Wordpress ate this post. Boo-urns!

For the past few days, I’ve simply, flat-out refused to edit this entry in my great strike against WordPress for nomming my (admittedly “nom-able”) entry. Damn it. I typed out an entire long rant about my hatred of raisins, complete with pithy reference to my favorite children’s book of all time, and hit publish. Bam! The entry appeared, just like I wanted it to, so I toddled off to bed, satisfied that I’d done well and gotten a post up on time.

Except the next day, when I went to copy the formatting to post a new entry about Vegan With a Vengeance and muffins, guess what? No entry.

My rage was palpable.

Suffice to say, I’m over my anger and angst — having learned the message of “forgive and forget”, over time leads to forgetting more than just your anger but also the wording of the damn post WordPress ate. It went something like this:

When I was a child, night after night without fail, when my mother came to tuck me in and read me a story, I’d always have only one that came to mind: The Monster at the End of This Book (Starring Loveably, Furry, Old Grover). Grover was not my favorite Muppet — that honor was shared between Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch — but the book took full advantage of Grover’s two character features: adorableness and stupidity.

You see, Grover is meant to be your humble narrator through this lovely, fuzzy (like him!) children’s book. But as soon as he sees the title on the first page, he has a bit of a melt down. Because Grover is scared of monsters. Each page you turn brings you closer and closer to the end of the book, where there is guaranteed to be a monster, and Grover cannot let this happen. He ties, glues, nails, and bricks closed the pages. He begs and pleads and cries in vain attempts to convince you, dear reader, to stop turning pages because there is a MONSTER at the END of the book, and with each page turned, you bring yourself (and him) one step closer to the monster!

Luckily (as you may have deduced), what Grover has failed to realize is that he is the main character of the book and is, himself, a monster. Thus (SPOILER ALERT!) he, himself, is the titular monster. It wasn’t so scary after all!

It is with this sort of apprehension and panic run amok that I approached my goal of making every muffin recipe in Vegan with a Vengeance because like Grover, I have an exaggerated, irrational fear: raisins. I hate the damn things. And at the end of the section on muffins are two recipes: Carrot Raisin Muffins and Raisin Bran Muffins.

*gulp*

Momentarily, I felt like Grover and considered tying, gluing, nailing, or even bricking shut the pages dealing with raisins, so I could pretend they did not exist. And like Grover, as I worked my way through the book, toward those two horrifying pages, I could feel the dread washing over me. But unlike Grover, I could avoid the menace of Carrot Raisin muffins with one simple substitution: Crystallized Ginger.

>Crystallized Ginger is simply ginger root that’s been cured and coated with sugar. You can buy it, finely chopped, in the spice aisle in a small jar by McCormick or Spice Islands for $11 an ounce. Or, you can go into the Asian aisle and buy it in slices you finely chop it yourself for about $2 for the same amount. I usually buy a box of Asian Gourmet, but Ty Ling brand is the same, and you can buy that brand in bulk on Amazon.com.

Carrot Ginger Muffins

INGREDIENTS
• 1 1/2 c. flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 c. sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 c. rice or soy milk
• 1/4 c. canola oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 c. grated carrots
• 1/2 c. crystallized ginger (finely chopped)
• 1 tsp ginger paste

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat the overn to 400; prepare muffin tin w/spray or cupcake liners
2. In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, spices, sugar, and salt.
3. Create a well in the center and add the milk, oil, and vanilla, stirring until just combined.
4. Fold in carrots and ginger.
5. Fill muffin tins and bake for 18-22 minutes until done.

As such, I usually experience a significant sugar crash midday, and have tried to figure out ways to make sure I get breakfast into my angry but sleepy morning body, and muffins — whipped together on Sunday and then pre-bagged in Ziplock baggies for a grab-and-go breakfast throughout the week — are the perfect thing to fill my morning void.

As usual, I couldn’t leave well enough alone and added some ground flaxseed meal to the recipe for some extra wholesomeness. Because something just seems very wrong about eating a muffin that tastes like it could be a dessert. And oh, these could be a dessert. If anything went wrong, though, it was probably due to the flaxseed, or my use of a KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer instead of using a spoon and blending things by hand. Either of those changes could explain why I didn’t get the “apple pie filling in the center of the muffin” like the book promises.

