Vegan Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

Recipe found on Whipped: Vegan Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

I'm usually not tempted by unfrosted muffins or cakes, but something about this recipe whispered to me and convinced me of its worth. I think it was the vegan part. My friend Julie makes an incredible vegan Guinness chocolate cake. Pumpkin chocolate chip muffins have little to do with Guinness chocolate cake. But somehow my brain said "vegan baking = awesome." And the photo is pretty. I knew just how they would taste from the photo.

I rationalized baking these muffins for two reaons: 1)What else does one do with a day off work when the temperature is minus 20? (I'm not really outdoorsy in any weather, but whatever.) 2)It's carb-moderate baking! The flours are whole-grain. (I found the whole wheat pastry flour in the bulk bins at my grocery store!) I'm thinking of substituting Splenda for part of the sugar for my next batch.

The results: I ate three of them in one hour. The muffins are nutty and sticky and very filling. The texture of the muffins falls somewhere on the spectrum between fluffy cake and fudgy brownies. The nutmeggy-ness is heavenly.

My tweaks to the recipe:
-I used a combination of semisweet and bittersweet chocolate chips. The bittersweet were better (Ghirardelli 60% chips).
-I was considered skipping the ground flax seeds, because I had to buy a whole bag for such a little quantity. But I did buy it, because I believe the flax seeds function as a butter substitute, chemically speaking. And they are tasty. I will seek other uses for the rest of the bag.
-I highly recommend freshly grating the nutmeg. The ground jarred stuff isn't the same.
-I suggest toasting the pecans in a skillet before using.

I will be baking a second batch this week!

Three on the Road

Thought that I forgot, eh? Thought that I neglected my New Years resolution already, huh? Nope. Here is some writing. For the Weekend Wordsmith prompt: The Road.

Three on the Road

“Did you say something? I can’t hear you when you mumble into your sleeve,” said Kate.
“I SAID, we’ve been listening to talk radio for THREE HOURS.”
“That sounds about right.”
“We have heard this news clip FOUR TIMES. I will JUMP OUT OF THIS WINDOW if I hear anything else about Afghanistan.”
“Fine. Pick something else then.”

Claire slumped forward and punched the seek button with the same force that she would have used to squash a beetle. She scrunched her eyebrows together as she scanned through the dial twice. She twisted the power off and flopped back in defeat.

“I’ve got my iPod,” said Jenna thickly, from the backseat. She was working through a box of chocolate-covered caramels.
“Your iPod selections are of questionable taste,” said Claire.
“The tour books are behind your seat,” said Kate. “You can study our travel routes and menus for the week. You could double-check the itinerary for errors.”
“I need peace and quiet. I need to hear myself think,” said Claire.

Kate had known that Claire wouldn’t have wanted to look at the travel plans anyway. She preferred it that way. Claire would have gotten the pages out of order and the books bent and dog-eared. Kate had reviewed everything the night before and had every minute of the trip in place. There were no errors. There were no idle gaps. She took her eyes off the road for a moment to glance at her painted fingernails against the steering wheel. Not a chip in sight.

Jenna took tiny bites, trying to make the caramels last. She allowed the chocolate coating to melt away and flood her mouth with joy, and tried to do the same with the caramel part. She wasn’t able to stand not chewing it most times, and so she needed to take breaks and work at unglueing her jaw. She laid lengthwise across the back seat and admired her shoes. They were orange suede shoes, bought yesterday.

Claire regretted her declaration for silence. The noise of the surroundings expanded to fill the radio void in irritating ways. Jenna slurped on caramels and used her fingers to pry them loose from molars. Kate cleared her throat at regular intervals, a reminder that she was recovering from a cold and was in the process of infecting Claire. The car rattled disturbingly loudly over bumps in the road. Claire predicted that it would break down within the hour of some insidious internal ailment; broken belt or blown fuse or one of the other thousand things that was always wrong with the old thing.

“Caramel, anyone?”
Jenna thrust the box in the opening between the front seats. Empty paper cups whooshed out and drifted to Kate and Claire’s feet. Kate picked them up while managing to keep her eyes on the road.

