Life Changes and Lattes

I was reading back on some posts I did a couple months ago before I went home. Turns out there were some big life changes headed my way, and I'm pleased to announce that beginning in January, I'll be taking on a five month macrobiotic apprenticeship!

My friend Natalie was telling me that there's a difference between a "pull" and a "call." A pull towards something means that you feel a nervous urge to do it, whether from guilt, desire, or some sort of need. A call is quieter, and often much more subtle. It can be long term, never "pulling," simply waiting at the periphery of your life for you to decide that it's the right thing to do.

I have felt a call to take on a more serious study of macrobiotic practice that has been growing for some time, and once I stopped fighting the urge to be right in the thick of things here in the city, it became clear that it was the right thing for me to do, and that this is the right time for me to do it.

I plan on setting down some major roots in the next two years (graduate school, a dog, a lease with my name on it and checks that don't have hello kitty on them)... so this feels like the right time for me to do this.

Ok, onto the next. I had two major culinary accomplishments today:

1. Homemade vegan lattes.

2. "Buttermilk" Scallion-Corn muffins.

As you know, I am a purveyor of artisan crafted beverages by day, so on my days off, I find myself utterly bereft of steamed foamy drinks. This morning I went to the yuppie grocery and got two soy lattes. This evening I needed another, so I cleverly heated soy milk to boiling, put on an oven mitt because it was insanely hot, and used the $3 Ikea Milk Frother to make a drink that looked nothing like this:

But it tasted pretty good.

My second victory was a modification of a positively stellar Martha Stewart recipe that blew my mind with its utter goodness. I told May I'd make her dinner because she's been cooking all kinds of insanely good Chinese comfort food lately for my cold-ridden self. The theme? Southern Comfort.

We had vegan chili with kidney beans, organic local onions, and a bunch of other stuff I'm not too sure about. We had patatuh salahd, as it were. And we had these amazing freaking biscuits. I know that I just wrote a tirade about making vegan substitutions and calling it healthy. So hear me say:

This is not healthy.

There we go. I feel heard. Onto the muffins:

Ingredients

• 1 cup yellow cornmeal
• 1/2 cup garbanzo bean flour

1/2 cup brown rice flour

• 2 tablespoons agave nectar/ brown rice syrup
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoon coarse salt
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons rice or soy milk
• 1 tbsp white or white wine vinegar
• 4 tablespoons oil
• 2 large eggs, whisked
• 1/2 cup chopped scallions
• 1/2 cup fresh corn, cooked first

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Lightly grease 6 cups of a standard-size muffin pan with vegetable oil. In a large bowl,
   combine cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Make a well in the center; stir in buttermilk, oil, egg, and scallions. Fill muffin cups two-thirds full and bake until a toothpick inserted in center of a muffin comes out clean, 10 to 13 minutes.

Courtesy of Martha Stewart. Modifications by Becky to make it dairy free and gluten-free and more delicious. I was privileged in my muffins to have both local scallions and local corn, which totally heightened the experience, because the cornmeal I was using was so generic it was probably GMO'd to glow in the dark so it could be picked at night.