Category Archives: Food and Drink

Recipe: Vegan Applesauce Bran Muffins with Blueberries

vegan-applesauce-blueberry-bran-muffinsVegan Applesauce Bran Muffins with Blueberries

Because I posted this picture on Twitter and all these people were like HEY I WANT TO MAKE THOSE HOW DID YOU DO IT?

Okay, a few things before we start: this is just a basic muffin recipe I cobbled together from the Internet, with a couple of vegan substitutions. I didn’t make the substitutions because I’m vegan, but because I was out of eggs and I didn’t want to go to the store. Once I decided to do one vegan substitute, doing one more wasn’t that big a deal.

Ingredients:

  • 1 C all-purpose flour
  • 1C bran cereal (I use Bob’s Red Mill Hot Bran Cereal For Cool People)
  • 1/3 C applesauce
  • 2/3 cup brown sugar
  • 1t vanilla extract
  • 1C almond milk (unsweetened)
  • 1t apple cider vinegar
  • ½ C blueberries
  • 1T flax seed meal + 3T water

Okay, a few things before we start: this is just a basic muffin recipe I cobbled together from the Internet, with a couple of vegan substitutions. I didn’t make the substitutions because I’m vegan, but because I was out of eggs and I didn’t want to go to the store. Once I decided to do one vegan substitute, doing one more wasn’t that big a deal.

Before we even start you’re going to pre-heat your oven to 375. If you have a convection oven, set it to 350. If you have a nuclear reactor, it’s going to be too hot, so find a regular oven.

First, make your egg substitute by mixing one the flax meal and three tablespoons of water together. Set aside for at least five minutes.

Second, make some fake buttermilk by mixing a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar (or lemon juice) into the almond milk. Let that sit until the egg substitute is done doing its thing. Put them next to each other, so they feel like they have to compete to be the best.

Third, combine the fake buttermilk you just made with the bran cereal, in a large bowl. Stir it all together so it’s mixed really well, and let it sit for ten minutes. Tell the egg thing and the buttermilk thing that they had it easy.

While it’s sitting there, you combine the brown sugar, the fake egg stuff, and the vanilla extract. Mix them up really well, too.

When ten minutes are up, mix the sugar stuff into the bran cereal and stir like crazy until it’s all combined. Use a spatula thing (available from Spatula City) to make sure you get all the sugar stuff out of the bowl you mixed it into. If any of the sugar stuff is left behind, it will attract C.H.U.D.s. I am totally serious and this is really important.

Now take the flour, and mix it into the bowl of cereal, milk, and sugar stuff. Mix the hell out of it because you want the moisture to be evenly distributed. Double check when you’re done. Is there any hell left in your mix? Keep mixing until all the hell is out.

Now take half a cup of blueberries and dump it in. Guess what you’re going to do? That’s right, mix it all together.

You have a bowl of almost muffins! Good for you. But don’t go high fiving yourself just yet, tough guy. Now you gotta put some paper muffin things into a muffin pan, and use a big spoon (I used a tablespoon from the silverware drawer) to put about 2 spoonfuls of batter into each muffin thing. I got about 10 muffins this way, but your total number of muffins will probably vary due to variations in weather, air pressure, time of day, the stock market in Asia, and how intensely your neighbors have recently had sex on the other side of your apartment wall while you were trying to sleep.

Your oven should be ready now, so go ahead and put the muffin pan into it and close the door. Say a prayer to whatever god of baking you think will pay the most attention to your plea.

It takes about 15 minutes at 375 in a regular oven, or about 12 minutes at 350 in a convection oven for your muffins to be all baked and ready to go. I recommend stabbing them with a toothpick, so they know who’s boss, and also so you can find out if they’re ready (they’re ready when batter doesn’t stick to them).

Put them on a wire rack to cool. Be really careful when you take them out of the muffin pan, because I don’t want to have burned the everlovingfuck out of my fingers for nothing.

You can eat them right away, while they’re hot, but they’ll be a little chewy. If you prefer them to be slightly less chewy, let them cool for about 20 minutes or whatever.

These have like up to 70000000 calories in them but they also give you superpowers if you make them right, so it’s a tradeoff.

EDITED TO ADD: I’m not a particularly skilled baker, so maybe this recipe could benefit from leavening, like a teaspoon of baking powder, or maybe some baking soda (because it would theoretically react with the vinegar) but I don’t know for sure. If that sort of thing matters to you, the Internet has answers and suggestions for you. Oh, and this isn’t gluten free, but if you use your commas correctly, you could give it away and be like, “It’s gluten, free!”

The August Reboot Check-In

Wil and WilNear the beginning of June, someone asked me if I was planning to do any travel during the summer.

“No, I’m staying home to write a book,” I said.

“Oh? What’s it about?”

“It’s a collection of short stories that I’ve been wanting to tell for a long time, but haven’t had time to tell, because I’ve been doing other people’s work for the last couple of years.”

“That sounds like a cool project. And the year is only halfway done!”

“There’s another way of saying that,” I said. “The year is already halfway done.”

And so here we are, past the halfway point of the year. A long way past it, actually. Today is the 244th day of the year. There are 122 days left in 2016. Better start your holiday shopping.

I never thought I would have a midlife crisis, because the way they are depicted in media and pop culture are anathema to me: the sports car, the clothes that look ridiculous on someone my age, fucking someone young enough to be my kid. These are all things I would never do (things that are pretty gross to me, actually) so I just figured that it wouldn’t happen to me.