“Gross. They’re all melty,” said Claire, not even glancing at the box.
“No thanks. I brushed my teeth just before we left,” said Kate.
“But we left three hours ago!” said Jenna. “You’re going to have to eat something some time.”
“I want to delay having sugary teeth for a while yet. I have baggies of smoked almonds and Triscuits for later.”
“You’re missing out. I’ve eaten all the ones with fleur de sel already!”
“Save one for me, will you? I’m going to stop at this next exit for gas, I think.”
“We’ve got a quarter of a tank!” said Jenna, leaning companionably between the seats to see.
“You never know what might be up the road,” said Kate.
“There might be a pile-up, or a blizzard, or worse,” said Claire.
“Find a gas station with a giant convenience store,” said Jenna dreamily. “I’m going to get a drink, and I’m hoping for something fizzy with blueberries and pomegranate.”
“I’ll find somewhere with decent coffee, I hope,” said Kate. “I’ll have to blend together equal parts of regular and decaf. I don’t want to exceed my caffeine quota.”
“I’ll just stay in the car,” said Claire, muttering into her sleeve.

Note: This was a inspired from a writing prompt from the book A Writers Idea Book by Jack Heffron. Choose two or three aspects of your personality, assign them to characters, put the people in a car for a long trip, and see what they talk about. Claire was my melancholy self, Jenna was my happy self, and Kate was my Type-A organized go-getter self.

Survey

Found on John Green's blog.

01. What's the last TV show you saw?
The Office. It was a mediocre episode. Too much relationship drama. I prefer office minutiae.

02. What are you wearing at the moment?
Wool sweater which I wore at work today. Running pants because I plan on running today, and I cannot remain in dress pants for a moment longer than I have to. Pink slippers.

03. Favorite Song of the Moment?
I sort of stopped listening to music at the moment. I just listen to NPR talk all the time. NPR has a theme song, and that is OK.

04. What is your favorite scent?
Brownies baking.

05. What's your occupation? What do you do there?
Pharmacist. I work in a hospital. I make sure drugs are safe and correct and answer questions about them.

06. What do you drink the most?
Hot tea, constantly.

07. What is your favorite restaurant?
I only go out to eat once per month now, so my memory is dim. Probably Saigon Noodle, which is a Vietnamese restaurant here.

08. What will you be doing after finishing this?
Cook and eat dinner, then read, then run, then write, then go to bed.

09. What did you want to be when you grew up?
Just about everything at one time or another. I wanted to be a clown when I was four.

10. Your favorite romantic movie?
Once. Punch Drunk Love is a favorite too, but more for the Healthy Choice pudding than for the romance.

11. What's the least favorite thing about yourself?
I am selfish.

(There is no #12 on my source; I don't know why.)

13. What are your ideal qualities in a novel?
I seem to love books centered around abundance and/or scarcity of food. I guess there is nothing more thrilling/terrifying than to have extreme food issues.

14. What time do you usually go to bed?
8:30 p.m. I get up at 4:30 a.m.

15. What's the meaning behind your LJ username/name/nicknames you go by?
SlyGly was derived from my secret code name in 8th grade, which was Gly the Sly. It was used for covert written correspondence.

Busy Work

A set of questions from Write on Wednesday.

What’s your favourite genre of writing?
-I will dabble in whatever, but especially fantasy and mystery and memoir.

How often do you get writer’s block?
-It predictably occurs one or two nights prior to monthly meetings with my writing group.

How do you fix it?
-I abandon the thing that I had been trying to force to my will, choose a completely different project, and start over fresh.

Do you type or write by hand?
-Both

Do you save everything you write?
-Mostly, but things are not well-organized. I write on fragmented Word documents crammed into random folders on the laptop or emailed to myself, different journals for different places, and scraps of paper thrown around.

Do you ever go back to an old idea long after you abandoned it?
-Oh yes. That's what NaNoWriMo has been good for. I pull characters from the struggling novels and find better stories for them later.

Do you have a constructive critic?
-I have a wonderful crowd of them. My writing group is awesome.

Did you ever write a novel?
-I wrote two! NaNoWriMo 2007 and 2008.

What genre would you love to write but haven’t?
-I'd like to write a moody and shimmery character-driven kind of fiction. I think I emphasize plot too much.

What’s one genre you have never written, and probably never will?
-Western.

How many writing projects are you working on right now?
-Two. They are secret.

Do you write for a living? Do you want to?
-No, and I wouldn't want to. I couldn't face my computer all day. I wouldn't be able to keep myself disciplined enough to produce. Even if I could do that, I think it would lose its fun.

Have you ever written something for a magazine or newspaper?
-I've written some work-related articles over the past few years. After the last one, I decided that I was done with non-fiction. Medical articles have no character or plot. Even the ending is given away in the first paragraph. No suspense.

