tylik

I'm not even sure what to call this one. I mean, it's lineage is from one of my favorite biryanis, which involved meat and dairy but which has spawned a lot of things I can eat. (And I make a bazillion variants.) But... it has gone a little adrift. Peanuts? Cumin? Suggestions?
(all measurements approximate)
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With all the serious winter weather, I need new biking gloves. My beloved Zone2s are kind of battered, and just not cutting it for biking in this kind of cold and wind. And I didn't get serious REI time in Seattle.

What I want is heavy on the warm and windproof - I'm thinking shell and liner. Semi lobster claw would be fine, but I think I'd prefer the first and second finger separate (and the recumbent being what it is, the thumb side of the first finger gets a lot of wind.) And since I'm probably going to be spending silly amounts of money on glovse, I'd like them to work with capacitative touch screens, because connectivity. (Yes, I can and have modded gloves, I just figure I might as well go for ones that come that way.)

Recs?

While I'm waiting to see if I'm teaching tonight (on the one hand, I have a cold, and I could do with a hot bath and more rest, since I'd like not to be sick when I'm flying out, on the other, I suspect if people don't come it will be because they think we don't have class because the taiji open house is tomorrow, and really, I was totally prepared to have class and it's not that bad of a cold) I figured I'd jot down the current fruit and spice bread that's in the oven, because it smells amazing. It's so nice to get an idea of how you want something to taste, and then just make it.

But, um, it's jotting, because I don't actually measure unless I'm intending to write up a recipe, and I was just cooking.

Place 8" deep ceramic baking dish in oven. (Or whatever you have on hand. Honestly, these make great muffins or drop biscuits, but you have to adjust the baking time.) Heat oven to 350.

1 apple, grated*
1 orange (zest and juice)
generous glugs of maple syrup and cream sherry (don't skimp!)
1/2 t+ cinnamon
1/8 t cloves
1/4 allspice
1/4 ginger ...yeah, or something like that, seriously, spice to taste
1/2 t vanilla extract
1 T olive oil (or other oil - I used to prefer nut oils, but, well)

(stop and taste, and keep in mind that you haven't added any grain yet, so it should be intensely sweet and strongly flavored, and bitter from the orange zest**. If in doubt, add more of something.)

2/3 c pumpkin seeds (or some kind of nut - filberts would be especially nice)
2 c oat bran
2 c whole wheat flour (but buckwheat would also work well - slightly different texture, but not gluten, hey)
1 t baking soda

Resultant dough should be getting stiff, but not dry. Pull out the by now thoroughly heated pan, drizzle in a little more oil and swish it around, mash the dough into it, and return it to the oven.

Bake for an hour, or until a clean knife inserted into the center has a few moist crumbs but isn't doughy.

Now the worst bit is that I didn't make enough to bake a little ramekin full, and I shouldn't cut into it until tomorrow.

* Yeah, micro plane grated apple is probably my favorite base for this sort of thing. Gives vegan baked goods amazing body and texture. The orange dominates.
** I mean, as it should be, and I am kind of sensitive to bitters.

Just a note, concerning my last post.

I'm pretty happy with the conversation that's going on there. (For a bunch of folks, I wish I had the internet doohicky that would allow me to send you chocolate in near real-time. Thank you.)

But it's hard not to notice that it almost entirely has gone over to talking about how to handle harassment in the current context.* Rather than my actual focus, which was what do you do, if anything, about people in the community, people in your social circles, who you know to have histories of sexual assault.**

It's a much harder question. I'm not pretending that I have an answer. A lot of folks, well, my life is arranged in such ways that I don't have to deal with them. (And, of course, I've been careful to arrange my reputation to be known as someone who is likely to hurt you if you try it.) And there are people where really, they seem do have learned something, and I haven't seen anything like that out of them in the last ten years, so maybe it's not a problem any more? I... don't really know if that's adequate.

I fear my own doublethink on this.

* And yeah, when the first response is, essentially "You were assaulted when you were a teenager? Well, what did *you* do?" well, yeah, apparently we're going to have to treat some ground that I'd kind of hoped was already covered.
** BTW, yes, I am using sexual assault for things like grabbing someone's boob or groin at social events without permission. Because that's what it is. I wonder how things would change if the standard to response was not to slap their hand away, and tell them off, and then studiously avoid them (perhaps with a word to the host) but to call the police. One suspects there would be a lot of grousing... but an awful lot less groping, real quickly. But this illustrates the difference between a social context that says this isn't okay, but implicitly accepts that this is going to happen, and one that really enforces this kind of stuff not being okay. I like to think this isn't the only way of going about it, but I think it's worth asking "Why wouldn't I do this?"

1 t ground flax seed
1/4 c boiling water
3/4 c coconut flour
1/2 c cocoa (grenada, better and richer than most)
2 T olive oil (or other oil - I'd use a nut oil if not suddenly impractical)
1/2 t baking soda
1/8 t salt
1 c soy milk
1/4 coconut milk yogurt (as an acid source for the baking soda, mostly)
Stevia to taste (I used Truvia - maybe a teaspoon? And I don't like it that sweet.)

Preheat over to 350.
Mix boiling water into flax seeds, until viscous.
Mix in dry ingredients and oil.
And then mix in wet ingredient.
Put into a 5" round baking dish.

It's currently in the oven, baking at 350. I'm suspecting that I might want to use melted chocolate in the next rev, but this will help create a baseline. Obviously, I'm posting this before it's even done (a weird habit of mine) so it might be terrible, though I'm guessing at least edible.

Hm. I could totally make crepes with coconut flour and flax seed...

A long time favorite book is being re-released through Book View Cafe. http://bookviewcafe.com/bookstore/book/night-calls/

Let me step back for you. Book View Cafe all by itself is one of my favorite things. It's an author's collective that sells DRM free fiction. I mean, really, what more do you want? Quite a few authors are selling their older books, shorter works or things otherwise likely to be unavailable... and increasingly many are using it for new releases as well. I love it.

Going back to Night Calls, though... It's just a ton of fun. A girl growing up in the Michigan territories discovers she has the Gift - which runs in her family, but which her mother has turned away from - and eventually gets trained as a magical practitioner. With lots of random notes about cooking and hunting and tracking and collecting herbs and making beer. And various ghosts and shapeshifters and other random hazards of frontier life. Whee!

It will be on my phone and my phone can read it to me. What else could I ask for?

So there I was, at my bank, with my foot (and shoe) up on the chest high counter, explaining how my bike cleats work. This totally happens to everyone, right? ( Read more... )

Hm.

So I'm thinking of making some maple blackberry hickory nut sticky buns for brunch tomorrow. Because I was going to make sticky buns, and M had really yummy looking blackberries, and "I'm getting them for stick buns" is how I justified them to myself. So... I'd rather crush the berries lightly, and use them directly on the buns, but I'm worried about them being too wet. Thoughts? I could cook them down first but that sounds like they'd end up awfully cooked and work.

(Well, okay, the plan is to use the hickory nuts. But these are the only hickory nuts I have, so I might use walnuts instead if I get greedy.)

It occurs to me that while that last image might be mouthwatering (at least to those who appreciate chantrelles) it is possible that there hasn't been enough cute in my journal recently. So, here, have a baby bunny:
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So, since my last attempt at making tea my tea bush had a difficult winter, so I've been letting it recover and grow out in the sun. Of course, this means the new leaves darken more quickly, so it's something I might want to reconsider later. But on Friday I decided to gather up some of the new leaves, and so I did, picking just the last two at the end of any given twig, and the arranging them on a steamer plate to be steamed for a slow count of 36, and so half enzymatic oxidation (what is usually called fermentation.)


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