But I read Henry Rollins’ column in the current issue of LA Weekly, and he mentioned something about having more days behind him than in front of him, and I realized that, yes, I’m having a midlife crisis. It’s not that I want or need to do any of those gross things I just listed; it’s the feeling that there are more days behind me than ahead of me. It’s the feeling that I’m running out of time to do the things I want to do, and the fear that comes with that. It’s feeling the world around me change and leave me behind. It’s seeing young people who have no idea just how fast they’re going to be me. I guess it’s the feeling that motivated me to do this reboot in the first place. I may have fewer days behind me than in front of me (or maybe not; my generation is probably going to live for a really long time, maybe even to a point when we can upload ourselves into computers … unless we’ve already uploaded ourselves into computers and all of this is an illusion) but I’m going to make the most of them, to the best of my ability.

So let’s check in and see how things are going.

Continue reading… →

It’s my 44th Birthday. Time for a check-in.

Wil and WilToday, I complete my 44th trip around the Sun. It’s only taken me a little over 16,000 days, so my pace is pretty solid.

Most birthdays since I turned 30 have just been another X in the box, more or less, but this one is the first since I made a deliberate choice to reboot my life, so now I can clearly and honestly assess how that’s been going (which I guess is what I’ve done every month since I started, but whatever. It sounds profound so there.)

One year ago today, I was at GenCon, having the worst birthday and worst GenCon of my life. I should have been having fun, playing games, and celebrating Tabletop, but I spent the entire convention meeting with game publishers who had been lied to by the same person (who I thought was a trusted friend) who had been lying to me for three years, using me and his position as a trusted part of Tabletop to advance his own goals. While I was trying to deal with the emotional effects of being so totally and utterly betrayed, I also had to try my best to set it aside and save not just my show, but dozens of relationships that I didn’t even know had been severely damaged. I sat down with people who didn’t know me, who I didn’t know, and had to listen to them tell me about all the lies they’d been told about me, about my show, and about my personal values. It was horrible. I had a terrible time, and by the time the day was over, I just wanted to drink beer until I couldn’t feel feelings.

What a difference a year makes. Instead of trying not to cry all day, I’m enjoying the peace and quiet of my home. Instead of struggling to find some enthusiasm to make more Tabletop, I’m creating and writing the stories I’ve been wanting to tell for months. Instead of cleaning up someone else’s mess, I’m spending the day with the people I love.

Being betrayed by someone I loved like family was one of the most painful and devastating things I’ve ever experienced. But I can take something good out of it: it forced me to look at what I was doing with my life, how I was coping with the way I was feeling, and why I had allowed all of it to happen in the first place.

It forced me to get serious about dealing with all that unhappiness, and ask myself what is important to me? What do I want to do with my life? What can I do to take control of my life? How can I be responsible for my happiness?

It’s an ongoing process. Some days are harder than others. I make mistakes, but I learn from them. Months later, I still have profound realizations about my life, my art, and where they intersect all the time, thanks to the clarity and focus my life reboot has given me.

I never would have expected my 44th birthday to be a Big One™, but here we are. Let’s check-in and see how my seven things are working out.

Continue reading… →

I’m the boss of me. (Or, how’s that reboot working out for ya?)

It’s been about seven months since I decided to hit the reboot button on my life, and it’s time to check in and see how I’m doing.

The real challenge this month, and the 54,000 dollar question is: is it worth it?

The fact that I’ve waited until the last day .. even the last half of the last day … of the month should give some indication as to where I’m at, emotionally, right now.

I mostly feel good. I’m mostly sleeping well (other than a couple of intensely terrible nightmare nights), I don’t feel like I’m missing out on any food I want, and I haven’t really missed beer that much. But I feel like the reboot curve has flattened out, and now I’m through the part where I see and experience dramatic results all the time, and I’m in the long dark teatime of the soul.

That’s, uh, that’s not where I really am. My fingers just typed that because it was amusing to me. I’m in the long and boring maintenance part of this, while I adjust to a new normal. I feel really good in my body, the exercise is actually fun, cooking healthy food is fun and delicious, and I can have ice cream almost every night, because I’m taking good care of myself in every other aspect of my life and if I want to have ice cream then goddammit I am going to.

But when someone tells me that I look really good (“ten years younger” is the most common thing, which is nice) and they want to know how I did it in such a short period of time, I tell them that I just took everything I liked and replaced it with water and exercise (which isn’t my phrase, I heard it somewhere else). It’s one of those funny-but-not-ha-ha-funny jokes that isn’t a joke. It’s true … but is it worth it?

I honestly don’t know. I know that I feel good. I know that I look better than I have in years. I know that I’m in really good health, so I don’t feel trapped in a body that’s aging and trying to prevent me from doing the things I want to do.

Strangely, that all feels external and not as important as it was four or five months ago. I don’t have creative and artistic satisfaction, and I know that that is entirely my fault, because I’m not nearly doing as much as I want to do creatively. I still feel like I’m doing other people’s work, even though a lot of that work is intensely satisfying and rewarding in every way. Maybe this only makes sense inside my brain, but I feel like writing for Tabletop and Titansgrave, and doing voice work for the projects I can’t talk about is work and I am expected to do work. Writing stories and making podcasts and putting together films and junk draws from essentially the same creative well, but … I don’t know, it tastes different. It’s more satisfying, I guess. It quenches a different type of thirst.

I’m doing that kind of work a very little bit at a time, but it really does feel like my phone and my email and my texts are constantly pulling me away from it, and the year is nearly half over, and I haven’t published a single short story.

Anyway, that’s a lot of first world problem complaining that I am reluctant to even share in public, but honestly assessing how this is all going is kind of important, so there it is. Let’s check in and see how my grades are for May.

Continue reading… →