Have you ever won an award for your writing?
-In the fifth grade I got a story published in the school district's creative writing magazine, submitted secretly by my teacher. That meant a lot to me, because prior to fifth grade I had never been recognized for anything academic, and I had felt doomed to obscurity. In high school I won money for a story in a state contest.

What are your five favourite words?
-Ah, it's too tough. There are so many. Trixie- it is a cheerful word. Sustorsch- it was a word verification on a blog where I commented today. I like the way it looks. Fondaparinux- a sexy drug name. Episcopalian- it has so many syllables and vowels! And...it isn't a WORD, really, but I like when people do that scornful "Email! Schmemail!"

Do you ever write based on your dreams?
-No, but I do write them down. I remember them better than I used to, because Trixie wakes me up at odd hours.

Do you favour happy endings, sad endings, or cliff-hangers?
-Ambiguous endings.

Have you ever written based on an artwork you’ve seen?
-Nope.

If you’ve answered all these questions, give yourselves a huge gold star and pat on the back.
Now go off and do some real writing.

As Simple As Snow

As Simple As Snow by Gregory Galloway

Synopsis: The self-described normal and ordinary narrator starts dating Anna Cayne, the eccentric new Goth girl who likes to write obituaries for everyone in town. Shortly before Valentine's Day, Anna disappears. The narrator must figure out what happened to her by deciphering the cryptic codes that she left behind as well as the clues which continue to arrive in the mail.

The goods: I love mysteries! This book had been on my list for so long that I had forgotten why I put it there. I picked it up in the library, read the inside cover, and squeaked with joy. This is just the kind of topic I like. The story had delicious clues and shadowy, skulking enemies. Friends and enemies blended and traded and at most times I couldn't categorize anyone, so I was deeply suspicious of everybody. Every character had a back story and a dark secret.

The bads: I didn't care for Anna Cayne and didn't find the romance believable, and so I wasn't too concerned when she disappeared. But I was still curious about what happened to her. I thought Anna was cliche; the crazy beautiful girl who sweeps in and messes everything up and then disappears, and then in the midst all of the upheaval, the narrator's character arc comes to fruition. Anna reminded me a lot of Alaska Young in Looking for Alaska by John Green, actually. Alaska reminded me of somebody in another book, I just can't remember what.

I don't mind ambiguous endings. In most books, I prefer them. But this one didn't leave me with any sense of closure. The main plot was sort of resolved but the subplots were wide open.

I don't mind nameless narrators. If done well, I barely notice. But for some reason, the author took extraordinary efforts to hide the narrator's name, even seeming to call attention especially to it. That bothered me. What's the secret?

But otherwise, I liked it, and the clues are still swirling in my head and figuring themselves out. January is a perfect time for a snowy mystery.

Hiding Space

On this month's Cafe Writing project, Melissa invites us to give seven things that inhabit or occupy our writing spaces, interpreting "writing space" any way we please. A thoughtful quote is provided:

In a mood of faith and hope my work goes on. A ream of fresh paper lies on my desk waiting for the next book. I am a writer and I take up my pen to write.
~Pearl S. Buck

1. My official writing space is in the spare bedroom. I have a solid desk made of wood that is the color of Dexi's red coat, my parents' dachshund. When the sunlight reaches the wood, it glows with inner warmth. I bought the desk especially for writing purposes at a local Scandinavian furniture store. I fell in love with it immediately. I almost hugged the woman who sold it to me.

2. One corner of the desk is occupied with an untidy stack of bills, receipts, coupons, recipes, and to-do lists. Sometimes the stack disappears. It always comes back.

3. My laptop is a frequent companion. The screen and top have smudges from Trixie's nose. I do not trust it. I email documents to myself.

4. Sometimes the spare bedroom and the fancy desk are too intimidating. In times like these, I use my green armchair in the living room as a writing space. It is a sage-colored recliner which has soaked up all the wisdom from the hundreds of novels that I have read within its arms.

5. My journal is in my writing space, especially when I write in the armchair. I have a black Moleskine book that I use to try out fiction ideas or record important truths. The journal has a black elastic band over the cover. It is satisfying to snap that band closed when I'm through.

6. My bed is a writing place. It is a nest of heavy flannel sheets, three thin blankets, an embroidered quilt, and one small dog. I keep scrap paper or the journal on the cheap particleboard side table. Sometimes I write down ideas before I go to sleep and sometimes I record dreams when I wake up. I write while lying on my stomach and resting on my elbows. It is awkward to be that way, and so the sessions do not last long.

