Coffee Cake for Bird

Ingredients 
1 3/4 Cups Unbleached White Flour 
1 tsp Ground Cinnamon 
2 tsp Baking Powder 
1/2 Cup Canola/Vegetable Oil 
1 tsp Vanilla 
1/2 Cup Sugar 
1/4 tsp Ground Nutmeg 
1/2 tsp Baking Soda 
1 Cup Soy Yogurt
approx. 1/2 Cup Soy Milk

Topping Ingredients
6 Tbsp Unbleached White Flour
1/3 Cup Turbinado Sugar (i.e. Sugar In The Raw)
Ground Cinnamon 
3 Tbsp Soy Margarine
1/2 Cup Rolled Oats

CAKE: Mix flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder and baking soda well. Add oil, yogurt, vanilla and soy milk and mix thoroughly. Pour ingredients into a lightly oiled baking dish. 
TOPPING: In a separate bowl, mix flour, sugar, oats, and soy margarine. Add flour and sugar and cinnamon until you have a crumb topping, then sprinkle on top of coffee cake. Bake at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes, or until a knife or toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Fruit of the Harvest: part 1

The past few days have been full of harvesting, prepping, and cooking. We've gathered blackberries, plums, pears and apples. We've also had a steady flow of tomatoes from the garden, and some beans have been collected as well. Add to this a great buy on Italian prune plums at the grower's market and that has made for busy times. It's also made for delicious times well worth sharing (click the links for photos of the delight).

First:  Blackberry Crisp

4 c Fresh Blackberries

1-3 Tbs of Organic Sugar (some say 1/2 cup, but that is way too much) 

2 & 1/8 cups Organic Whole Wheat Flour

1/2 c Organic Brown Sugar

1/4- 1/2 cup Margarine or Butter

1/2 c Oats

2 Tbs Lemon Juice

Cinnamon

Coat the berries with lemon juice, sugar, and 1/8 cup of flour. Pour these into the bottom of a pan 9x13 should do it.

Mix Margarine, the rest of the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and oats until crumbly. Spread this mix over the berries. 375 for 30 minutes.

Second: Garden Bean & Corn Salsa

3 green onions diced

1-2 Tbs diced jalapeno

1/2 onion diced

3-4 ripe tomatoes diced

1 can corn

1 can beans rinsed (black or mixed beans)

cilantro

1 lime worth of juice

2 Tbs olive oil

pinch of salt

Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl and enjoy. Refrigerate the leftovers.

Cooking and PowerPointing

The night is wearing on and despite the fact that I worked diligently on my teaching materials all day I haven't progressed past week one's PPTs. Maybe it's the fact that at almost 9PM I haven't had dinner yet but I feel somewhat confused and sleepy as I try to recall the events of my day. 

On a high note, there's a 100% homemade pizza in the oven. Ten minutes to soy cheese, tricolor pepper, garlic, whole wheat bliss. It has been a cooking filled day now that I think about it.

In addition to the pizza, I tried to whip up an apple bread with some of the bushel we bought last Saturday. Somehow things were poorly timed and the apple chunks ended up coating the bread rather than permeating it. It's tasty nonetheless. People have been nibbling on it all evening.

Undaunted by that mild culinary setback I made some delicious chocolate chip coconut cookies, and we took some down to the new grad student who lives in our apartment complex.  

Flagging, Feasting and Free-Verse

It seems I just can't keep the same intellectual pace up anymore. I haven't really read any scholarly works in some time. I've slowed down in my Wharton readings as well. I suppose the lull is understandable given the intensity of the past few weeks, but it is somewhat dismaying. I'm hoping to go to the map and photo archives tomorrow to find some information about the historical hydrology and geology of Pendleton, Oregon. The due date for this Columbia Basin paper is fast approaching. 

Despite the diminished scholarly work I have been busy mixing up pizza dough, making jugs of tea, Thai peanut sauce and the like. 

I've also written three or four poems, none of them very good, but they are first drafts after all. 

Channeled Scablands

1.

I will be a reminder

a curve

hugging close hand

to hip

a whiff of water

in a wasteland

slip of skin black

between shadowy hillocks

a glimmer of cataclysm

some will say

sun white in open sky

light I will be

reflecting

whispers the fluvial

fluctuations

of will whirling

star-spit in a field of

basalt umbilici

Of Pangs and Pages

Feeling the pinch of a day without Wharton, I've spent today attending to other literary pursuits. My class in Women and Literature ran from 9 am to 11 am and then spilled over into another 45 minutes of conversation for those of us who are graduate students. I had been hoping for a small class, but this class is well stocked with undergraduates. In all we as a class probably total around 25 people.

The first read of the session is The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Written in 1899, this novel has some stylistic and thematic similarities in common with some of Wharton's work. This is helping to ease my transition away from my serious focus on the Thesis. I intend to do all of my major projects for this class on this particular novel so that my energies expended here can double by providing some more background for my thesis work (fortunately this work has a significant body of water at the center of its action). The syllabus for this class is stuffed and I have read my 57 pages for the night.

Now onward to dinner and blondies (vegan).

3/4 c. butter or margarine

2 c. brown sugar (packed)

1 Tb. vanilla

1-2 Tb. finely ground coffee

2 eggs (or egg replacer)

2 c. whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp Baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 - 1 c. chocolate chips

1/2-1 c. walnuts

melt butter/margarine dissolve sugar in it

let this mix cool then add vanilla and egg (mix it up)

add this liquid to the mixed dry ingredients

fold in choc chips and nuts

press into greased 9x13 and cook 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees

Good Finds, Great Foods, and Garden Delights

Today I tried my best to get some work done on the thesis. I started out hearing from Betjemann (superhero lit master/thesis advisor). He essentially assured me that my original thesis idea was probably worth sticking with. We're meeting up next week to discuss it. In the meantime I've been advised to look into Italian Villas and Their Gardens in hopes of some info pertaining to water. Of course in this text I would likely find writings about fountains, ponds etc... I haven't followed this advice yet, but I did read a good essay today; Peter Hays "Undine is Us". The essay gave a good overview of how Undine (The Custom of the Country) is an embodiment of American materialism at its worst. I was also pleased to find several passages in The Fruit of the Tree which referred to swamps and marshes. I am still trying to figure out what state Westmore mills is set in so that I can better guide my historical research though I suppose it doesn't make too much of a difference if it's in New York or New England since the industrial histories of the two are quite similar.

In an effort not to let my whole day be consumed by Edith I took some time to cook world class awesome pancakes, prep a fruit salad, a garden salad, and make a pizza. Of all these I must say the pancakes, although I make them frequently, were amazingly superb. How to make such awesome pancakes?

1 cup whole wheat flour (organic of course if possible)

1 tsp baking powder

1 tbsp cinnamon

pinch of salt

1-2 tbsp raw sugar (or brown sugar)

2 tsp vanilla

1-2 tbs oil

1-1.5 cups water or soy milk

To this deliciousness I added liberal amounts of Wilt's Blueberries.

I also gave my garden some attention. We've finally run out of lettuce. I harvested the last head today and it has been consumed (yum). The tomatoes are looking good, the strawberries also look awesome and have been taken inside to avoid fruit loss to the marauding Western Scrub-Jays. The garden, small as it is and totally done in random containers, has been very productive for us. We've harvested six heads of lettuce, a large pot of salad greens, two types of peas, two types of radishes, cilantro, lavender, sage, oregeno, and strawberries. Still in the works are garlic, carrots, two tomato plants, gladiolas, beans and cukes.