Gothic Granola

If you have ever read any Buddhist sutras translated to English, you will recognize the title structure:  "Thus I have heard..."

**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...

Call me biased and call me teetering on the fine edge of victim-blaming, but really, one can choose not to be offended in this fairly innocuous trend:  #fitfam and the public celebration of physical fitness. I read this Elite Daily article and wanted to post my meal-prepped box of lunches all the more  (Then I stopped posting. More on that later) . FitFam is about working towards goals that have to do with physical fitness: for improved health, for better quality of healthy life, for competitions, for improved physical appearance.  I can do yoooooga!

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 .

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.

For weeks now, I’ve been wanting to give yeast bread a go at the Abbey in order to test a jar of yeast, to see if it was still active. Bread creation satisfies me on many levels. This is hardly a new observation. Something I also find satisfying is making playlists and burning them to CDs.

Ah, it’s so nice to listen to music with lyrics again.  “Love will Tear Us Apart” by Joy Division fits with today’s recipe and sermon. I remade Columba di Pasqua as bubble bread or monkey bread or pull-apart bread because I am now steward of Lady Neona’s Bundt pan. Besides, I wanted to shape the CDP this year, but I also wanted pull-apart bread. Rather than risk a flat dove, I went for a different shape (and recipe) option.

Stretch it, psyche! “Everyone comes to shame through a people that cannot profit them, that brings neither help nor profit, but shame and disgrace” (Isaiah 30:5, NRSV).  Yes, dear readers, like many before me, I’m doing a circular, self-referential hermeneutic of the Bible.  Speak English?  I’m reading my life into and from the Bible and/or other sacred text I find on the path.

Maximus, the male of my aunt and uncle’s pair of cats, likes to hang out with me when I meditate in the morning.  When I switched from exercising on the ground floor to the top floor of the house (gotta follow the WiFi, man), he became confused and meowed loudly at me.  Max caught on soon enough and knows to find me upstairs.

Post I of III on vegan and gluten-free beer Pizza and beer…well, for me, I’d like root or birch beer to drink with pizza, not the hard stuff.  However, beer-braised onions are one of the summer grilling season’s delights that I miss terribly.  This recipe would be a tonne of fun to make on the grill, but, alas, no outdoor grill for Q.  Nevertheless, there was about a cup and a half of Bob’s Red Mill All-Purpose GF blend to be used, and use it I would in a savoury application.

Zucchini…and tahini.  Oh yesh.  Last year I made a zucchini-tahini cornbread for breakfast.  I mentioned making tahinopita before, and it was a quickbread version .  This is my yeasted tahinopita variation.

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

Some very good vibes in the kitchen today on the last day of 2011.  I made Bonobo Bread (also known as Cinnamon Pull-Apart Bread), pumpkin quiche, and chocolate cake.  The  quiche  and the  cake  recipes are those previously mentioned on this blog.