7. Trixie is in my writing space, nearly always. She pokes her nose against the computer screen critically. She paws the keys like a cat when I am being too productive and ignoring her. She likes to squeeze in beside me when I am sitting in the armchair. She chews the ends of pens while I am trying to write with them. But most of the time, she dozes and dreams.

Rational Mastermind

I have always thought of myself as very different and generally misunderstood. That is how everyone views themselves, right? But in my case, I have proof that I actually am certifiably strange!

I love personality tests of all kinds, but Myers-Briggs is a favorite because my scores are so consistent and my type describes me precisely. At my college, all the freshmen took the Myers-Briggs during orientation week. Our professors had access to the results, and I learned that there were only two extroverts in my pharmacy class of 90 students. Extroverts are the majority in the general population. We identified the two extroverts in the room easily. It's fascinating how similar personalities cluster in the same professions. It's no wonder why pharmacy department holiday parties are so poorly attended.

Today I took another version, and I was INTJ, as usual. I read the detailed results and discovered that INTJs comprise only one percent of the population!

So, I am unique to start with, but look at my scores (strength of preferences) for each:
Introvert: 89%
iNtuitive: 62%
Thinking: 100%
Judging: 89%

I am an extreme INTJ, otherwise known as a Rational Mastermind by Keirsey.com. It's a nice term. Better than criminal mastermind. You can read the whole description if you like, but here is my most applicable segment:

Masterminds tend to be much more definite and self-confident than other Rationals, having usually developed a very strong will. Decisions come easily to them; in fact, they can hardly rest until they have things settled and decided. But before they decide anything, they must do the research. Masterminds are highly theoretical, but they insist on looking at all available data before they embrace an idea, and they are suspicious of any statement that is based on shoddy research, or that is not checked against reality.

Take the test if you want, and leave your type in the comments. Then I can research the reasons why I am unable to understand you.

Resolution Progress

I bought a new writing book, The Writer's Idea Book by Jack Heffron. My writing group will laugh at this, because it is about the fifteenth writing book that I own. They are addictive. I'm always pulling them out and tearfully stating how the newest one changed my life. This book has 400+ prompts, and I have been slowly working through them and finding some interesting exercises.

One piece of advice that the book offers is a quote from Woody Allen: "80 percent of being successful in life is just showing up." So that is what I have been doing, showing up every day. Every day I ask myself to write on a piece for at least five minutes. If I am miserable or in a hurry to do something else after that, I can stop. If I want to continue, I do.

On an unrelated note, I went to Half-Price Books today, which is a dangerous place for me to be. I bought a stunning volume of The Complete Sherlock Holmes. It is 1408 pages long, hardcover, illustrated, and the edges of the pages are tinted red to match the cover. I have had my eye on it for a long time. I was reluctant to buy it for a while, because it is daunting to ask myself to read all of it. I am not sure that I ever will. But it was on sale for $7.50, when the individual Holmes books were around $5 each! What a deal! And then I also bought This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I liked The Great Gatsby, so I thought this might be a good bet.

I keep buying classics at Half-Price Books, but I haven't read much of them because I am trying to keep up with the tide of fantasy books I continue to reserve for myself at the library. I keep getting excited about contemporary titles from book blogs. I think that I will stop placing holds for a while, finish what I've got reserved now, and make a dent in the pile around here. Here's what I've got waiting for me:

The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
The Collected Works of Kate Chopin
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
The Complete Tales of Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne

What should I start with?

Comfort Foods

I get excited about heavy comfort foods every year at this time. I am feeling very motherly about it. I am all in raptures about old favorites like meatloaves and stews and sauces and such, but I'm trying to keep my carbs to a minimum.

This weekend, I made a casserole. That is unusual for me. I lack the patience for casseroles, and it makes me feel old to have a collection of recipes for them. I made this sausage and leek breakfast casserole. It was easy, though it did take some forethought to prepare it the night before and then bake it for an hour. Definitely a weekend thing. It was delicious!--spicy and cheesy! OK, there were carbs in it from the bread, but I decreased the quantity requested, and I made it worthwhile by using a nice sourdough baguette. I may make this again some time, but substitute bacon, onions, and mushrooms for the sausage and leeks for a change.

