someone to go vegan or give up alcohol and you will see the deep emotional bonds humans form with certain food preparations (goat cheese! applewood-smoked bacon! craft beer! mom's apple pie!).    This is some kind of chicken? Or sausage? According to my family, it was tasty...for dead flesh. /vegansnark