Gothic Granola

The old woman nodded as she listened to the soft, bubbling words [of the spirit of the well].  Then she went back to the cottage, her eyes bright with resolve, her step firm with courage. She took water from the sieve and sprinkled it over the doorstep.  When she got inside she saw a cake, dark reddish brown and unappetizing to look at, on the table.  'They didn't even wait for me to come back with the water,' she said to herself.  'They were greedy as well as wicked.  But thanks to the spirit of the well I know what is in that cake.' Geoffry Palmer and Noel Lloyd, "The Horned Witches," Nine Witch Tales, ed. Abby Kedabra (New York: Scholastic Book Services, 1998), 13. There were a few magical things about this cake I baked for my birthday: I still had the book from which the above quote is excerpted and the cake actually  worked this time.  

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.  

It's time for another round of Into It/Over It , the High Altitude Edition.  The point of this type of post is to point out a negative and replace it with a positive (and sometimes just point out positives).  What does a picture of this awesome-yet-undisclosed location have to do with Gothic anything?  If you have ever read any Gothic literature ( Frankenstein ,  The Castle of Otranto ,  Carmilla ,  Dracula , et cetera), they can be read as travel journals, with significant chunks of text devoted to describing landscapes and characters' travels.  I re-read  Carmilla  on a weekend's camping trip, and the descriptions of Styria (region in modern-day Austria and Slovenia) reminded me of the critical angle of Gothic literature as travel journals.

Fun fact, Gothic Granola isn't dead.  Neither am I.  I've been Instagramming my creations but haven't been blogging as I've been creative writing and working on other projects.  Since November 2015 , I have made several kinds of vice cream (vegan ice cream) including: Chocolate Rocky road Mint chocolate chip Pistachio Cherry chocolate chip Kind of whippy vanilla (that's a lot like coco whip )

This post may be best placed on my other blog, Cemetery Spelunking , but it bears mention here. [caption id="attachment_4359" align="aligncenter" width="169"] Stained glass window next to the front door in the narthex of Arlington Metaphysical Chapel; view from the basement stairs.[/caption] When TC and I went mountain bike camping a few weeks ago, one night we hung out with this older gentleman and his dog since they were the only other people at this remote camping spot.  The old man kept playing classic rock and folk that neither TC or I knew (I like Pink Floyd and that's about the extent of my classic rock knowledge).  He kept saying, I want them to play this song at my funeral, playing songs by Cat Stevens , JJ Cale, Jim Crochee, and Lobo. I don't know what song I want played at my funeral, but I did hear this song recently on Pandora, " Without Faith " by ThouShaltNot.  It's perfect for a scene where I plan to kill off a major...

Ginger Orange Booze Cookies, that is.  While I had real ginger in the house, and could have coloured them orange with real turmeric root, I followed TC's suggestion and made a ginger liqueur and triple sec chocolate chip cookie.  Sweetened with agave, vegan, gluten-free, slow-food, housemade, local... No, I'm not trying to up my SEO. I'm being ironic.    

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.

Finally, finally, I have been able to rescue some pictures from my broken WD MyBook external hard drive, and I've reposted several posts from 2012 with pictures this time. I'm not buying WD products anymore due to lack of durability; Seagate HQ is a few miles away, so I can get "local" hard drives from Best Try, LOL. Enough meta-discussion. This is another no-recipe post. Lately, I've been making other people's recipes, and I guess it's a derivative work if I veganise/deglutenise them, but I'm not going to post the full recipes. I made peanut butter cookies and chai shortbread from  Vegan Cookies Invade your Cookie Jar by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. The PB cookies were for TC and I gave away most of the chai shortbread.

This is going to be one of those self-absorbed posts wherein I talk about what I did and not about what I've made. Week before last, TC's mentor asked him to come to DC to work on his house, and TC insisted that I accompany him. We both worked, a lot. While I pulled days in the office with significant overtime, TC put his mentor's house back together (not a small exaggeration there).   Before we left, we saw these two kitties in a dusty window on Main Street.  

