As I was walking towards the grocery store today I realized I could just as easily go to the senior center. Even more easily, as a matter of fact since it is not only fewer linear meters but after the recent school remodeling, the parking lot connects to the back of the senior center and although cars cannot go that way, I can. Making it a mere 15 minute walk door to door.

Now you may wonder, how can the senior center be interchangeable with the store? Do they sell food? Well, no. I go to the store just to get a 3 mile walk, round trip, while listening to the news, checking messages etc. I had considered buying whole wheat flour, even though I used to thumb my nose at buying flour. Oh how long it has been since I milled my beautiful wheat berries … even though after my first experience of baking bread with flour I had freshly milled, I was sure I’d never again go back to store-bought flour. That was another era. It was actually the night before I was scheduled for election duty and I realized I had nothing to take for lunch the next day, no time or energy to go to the store and no flour in the house to make bread.

I did, however, have wheat berries which had been sitting in my pantry waiting for me to try out my new (to me) mill on soft-loan from a friend.

Reader, I milled. And loaded up the bread machine and pressed start. Then made hummus. Sure enough, by morning the bread was ready and I was off to check in voters for the primary election. Our polling center supervisor had suggested that we make a pot-luck out of it and encouraged everyone to bring something to share in the break room. So there I put out my loaf of bread and bowl of hummus and got the most enthusiastic compliments from the other election judges. (I am not sure why we are called judges, we just check people in.).

When I say that was a long time ago I am not only talking about how long it has been since I milled my own flour. (For more see Milling Wheat, Part 1) I am also talking about the conversations in the break room where we literally could not tell who was who, party-wise. The rule was that there needed to be an equal number of R- and D- affiliated judges. All of us worked together very seamlessly and had no doubt that we all shared the common goal of making it easy for people to vote.

Back to the present. If I skipped going to the store, I could go to the senior center and walk on the treadmill, allowing me to set an incline. Since I wouldn’t be buying flour, I thought, why not see if I can make muffins with chickpea flour? I had plenty of that at home already. I found a recipe on Power Hungry and adapted it slightly (used mashed bananas in lieu of applesauce and milk in lieu of coffee and almond oil in lieu of avocado oil simply because I get most of my baking oil from the oil on top of peanut or almond butter jars).

Voila

So here is what I did (though I was not precise with my wet ingredients as I am lazy to wash more dishes):

Preheat oven to 400 F

In a mixing bowl combine all of the dry ingredients, followed by all of the wet ingredients. 

• 1 1/4 cup besan (chickpea flour)
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup mashed banana
• 1/4 cup oil
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 TBS apple cider vinegar
• 2 TBS baking powder

Pour into muffin pans – makes 1 dozen. Bake for 15-20 minutes. I baked for 15 minutes at 400 and then just because it seemed like it could use a few more minutes but I didn’t want to burn them I reduced the temperate to 350 for the last 5 minutes.

Note: The Conscious Plant Kitchen has a recipe that uses cooked (canned) chickpeas rather than besan (aka chickpea flour). I haven’t tried it.