June should have brandished a cleaver

If the temperature is under 80ºF the oven is able to be used. In rare instances I’ll bake something when I could easily just set a metal box outside and let the sun work for me, but like I said – thats rare. Yesterday I felt the need to bake something for my housemate/roommate/bedmate – boyfriend I suppose. I don’t know where this domesticity comes from.

Apparently I have June Cleaver somewhere in my blood. But those genes don’t mix well with the feminist hippie ones. I don’t like relationship terms – ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend’ make me think I’m twelve again and ‘partner’ makes me think John Wayne is talking to me. And I regularly threaten, lovingly, that I’d stab my darling with a broken bottle if he ever told me to get him a beer – though he never would even if I didn’t have such a maniacal look in my eyes.

I think it comes down to me wanting to do something nice for someone else. Its more like taking treats to the shop than to him. I like visiting a bunch of surly mechanics and giving them sweets. Today’s delicacies were an invention using what was in the house since I am completely broke – and will be that way for a while.

Monkey Bars – adapted from this blondie recipe.

Ingredients

1 large frozen, thawed, mashed banana

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup canola oil

1 Tablespoon vanilla

1 Tablespoon molasses

1/4 cup peanut butter?

1 1/4 cups flour (1/2 c. whole wheat, 3/4 c. white AP)

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup choc chips

1/2 cup walnuts

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 and line an 8×9 brownie pan with parchment paper and set aside (if no parchment is handy, spray w/ non stick cooking spray or brush lightly with margarine or canola oil)

In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking soda and salt.

In a large bowl mix banana and sugar with a strong fork or wooden spoon. Add oil, vanilla, molasses, and pb.

Stir the dry ingredients into the wet. Fold in chocolate chips and walnuts.

Pour batter into the brownie pan, spread with a spoon or spatula. Bake for 40-50 minutes until top is firm and brown and a knife comes out clean when stabbed into the center. Let cool completely and devour.

Maybe baking all this is just an excuse for me to eat some of the batter.

Vegetables

Today turned out to be a beautiful day. A day I feel foolish for wasting. Yes I cleaned and walked the dog, enjoyed the sun as I hung up sheets. But it wasn’t until later in the day that I really wanted to go for a ride and then I couldn’t because of an obligation to our CSA.

Our lovely blue house is vegetable central on Tuesday afternoons. All the boxes (3 of them) are dropped off at our house and the owners come here to collect their vitamins and minerals. The perks are we get the most beautiful of the produce. The lettuce we got today is bigger than my head and just, well I’ll just give you a picture.

Clockwise from that beautiful lettuce are fennel, a bag of cooking greens (chards, kales, etc.), a bag of snap peas and carrots, a single squash blossom that I have no idea what to do with, two kohlrabi, two beets, 4 onions, a handful of sage thats actually from last week, a small broccoli, and a bag of purple basil.

We split this bag with a friend and have trouble consuming half this. I can assure you we will have salad tonight though. The exciting thing about this is I have to experiment with new things. Today I was on a mission to use up the rest of the veggies from last week which consisted of snap peas that I’d forgotten about. And this my friends is why I love the internet. A quick google and I give you: Minted Snap Peas! I left out the onion and used granulated garlic.

I can’t stop eating them.

The Summer of Sourdough

I’m no longer an herbivore, I an a carbivore. We had a windfall of bread and it now sneaks into every meal, every snack, every foray into the kitchen for water. This overload of wheat stalls my baking though. I can’t bring myself to make cardamom buns or treats because we have enough food already. Not to mention we are now getting our CSA box so my almost daily trips to the grocery store have stopped. Thankfully chlorophyll doesn’t act the same way as beta carotene or I would have a lovely chartreuse sheen by now.

June may be upon us but it doesn’t feel like it. June is usually heavier, or so I thought. We haven’t had any excruciating days. In fact its been beautiful and I’m beginning to worry that I was making things up when I spouted off all those soliloquies about how terrible summer was. Maybe June is out to prove me wrong. Apparently I just pissed her off – probably has something to do with the fact that it isn’t technically summer yet. I should have been directing my irritation towards July this whole time.

Oh Boy

It appears all my enthusiasm goes into my school work and not into my blogging. Which, for once, is true. I have so much work to do every day that I have time to check my email, the PPK, and continue reading articles from the thirties and theories about social stratification. Every once in a while I get some cookies made – like the 1917 War Ration cookies I made for my History class!

I’m able to walk again, I’m almost done with school, and I promise I will get my camera out.

Hobbled

My return to school has certainly had ups and downs. I love both my classes, content and professors alike. But I somehow injured my foot and have been hobbled for about a week now. I’m not sure if its just a strained muscle or a stress fracture. Either way its been on my mind a lot lately. I can’t walk and bike in this beautiful weather so I am relegated to stumping down to the bus stop at the end of the block. 

On the up side, my handsome, strapping young boyfriend is back from the desert just in time to save me from hurting myself any more. Between the foot, the burns from cooking, and the finger smashed in a window I was well on the way to self destruction. Hopefully my streak of bad luck has come to an end. 

Tomorrow we plunge forward into WWI and I continue my afternoons full of homework and being sedentary. I feel like the average American. And its killing me.