Like last post , this post also contains two variations on the same recipe. My grandparents helped TC and me get a nice waffle iron, "one that flips," as TC specified. Previous waffle recipes I have made did not turn out well. There were mitigating factors: too much liquid, not enough liquid, the dynamics of small pans, the problems of converting traditional recipes to vegan and gluten-free. Also, the iron I had until I moved West was drenched with a peculiar sadness; it was never truly "mine." Nevertheless, waffles, with all their nooks and crannies, hold memories. Ownie Mom made chocolate waffles on various occasions and gave us a bag of "chocolate waffle mix" for when my cousins and I went to the OBX with our grandparents. I remember my grandmother soldiering through making vegan waffles for me when I became vegan (the recipe isn't even listed here, it was that terrible and goopy of a recipe I pulled from some website).  My grandparents also introdu...

Change in programming today. My grandparents' (mom's parents) birthdays are in January. This year: As you all know we will be celebrating 75 years of wonderful life.  Since we can't be together for these momentous occasions we thought of this great contest which we hope you will all take part in. Normally, Dad tells you a story every year on his birthday.  This year we would like you to tell us your favorite story about life with us.  It can be from any time, as long as it has special meaning to you. The stories will be available for all to read after we have read them.  Then you can select the story you think wins the trophy. We're supposed to send the stories just to them, but since I'm pretty sure none of my immediate family reads my blog, I'm safe. And if they do, hah, I found you!

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPY5P0TaC4k     "Just walk away...and there will be an end to the horror."

What you put in your body is important, no doubt. From avoiding foods treated with pesticides to minimizing added sugars , and instead cooking whole grains and leafy greens, we can choose to fuel our bodies with foods that will prolong our lives.   Generalities aside, the motivation behind this post is two-fold: one, cosmetics for cosmetic purposes, and two, cosmetics for compassionate purposes. When I became vegan in 2010, I wore makeup: eyeliner, eyeshadow, nail polish, sunscreen, and lipstick.  

My gifts to others were a gift to myself this year for Solstice/Chanukkah/Christmas. I turned my writing time into beading time for the last two weeks in December. Focusing on beading let my mind wander and work out plot issues with my writings and meditate on other matters.  

National Cookie Day is 4 December, which also happens to be an important date in the novel I've been writing since 2006. If you know me in person, you know that I like vampires: old-school, bloodsucking, remorseless, Dracula, Carmilla, The Vampire Lestat type of vampires. None of this Twilight wishy-washy stuff, a little Charlaine Harris (haven't read much of her work, but from what I hear...). Some Hemlock Grove as well, though that book (and excellent Netflix series) is about werewolves, which are cool, too. Back to the point. We need food for the brain as much as we do food for the body. Creativity for me (writing, beading, recipe R&D) feeds me, too. And I like vampires.

I spent a good part of 2013 and early 2014 proofreading a novella for a former co-worker, and he self-published it a few months ago. Read it! White Plastic Butterfly Barette  by Erin Willis.   There's some part of WPBB on the ground in this photo, amongst all my other books (mostly religion books) from August 2013.

Going gluten-free is not a magic bullet to health, contrary to this article from Paleo Magazine . If you have, in fact, experienced real intestinal damage at the hands of bread, pizza, cake, and beer, then your health is going to take a nosedive even after becoming gluten-free. Why? The body doesn't heal overnight.   Mmm, cake... Eww, beer...

By "bad" webinars, I mean, "poor quality," for the following reasons. These reasons are presented in a list format, like many webinars giving health and wellness tips; some representative titles: "Top 5 Must-Do's for Small Business Wellness," "Top 5 Cost Neutral Wellness Program Strategies," and "14 Wellness Predictions for 2014." I've listened to a lot of webinars since entering the world of health and wellness in December 2012, listening to those first live calls with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition .   Grab some stove-popped popcorn and read on. 

I was right about a rant brewing, but my prescient vision was off by a week. Yes, I finally finished reading Frank Herbert's  Dune .  

It's Thursday, and it's time for a roundup of wellness bits and bobs, readers.