Vegtastic!

I love eating oatmeal for breakfast, and it wasn’t until a recent snow day that I thought to prepare it in the oven instead of the microwave.

Using recipes from Cooking Light and Super Natural Every Day as inspiration, I came up with a vegan version of baked oatmeal that utilizes the local produce Washingtonians have available in winter: apples.

Baked oatmeal is destined to become a weekend staple around these parts. The chewy texture and sweet, nutty flavor of the grains is akin to a healthier fresh-baked oatmeal cookie, and it comes together quickly — sip coffee, catch up on blogs, or do the Sunday crossword puzzle while it bakes.

It also reheats well, so you can munch on leftovers Monday morning while your coworkers enviously slurp the fake-maple instant stuff.

Apple cinnamon baked oatmeal

Ingredients:

• 2 cups uncooked rolled oats
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 apple, peeled, cored and chopped
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• salt, to taste (1/4 – 1/2 tsp)
• 2 cups vanilla soy milk or other vanilla nut milk
• 1 tbs oil
• 1 tbs ground flax, mixed in 3 tbs warm water
• Cooking spray

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Combine oats, sugar, apple, cinnamon, walnuts, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.
3. Add soymilk and oil; stir to combine.
4. Stir in flax mixture.
5. Pour into a greased 8″ x 8″ pan. Bake for about 40 minutes, or until mixture is set.
   

3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693…

I’ve always thought that the first 30 or so digits of pi would make a lovely nerd tattoo, if I was into either body art or math.

Pi is used so frequently in the hard sciences that were I a mathematician or engineer, I would probably find it very handy to have a reference inked into my flesh.

There’s something very comforting about a mathematical constant: divide any circle’s circumference by its diameter and you get pi.

C/D = π.

The lid of a jar. A lens cap. Columbus circle.

I’m not that into math. I am, however, very much into pie.

But here’s a little fun with numbers: if I have a 9-inch pie pan, the circumference of said pie must be 28.27433 inches.

Yup– that’s my kind of arithmatic.

Filling (from Group Recipes)

• 2 tbs all-purpose flour
• 6 or 7 apples (or one ginormous one and 3 normal-sized ones), peeled, cored and chopped
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ginger
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup  whiskey
• 2 tbs lemon juice

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Mix all filling ingredients in a large bowl and set aside.
3. Place flour, sugar, salt and baking powder in a bowl; mix thoroughly.
4. With a pastry knife, cut in Earth Balance until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
5. Add 6 tbs of the water and the apple cider vinegar; form a ball of dough, adding extra water if needed and handling as minimally as possible.
6. Divide dough ball in two; wrap each half in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
7. Roll half the dough out onto a clean, floured surface; place in bottom of pie pan.
8. Fill with filling.
9. Roll out the other half of dough and place on top. Cut vents in top to let out steam.
10. Bake 25 minutes at 425, then reduce temperature to 350 and bake 45 minutes longer or until crust is brown and juices are bubbling.

May is the best month to bake apple cake.

This statement may sound odd considering that apple season peaks in September/October/November. In those months, you buy fresh apples from the farmers market or grocery store, rinse them off, and eat them straight– crisp and juicy at the end of summer, mealy and cloyingly sweet the closer you get to the new year.

By May, apples are long-forgotten reminders of autumn that appear out of nowhere in the refrigerator during spring cleaning. Like Betty White, these refrigerator apples are shriveled and old, yet some not-to-be-overlooked spark remains. You certainly wouldn’t want to eat them as is, yet you can’t bring yourself to toss them. So what do you do?

Bake an apple cake.

David’s birthday is in the middle of May, and having several of these Golden Girl apples on hand, I decided to bake him an apple cake with maple frosting– a winning combination, in a Vermont-y sort of way. Many apple cake recipes produce dense loaves of glorified bread, but I wanted a lighter, layered, birthday cake-type of cake. I found a basic recipe on Country Living, and modified it to fit the confection in my head. (more…)