Books and Coffee Cake

I read Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” last Thursday (yes I read the entire thing in five hours) and I can’t stop talking about it to everyone I see. So after work yesterday I decided I really need a personal copy since the one I read is from the ISU library. And lucky me, I happen to work in the same shopping center a the oh so wonderful Half Price Books. I can’t tell you how much I love this place, how many books its gotten me for class and leisure or how many coffees its bought me when I return those few books that just don’t want to live out their lives on my bookshelves.

We closed up shop and I walked to the book heaven with a list in hand and a bank account with a brand new pay check in it. I found “The Road” and also picked up “Geek Love” by Katherine Dunn. Unfortunately they did not have “Lolita” which was also on my list. But to slightly make up for that they have a pristine copy of “The Joy of Vegan Baking”. As if I need any more cookbooks. But I was flush with imaginary cash and splurged on a ten dollar cookbook.

The time since that purchase has been filled with play time with my nieces and reading “Nickel + Dimed” for class with a few brief moments to flip through JoVB in its entirety. I had to make something before I left my mom’s house though. You see, she has all my baking pans, tools, and the space/dishwasher to take care of my haphazard style of cooking. 

So I present you with the cinnamon coffee cake modded to become a rhubarb coffee cake. Same recipe thats in the book except doubled with 2 cups of chopped rhubarb and an additional 1/2 cup of flour.

Wanna see my ride?

Its got two wheels and a few gears. 

I like to chat on a vegan forum here on the ol’ internet. By chat I mean I’m borderline addicted to it. The thread about bikes there convinced me to take a few pictures of my sweetheart’s fleet. I say that because technically only one bike is mine. I just pillage and thieve from his well stocked larder. I figured I might as well share some photos here as well. These are basically ripped off the other post because I’m too lazy to rewrite all that code.

Here’s the garage:

Scout, the Cannondale I’ve been riding this week
The gravel cruiser Nick just built a few weeks ago for a very small amount of money. 
The fixie I’m prone to stealing.
And the Karate Monkey that Nick rode for the Arrowhead Ultra Marathon.

Classes

I’m officially done with the spring semester. I have nine days to relax before going back to the grindstone. Even pressed a bit harder this time since my two classes will be compressed into less than a month. This is what will be entertaining me, enlightening me, and hopefully educating me…

Hist 360. U.S. 1900 to 1945. (3-0) Cr. 3.Prereq: Sophomore classification. America in transition and crisis: Progressivism, World War I, the twenties, the Great Depression, and World War II.

Soc 331. Social Class and Inequality. (3-0) Cr. 3. F.S.SS.Prereq: 130 or 134. Social stratification and processes resulting in social and economic inequalities; implications of status, class, and poverty for people of different races, ethnicities, and gender.

…while hopefully not stressing me too much (this is a preposterous idea).

I am excited however. I’m the kind of person who will walk through the university bookstore and find good books then find out which classes they are for so I can hopefully take them at some point. 

Along with these two classes I’m hoping to embark on my first independent study. Now I’ve done independent minded courses through correspondence and online classes. Those were a struggle for myself since I am a professional procrastinator. But this one. This one should be different. Crossing fingers, toes, and every other movable limb I will be traveling the highways and byways with my dad in his Peterbilt. Writing essays, taking pictures, and documenting life on the road. Truckstop food, driving for hours on end, and checking more states off my list of places I’ve been. If all goes as planned I’ll write a blog as part of my grade. Cross a few fingers and wish me luck.

The FUTURE!

In a little over seven months I will graduate college (hopefully). And into the real world I go. I have no idea what I will do nor am I all that worried. I refuse to be bullied into despair by the economy, the mindless work week, or my mom.

Despite everything I’ll be happy. Because really, my requirements for happiness are pretty slim. 

- My puppy-head.

- My actual dog (plus a part-time lab).

- A kitchen with an oven and flour/sugar/oil – all I need to bake.

- My bicycle in all her green glory. 

- Road trips chalked up on the highways of the US.

- Visits from far-flung friends.

See, no worries. But I still have to make it through the end of this semester. And with that, au revoir.

The Secret to Good Grades

Brownies! Or maybe baked goods in general. It also helps to go to class, study, ask questions, in general be interested and enthused, but treats are also helpful. 

For my presentation last week on the cocoa trade I figure I had to make brownies. Honestly the entire reason I chose that topic was the possibility of bringing treats for my 15 minute powerpoint presentation. So here they are.

These are tester brownies so I can’t share the recipe. But they are topped with decadent Mayan ganache that I mixed up. And that my friends I can share a recipe for. Well, as best I remember.

Mayan Ganache

(Mayan in the western tradition of naming any chocolate with spice additions ‘Mayan’ or ‘Mexican’) 

10 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips (mine were Sunspire Fair Trade)

6 2/3 ounces soy creamer*

Heat creamer until just starting to bubble around the edges. Move off heat and add chips. Let sit for several (i.e. 3-6) minutes. Slowly start stirring until all the chocolate is melted and incorporated. Let chill uncovered in the refrigerator for at least two hours. Once completely cooled add the following:

1/3 c. cocoa powder (preferably dutch process)

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. chipotle peppep, powdered

1/8 tsp. anise seed, powdered

Mix the following and spread on top of cooled brownies. If you can find them, sprinkle with 1/4 c. raw cacao nibs. 

As you can see, the frosting is almost as thick as the brownies. These are also known as ‘overkill’ brownies.

 

*The numbers are skewed because I was using leftover chips. An easier ratio would be 8 ounces of chocolate and 2/3 c. creamer.