Today, I made one of my staple recipes, which is smoked turkey baked chimichangas. I have made a few variations on these. I usually use rotisserie or leftover chicken rather than deli turkey, and this time I used fully-cooked smoked chicken breasts that were new at my grocery store. I have even used cooked ground beef. The cole slaw mix sounds strange, but it adds a wonderful crunch. Really, you can mix whatever you like and roll it in tortillas, place them in a baking dish, and lightly brush them with olive oil. Then they are baked in a 400-degree oven (I don't have a toaster oven) until golden brown and crispy! They taste like they are fried, but they aren't. I love them! I served diced avocados and corn-poblano salsa on the side.

For Richer or Poorer

After I graduated from college, I did two years of post-grad work before getting a "real" job.

There were six of us in the program that first year and we were a tight-knit bunch. Often we would lounge around and dream about what we would do with the money when we got the real jobs. Life would be so easy then!

Our program director was a man at the highest echelon of the profession. Presumably, he was amply paid. His response to our fancies was to reminisce about his own rise up the ladder. He said that he was grateful for his house in the suburbs and his cars and the private schooling for the three kids, but he yearned for the simpler times. He said that the happiest times of his life were when he was newly married and in grad school, and his wife worked at a convenience store to support them, and on the weekends when they could afford beer it was a cause for celebration.

We brushed it off. Easy for him to say, right? Who cares about beer when you can drink champagne?

I am grateful for my current steady job. I am so thankful to not have to worry about Trixie's vet bills or the fluctuating prices of natural gas. It is freedom to throw a pint of fresh raspberries in the grocery cart in the off-season. It is deliriously carefree to order desserts and drinks at restaurants.

I can remember feeling nauseated about textbook prices in college and groaning over the cost of an electric bill that had been split amongst four people. I didn't have an extra five dollars to spare in college.

But I would have to say that college was the happiest time of my life also. It is the source of my fondest memories despite the anxieties and scraping by. I would never, ever buy Ramen noodles for myself to eat anymore. I don't even walk down the aisle where the Hamburger Helper is. But eating spaghetti and jarred sauce with Jill and Johna and Elizabeth in a dilapidated house is a scene that I would return to in a second if I could. Gathering over a tiny apartment stove to make egg and cheese sandwiches with Jen and Kyla and Andrea is something I sorely miss. Money brings me convenience and comfort and opportunities, but it has little to do with happiness.

Submitted for Sunday Scribblings

Favorite Book

I read 36 books in 2008, per study of my goodreads.com account. I have no hesitation in choosing a favorite for the year:

In the Woods by Tana French! Reviewed by me here.

The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie

The last few books that I have finished this fall/winter have felt lackluster and cliche. I am pleased to report that I ended 2008 with a truly satisfying and refreshing selection.

Synopsis: Who would want to murder Bindy Mackenzie? Sure, she's annoyingly brilliant and arrogant, but everyone has their faults! It is up to her classmates to investigate the crime, but unfortunately each of them is an enemy of Bindy. They are detectives and suspects both. The answers lie within Bindy's obsessively produced transcripts, memos, and diary entries, which chronicle an unraveling life and descent into madness.

The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie by Jaclyn Moriarty is one of the three Ashbury-Brookfield novels (a fourth is in the works!). The other ones, in order of publication, are Feeling Sorry for Celia and The Year of Secret Assignments. The books can be read in any order as stand-alones, though some of the same characters overlap in each. Bindy tops them all, and I would recommend it if you only want to read one. There are a few asides to events which occurred in Secret Assignments, but there is so much stuff going on in Bindy that you would not have time to wonder about those confusing bits.

I loved this book. I know I seem to say that a lot, but I am hitting the keys hard here with earnestness. My favorite aspect of Moriarty's books is that the plots are so complicated; there must have been at least ten subplots tucked in there. I could not keep all of the happenings in my mind at once, and so when things were revealed I was surprised every time. I thought that I had Bindy figured out and was feeling very comfy and smug about things when beginning the last fifty pages. But this book has a dark and deliciously twisty ending that I did not see coming.

Most of all, I was enthralled with the character of Bindy. She is deeply flawed and hard to like at times, but I see myself in her and found her very sympathetic. I do not think that she is univerally likeable by all readers, but she is unanimously fascinating.

A representative excerpt of a letter from Bindy:

Dear Sir (or Madam),

I am a student at Ashbury High, a loathsome school in Sydney's windswept Hills District, and I am writing to inform you that I will not write again.

I have written two letters to date and I have not received a reply. Although I find this astonishing, outrageous, and unforgivable, I will refrain from comment.