Triple P Chops

Mix on plate:

¼ cup whole wheat pastry flour
the ½ t of leftover butternut bash you happen to have (sea salt, pepper, coriander, dried chili)
¼ t herbamare or other seasoned salt
there should be a word bigger than dash. a shake of cayenne
½ t black pepper, maybe more

table salt and pepper the boneless pork chops you got on sale, then plop them in the flour mixture. shake off any waaaay excess, but get them good and coated.

warm a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat, and add a couple tablespoons each of butter and olive oil. brown chops well (3 minutes or so) on either side, then remove to plate.

add ¼ cup pecans to skillet and sautee for 2 minutes. add ½ cup diced peaches from your smoothie supplies in the freezer and a couple of tablespoons of honey. this is crystallizing nicely, but we don’t want burnt sugar in the oven, so add ½ cup chicken stock and a big splash of peach cider. i would have used white wine if i had it. put the chops back in, and load it into the oven, which is already hot because, hello, you’re making butternut squash in there.


bake until you can’t handle how awesome your house smells. 20 minutes?

*this, like all dishes, tastes more awesome if you listen to mumford and sons while cooking it.*

Tell me now, where is my fault, in loving this dish with my whole heart?

Sorghum Says You're Welcome Vegan Cookies

Molly Shannon made me do it.

Wait! If you are going to make these cookies, stop reading right now and combine one Tablespoon of ground flaxseed (if you have whole, use your coffee grinder or blender) with 3 Tablespoons of water. Mix well and put that in the fridge.

So, Molly Shannon. We watched this movie of hers last night, and it was the most depressing movie, like, ever. Anyway, she's a vegan, and today I'm a-gonna vegan cookie it up.

Now, let's talk about sorghum. If you are not from Appalachia, you likely don't know what I mean. So, let me 'splain for you: you know how you like molasses? Sorghum is the more awesome part of the molassesy world. It's made similarly, but from the sweet sorghum plant instead of sugar cane. I just learned that the crop also produces roughly the same amount of ethanol per bushel as corn, so clearly it wants to run your life, be in your belly, and make your car go zoom. Thanks, Sorghum.

"You're Welcome." -Sorghum

Ok, on to the instructification:

First, do that flaxseed thing I mentioned earlier. It turns out you can mix 1T ground flaxseed with 3T water and chill it for about an hour to create a vegan one-egg equivalent for baking. Yes, you can taste the nuttiness some, but I like it.

Preheat your over to 365. Melt (just enough, you don't want it hot) 1/2 cup extra virgin coconut oil

combine with 1/2 c demerara sugar, two good dashes of Angostura bitters and 1/3 c sorghum and mix well.

Meanwhile, in another bowl, combine:

1 3/4 c whole wheat pastry flour

1 T vital wheat gluten

2 t. baking soda

1 t. ground ginger

1/2 t. ground cinnamon

give that a quick whisking together, then add the awesome vegan non-egg to the wet ingredients and whisk until fully combined. now, mix the two bowls of goodness together. it will be thick, so just dump and smoosh it with a spatula until it's like a thick dough.

spray your cookie sheet with a bit of cooking spray, and then roll the dough into 3/4" balls and drop onto the sheet. They don't expand much beyond a little fluffing up during cooking, so go ahead and put as many on there as you like. i also recommend making all of your balls in one fell swoop, because the longer the dough sits, the more sticky it becomes...roll like crazy while that coconut oil is still working for you. now, i suppose you could just use 3/4 cup coconut oil, like the recipe i based this on suggests, but where's the fun in that?

so, anyway, bake until your kitchen smells awesome, 7-9 minutes. let them sit on the sheet for just a couple of minutes before you move them. they're done when they have a few cracks in the top. Enjoy!

True Blood Scones

Ever have one of those months?

Recently, I was dumped by my ex, in an email. Yes, an email. But that's just barely a blip on my radar now. My cat has fleas who think I'm delicious, which is also taking a back-burner. Mostly, it's that my friend is sick. He's been sick for a long time, but now, it's much worse. Somehow, a rumor began in the far-extension of his circle of acquaintances that he had passed away. The rumor spread like wildfire through the nasty brush that is Facebook, and last night, they posted Rest in Peace messages on his wall. Luckily (and I say luckily with more than a pinch of irony), he wasn't awake to see it. Of course some people who actually know and care about him heard the fake-news as well, so we had to let them know that it hadn't happened yet. Poor darlings.

http://shitstorm.2kdub1.org/wellmeaningfuckery.html

As you may know, Food = Love.

