Gothic Granola

Cast iron pans: sign of a true DIY-er, in this day and age of convenience food and non-stick cookware.  Or a sign of someone who grew up in the Southern or Western United States.  Or the sign of a "foodie" poseur.

This is not a coffee cake in the sense of something that's covered in streusel. Sorry. This is a coffee cake in the sense of a cake that's not quite sweet enough for dessert but is perfect for a mid-morning or mid-afternoon caffeine break. Not sorry. I don't even drink coffee. I have no clue if this will "go" with coffee or not. Pairing sourdough with sour coffee doesn't make sense to me, but I don't make the rules, I just follow them . This is my first time participating in one of these link-ups.

This is not a coffee cake in the sense of something that's covered in streusel. Sorry. This is a coffee cake in the sense of a cake that's not quite sweet enough for dessert but is perfect for a mid-morning or mid-afternoon caffeine break. Not sorry. I don't even drink coffee. I have no clue if this will "go" with coffee or not. Pairing sourdough with sour coffee doesn't make sense to me, but I don't make the rules, I just follow them . This is my first time participating in one of these link-ups.

What you label wheat flour in a half-GF household: POISON!

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 . 

Due to holiday baking and general baking, I ran out of coconut sugar. For 2015, I'm still on the low-sugar kick (as in minimizing white sugar, organic sugar, the granulated stuff) because it was very helpful in maintaining a stable mood. Don't need to throw off my meditation practice because I've been eating blood sugar spiking foods, eh?  

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.  

**GOTHIC GRANOLA PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT** This blog is in a serious state of reconstruction. We have switched from Blogger to Wordpress thanks to the patient and thorough guidance of Jason at Site Image Studios . Themes will change pretty much daily. It's like shopping for clothes...no, wait, shopping for clothes is way more straightforward. Jason made the technical side of transferring the GG domain to a different registrar, setting up my email, and configuring Google Apps utterly painless. My site will be ready to expand should I use it for health coaching as well, and I have more features than ever before. Gothic Granola lives on, thanks to Site Image Studios!     Toys! My Polly Pocket restaurant set from 1992 or 1993 looks like a burger restaurant. But it’s vegan and gluten-free. Literally, because it is plastic. Literally, because there’s nothing to eat, just like at a vegan and gluten-free place. Hah. No, it's vegan and gluten-free because I say so. Good veggie burg...

My dear cousin K8 ( @akateisakate ) forwarded me three Brene Brown TEDx talks today and they were probably the most valuable audio I heard all day.  Vulnerability  and  Critics  and  Shame .  Go, listen. I'll be here when you get back, with hankies.

Let us repeat lesson number one of living with food allergies: You will not be fed. Ever. So get used to it and plan ahead. You will save yourself time, money, and headache. If you learn anything from reading this blog, this is the lesson, hence why I repeat it so often. If you learn anything else, it's that with a little planning and thinking, being vegan and gluten-free can be as normal as breathing oxygen.

"Fear of the Unknown" by Siouxsie and the Banshees One of my personal rules: don't give out problems unless you have solutions or suggestions!

Flatbread,  pancakes ,  Welsh cakes --griddled breads give me problems. I either burn or undercook them. There is no middle ground. There is, however, old poetry from 2010.

From the mountaintop of the juice fast, everything is clearer. I assert no moral superiority based on the supposed "purity" of my diet. I revisited the  Porrij Bread  from June 2013 for a different audience, with different porrij, different leavening, and different music. Funny, I spoke about fasting in that post and that's what I'm doing now. I wrote about my playlists and I considered highlighting the absurdity of my current one (including Shiny Toy Guns, Celine Dion, London Symphony Orchestra, Combichrist, and Electric Six). This time 'round I'm making this on request (more like demand) for more bread like  Mile-High Cinnamon Roll Bread .

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?

Starter Start-up: Flatbread It was like having a pet. Or a vampire in hibernation. I had to go home every day at lunch, mix water and teff flour, and feed the starter. Methinks I should name it Audrey, Junior.

Cooking with Gas | Penne alla Vodka Considering how I grew up on this dish, you might wonder why I needed a recipe. Rules are nice, sometimes. As my high school Honors Biology teacher said, "Rules were meant to be followed." 'Cept when veganising and deglutinising recipes. Then rules are meant to be broken and rebuilt from their component parts into new arrangements. Kind of like proteins/amino acids. Penne alla Vodka modified from  http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ree-drummond/penne-alla-vodka-recipe/index.html 1 pound GF penne pasta (I used brown rice rotelle and lasagne since I had kind of old boxes of each) 1 teaspoon olive oil 1 onion, diced 3 cloves garlic, grated dash sea salt 1 cup vodka (my mom used Stolichnaya; I used Luksusowa, a potato vodka, because I'm not taking chances with grain-based alcohol. 1 14- or 28-ounce can diced tomatoes (I went for the 14 but the 28 would be better) 1 16-ounce bag frozen peas, ...