The CMM.

This is the very intermittent public health blog of Rosemary Eileen Till.

I am going climbing this weekend and, as I am one to scheme about food all the time, I was thinking about what food to bring. I am trying to eat less gluten, mostly as an intentional way to get better at building my diet around other grains, proteins and vegetables, so I was brainstorming ways to go beyond the simple peanut butter and bread sandwich. Also, much as I love Clif bars, I like real food too.

A mainstay of my diet in Park Café days was the Cornmeal Millet Muffin – the “CMM.” Texture-y, tasty and totally granola, the CMM is edible straight from the pan, it makes a supreme compliment to bison-patty-cum-steak, a hearty addition to any backpacker’s Cream of the West breakfast, and is perfectly good smashed to grainy pulp in a bread bag in the bottom of your pack. They’re also gluten-free. What better thing could I do than bake a batch of CMMs? Ignoring the fact that I didn’t really have time, I bought the ingredients and then was obligated with whip them up, primarily because I didn’t want the buttermilk to go bad in the fridge and the only thing worse than buying store applesauce would be letting it go bad too.

However, I didn’t make CMMs and I’m not sharing the Park Café CMM recipe here.  I have this thing with baking cookies: I have one recipe and I play around with it all the time, substituting this for that and adding interesting things like flax and the crumbs from last time’s cookies. David accuses me of baking things that are good, but aren’t cookies. This is not the first time that I’ve made “CMMs,” and since each time they’ve been a little different, the recipe is becoming my go-to platform-for-adventures muffin recipe. There is much potential here. I present to you a variation on the CMM.

Mix in a larger bowl:

·      ½ cup oil

·      ½ cup honey

·      ½ cup applesauce (I used an apricot-apple sauce)

·      3 eggs

·      1 ½ cups almond flour

·      ¼ cup coconut flour

·      A dash of almond extract

Mix in a slightly smaller bowl:

·      1 ½ cups corn flour

·      4 teaspoons baking powder

·      1 teaspoon salt

·      1 teaspoon xanthan gum

·      ½ cup millet

·      ¼ cup sesame seeds

·      2 Tablespoons chia seeds

Mix dry ingredients into wet ingredients, alternating with 1 cup of buttermilk (almond milk or milk, mixed with some yogurt might work here too).

Oil muffin tin well and back for approximately 23 minutes at 350 degrees.

Also, don’t taste them before they’ve cooled to bearable temperature. And don’t inhale them.

They have a bit of a baking powder-y flavor, so maybe substitute in some baking soda. I didn’t have any because I used it to clean the sink about a month ago.

Also, a nugget from my new favorite NPR blog, "Goats and Soda: Stories of Life in a Changing World":

http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/07/29/336272173/fist-bumps-pass-along-fewer-germs-than-handshakes.