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]

If a recipe has a superlative adjective in the title, I raise my eyebrows.  Calling something the "best," "last you'll ever need," "fudgiest," etc., is a matter of opinion. Crustuli delectamentissimus sunt. That photo couldn't be more staged if I tried (and I tried to take a neat photo for once!).

 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 .  

My friend Potter said the above years ago. I blogged about it without stating it in 2011 . Join me in a thought experiment. Nota bene that this thought experiment is in the setting of 20th-21st Century Western Hemisphere society.  

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.

This morning as I ran to the farmers market, I noticed my freshly-loaded iPod shuffle was set on alphabetical sort by song title. Yeh, I didn’t think “Amame” followed “All Because of You.” I prefer to listen to albums in whole chunks with the songs in the artist’s intended order. Having the device on shuffle versus loop would make little difference. I could react in a few ways: 1)     Stay pissed off and complain about it. Take out earbuds in disgust. 2)     Accept it and see how the experience of random alphabetical order sounds. 3)     Change it!

I am very American in the fact that I like my car. Today my car was the instrument through which I received another wakeup call.

Another day, another dollar, another job application, another recipe…lest this gets boring, remember that you are alive, you can move, and you have the use of your five senses and third eye. Reverend Justin Terry’s take-home message from the Sunday evening service at Arlington Metaphysical Chapel was, God is blessing you, whether you can see it or not. But it’s always there.

  Every artist is a cannibal Every poet is a thief Both kill their inspiration And sing about the grief --U2, “The Fly,” from Achtung Baby (1992) Why am I sharing my signature dish? Why not. It’s carried me through pre-ganism (when I was testing out this vegan thang because I thought it would keep me safe from other issues with food…subject for another post). It’s carried me through breakfast, lunch, supper, and snacks as a vegan and likewise when I became gluten-free.

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

For the past three weeks, I have dreamt about the inside of a house. It is not just any house, it is a mansion, a schloss in Bavaria, I decided. Outside the floor-length windows in the main hall, it s always purplish, cloudy dusk over snow-covered, black, rocky mountains. I see the northeastern view. A gallery runs around the inside of the hall, separating first from second floors, but I haven't seen the stairs. Curiously, the walls are either plain dark wood paneling or whitewashed plaster. Different people I know from my current life have appeared in my dreams there. I don't know what it means, other than it's some sort of mashup of the pirate feast and SCA events and Nosferatu and Carmilla.

Though it is now full-blown Lent, I’m sharing my Mardi Gras luncheon because there’s nothing about it that’s sinful or off-limits in the fasting and abstinence sense, as far as I know. I can and will go on at length about how food is not “sinful” and should not cause guilt. Food is neutral. We bring the guilt as a side dish or a sauce. We also have the ability not to partake, but instead to enjoy our treats or what-have-ye mindfully and in appropriate-to-ourselves amounts.

This is attempt number two at vegan, gluten-free challah.  It was too sticky to shape, but it rose like, well, yeast!

Snowed in today.  Much thesis-ing, besides making sushi filled with a rice-and-lentil moosh, blending hommos, and baking & chilling coconut cream pie.   At this point, I still owe a "how to frost a cake" post and a "bread pudding" post. Good bring-to-work/class fare: I made these bars many times in spring 2011 since these are a convenient way to use up bananas fast going south or a third of a jar of apple butter or a bit of pumpkin...you get the idea.

This being the month of January, it’s time I took stock of a few things.  Some people (who are not related to me) have been incredibly good to me in the past few weeks whom I’d like to recognize.