...So I make it when I have feelings. This scone recipe is based on a beautiful recipe from Smitten Kitchen.

Dry Ingredients

2 cups Whole Wheat Pastry Flour

2 Tbsp Wheat Gluten

1 Tbsp Sodium-Free Baking Powder

1/4 Cup Demerara Sugar

1/2 tsp Sea Salt

I keep very coarse sugar and salt around, to match my coarse nature and satiate my desire to have everything I do be as difficult as possible. So I threw those babies in my trusty yellow-plastic-smoothie-making-cup and gave them a few good whirls with my stick blender before adding them to the rest of the dry ingredients.

In the meantime, I took
1 hefty Cup Frozen Blueberries
from the freezer and left them out in a measuring cup. Also, I'm awesome, so I added
The Zest of One Lemon
and used the rest of the lemon to make a quick, stevia-sweetened lemonade. Which is lucky, because now I need a pickmeup, and that will do the trick.

But we'll get to catastrophe later. No need for too much foreshadowing, narrator. Don't over-engineer it.

The Cutting

6 Tbsp Cold, Unsalted Butter, cut into pieces

I don't have a pastry cutter, but I did have a hankering for scones, so I used two tools: a whisk and will power. I used these tools to combine the dry ingredients and butter until they looked like this:

The Mixing

Aforementioned Blueberries and Lemon Zest

(gave it a quick mixeroo, then...)

3/4 Cup Part-Skim Ricotta

1/3 Cup Low-fat Buttermilk

I mixed with a flexible spatula until nearly combined, thus:

At this point, I preheated the oven to 400. The original recipe says 425, but like every gas oven I have met, mine runs hot and wonky. Next, I kneaded the dough as lightly as I could to make an even consistency. It was purpley and smooth. All that was left was to transfer the dough to my clean, floured countertop, pat it into a square, and cut that square into other squares! My counter was prepped! My cookie sheet was sprayed! Mumford and Sons were singing to me through the speakers of this very laptop! My PG Tips was waiting patiently in the pantry!

The Carnage

So, I dropped the bowl. It shattered, somehow cutting a giant gash in my foot, which immediately began bleeding everywhere, like the most polite horror movie ever filmed.

I cleaned, I discarded, I cleaned, I disinfected, I sighed heavily. Do me a solid? If you ever make these scones, let me know how they turn out, ok? I'm going to eat leftover pizza and drink that lemonade now. Deuces.

Pumpkin Bran Muffins

This morning I was hungry, so I invented these mini-muffins.

In Kitchen Aid, pour 1/3 cup boiling water over 1/3 cup wheat bran and a tablespoon or so of coconut oil (obv, you can use butter or oil or whatever you have). Let that sit for a minute or two while you measure into a smaller bowl: 3/4 c. whole wheat pastry flour and 1/4 cup hazelnut meal. (Let's be honest, I only had 3/4 cup flour this morning. I made the first batch with just that, then added the hazelnut flour to the rest, and it made a big, tasty difference. You could use pecan meal, almond meal, ground flax seed, or just more flour.), a pinch of sea salt, and 1 teaspoon no-sodium baking powder.

In the mixing bowl, add 1/2 cup pumpkin puree, 1/4 c. egg beaters (or 1 egg), two good squirts of vanilla stevia (about 40 drops), and a Tablespoon or so of sugar-free maple syrup. For flavor, I added 1/4 t. reeally tasty ginger powder, 1/2 teaspoon reeeeally tasty China cinnamon, and 1/4 teaspoon clove. Just regular clove, actually.

When the wet ingredients are combined, mix in the flour mixture, then 3/4 cup oats and 1/4 cup nonfat dry milk. It is my belief that if you added some chocolate chips or dried fruit at this stage, you would not be sorry.

Drop into mini-muffin pans (they don't rise very much, so it's okay to fill just above 2/3) and bake at 350 for 11-13 minutes. Let the muffins rest in the pan for another couple of minutes, then pop those babies out and straight into your face!

They're kinda ugly, these muffins, so I am not bothering with a non-glamorous picture from my camera phone. But srsly, they are so good for you, and they taste like treats!

*Serve with the effing delicious coffee you just made because you are some sort of breakfast goddess.