Apple Pie-Crumb Cake Muffins

FOR MUFFINS:

• 1 1/2 c. flour
• 1/4 c. + 2 tblsp sugar
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground allspice
• 1/8 tsp ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 c. apple cider
• 1/3 c. canola oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 c. grated apple.
• 1/2 c. chopped apple (1/4″ pieces)

FOR TOPPING

• 1/4 c. all purpose flour
• 1/4 c. brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. ground allspice
• Pinch of salt
• 3 tbsp canola oil.

Instructions:

1. Prepare the topping by mixing all the dry topping ingredients together in a small bowl. Drizzle the oil in while mixing with your fingertips until crumbs form. Set aside.
2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees; lightly grease a twelve-muffin tin. (For portability purposes, I use cupcake papers)
3. In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, spices, and salt. Create a well in the center and add the apple cider, oil, and vanilla. Mix, then fold in the grated and chopped apple. (I used my KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer on the “stir” setting.)
4. Fill each muffin cup two-thirds full. Sprinkle the crumb topping over each muffin. Bake for 22 minutes.

Until recently, if you asked me for a pumpkin muffin recipe, mine would be one handed down from a friend at my old job who got it from her friend who attends Weight Watchers meetings: mix one yellow cake mix with one can (15 oz) of pumpkin puree (not pie filling) and mix until blended. Bake according to package directions. Sometimes, to feel healthier, I’d add one or two tablespoons of my favorite ingredient, ground flax seeds, to the mix, but otherwise, it was pretty much the same. And the result was pretty much the same — uniform cake-like muffins of a neon orange color and smooth (except for the flax seeds) consistency.

Then, a funny thing happened on the way to the kitchen. One Sunday, I returned from taking David to work and found my parents (who we newlyweds were living with at the time) sitting up, waiting for me. As exchange for the free room and board, we did the grocery shopping and some light cleaning for them, and today, they wanted to talk to us about the list.

It turns out that when their radio alarm had gone off to wake them for church, a “doctor” had been on, talking about the health benefits of going vegan. For a diabetic with a heart condition, such as my father, veganism was the absolute answer to his weight gain and high cholesterol and blood sugar. Veganism would cure my mother’s thinning hair and weakening teeth. It was a miracle, to only be eclipsed by Jesus himself!

Having always been a meat and potatoes kind of Irish family, I was not only shocked but at a loss. What, exactly, would I  — or could they — cook? Other than salad and veggie burgers on vegan rolls (and let me tell you how hard it is to find a bread product commercially available that doesn’t include honey, whey, or some other animal product!) I couldn’t think of a thing for them to eat. So, I went to my local bookstore looking for a vegan cookbook for my pentioner parents.

The only vegan book in stock? Vegan with a Vengeance : Over 150 Delicious, Cheap, Animal-Free Recipes That Rock

The veganism thing lasted for five weeks, from the day after Easter until sometime in the summer, at which point the lure of Hebrew National hot dogs called them back to the meat-eaters. Not that they were particularly good vegans, mind you. Every now and then, my mom would sneak Morningstar Farms burgers instead of  the vegan Gardenburgers I’d bring home; my dad would get veggie burgers at Burger King. They’d both put honey in their tea and (when they learned they had to give up dairy) were buying Egg Beaters and Horizon organic cheese as “alternatives” — ignoring that both use egg and milk, respectively.

And all that time, there sat the little cookbook I found, waiting to be cracked open even once. For my parents, vegan meant prepackaged everything, leaving me (the grocery shopper) to read the labels and make sure what they were eating was vegan — an issue I quickly remedied by buying mostly Wegmans brand products, which are labeled on the front with a green V for vegan. One day, curious, I cracked open the book and the pages fell almost immediately to the Best Pumpkin Muffins.

Best? Oh really?

Yes, really.

The Best Pumpkin Muffins

Adapted from Vegan with a Vengeance : Over 150 Delicious, Cheap, Animal-Free Recipes That Rock by Isa Chandra Moskowitz

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground or freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 cup pureed pumpkin (Fresh or from a can; do not use pumpkin pie mix)
• 1/2 cup soy milk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons molasses

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Lightly grease a twelve-muffin tin.
2. Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and spices. (Ed. Note: I added 2 tbsp of ground flax seed to the dry mix for extra nutrition.)
   
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together pumpkin, soy milk, oil, and molasses. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix.
4. Fill the muffin cups two-thirds full. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick or knife inserted in the center comes out clean.