Why Your Cosmic Muffin?

Most everything you'll need to prepare Cosmic Muffins

When the Cosmic Muffin made its first appearance on a wooden kitchen table scattered with home-made granola, fresh berries, kifer, and herbal tea, the originator was told her newest creation might be better suited as a door stop.  A much needed item in a house with a foundation that was tilting on a downward slant more and more each year, causing the doors of every room to slowly sway open unless securely latched.   Not one to be battered into quitting, this baker-at-large continued to add, reduce, sift and change-up until her muffins were a balance of taste and texture even Mother Nature would appreciate.  Certainly her roommates did.  Since then, those who have bitten into a Cosmic Muffin have described its flavor and properties to be as enigmatic as its namesake.  High in fiber, this baked, cake-like bread prepared with a variety of flours, grains, dried fruits, seasonings and nuts makes for excellent breakfast fare.  Easy to prepare, as it is leavened with baking powder, this quick-bread is an eclectic combination of sweet and savory, moist and crunchy, and can also serve as a flavorsome snack when time is short or energy is low.  So how did this multi-tasking muffin get its name?  Well, I have to go back in time a bit. To the early ‘70’s, when we Baby Boomers were as passionate about our long hair and tapestries as we were our picket lines and folk music.  While some were tuning in, turning on and dropping out, I was in the kitchen.  Well, sometimes.    

I am the Cosmic Muffin and it all started with my pheromones.  Had to be.  Hooked him like the two fingers one of the Good Fellas jabs into the nostrils of a particularly annoying peon in a dark Italian restaurant.  Cigar smoke competing with the aroma of garlic, calamari and green olives.  Doing their best to avoid being witnesses, the surrounding diners feign interest in the plastic grapevines that loosely hang from splintering wooden trellises strategically placed between booths.  But there was only one witness to the effects of my engaging aromatics, which apparently lifted him to the very tips of his toes.  Mine was a combination of A & W French fries, from working 4-6 hours as a car-hop, the Jean Nate perfume I doused myself in, as I never had time to go home and shower after my shift and perspiration from my 3-5 hours of dance class and rehearsals immediately following work. 

It was mid-week in late October, my favourite time of year.  Light rains, cable knit sweaters and leg warmers.  Leaves turning colours from green to yellow to red and simple dinners of thick, creamy soups.   By early evening I was exiting the dance studio with a fellow dancer when we were approached.  I tried to walk past, I was hungry.   I had not eaten anything since my morning cinnamon Poptart.  I also needed a shower.   I was having one of my more ripe days as there were no breaks between commitments.    My friend insisted we stop so she could introduce me to the rather imposing figure walking towards us.  He was dressed in a ghee with a black belt tied tightly around his middle. 

 As my friend began to speak the most unusual thing occurred.  Our surroundings suddenly slowed to such a degree it felt surreal.   Her voice and his moved from their lips to my ears on languishing waves of thick, rich molasses.  As if I could, I tried to hurry my listening.  I watched their arms and hands move at this same dreamlike pace, as though they were moving through water.  I noticed this Grizzly Adams look-alike who stood before me emitted his own scent, one of real sweat, and chlorine, (likely because we were standing alongside the campus swimming pool).  He was saying something about just finishing teaching a women’s self-defense class and was on his way to water polo practice.  When, what felt like an hour long introduction finally ended, I found myself agreeing to meet this strangely magnetic man after his practice.  Time and space returned to normal and I hurriedly showered, then sat outside on the bleachers to watch a water sport I knew absolutely nothing about.  After practice, Gerard showered then took me to dinner at a place called Too-Taste-Tee’s.  They served the most gigantic burritos I had ever seen!  A once normal flour tortilla inflated to near unrecognizable proportions.   Filled with an abundance of black beans, well seasoned shredded chicken, cilantro, chilies and tons of cheese, then smothered in salsa verde and sour cream.  Though I could only take a few bites, barely making a dent in mine, I had to admit they were delicious.

What followed that “date” was seven years of on-again, off-again, love, fun, passion, jealousy, competition,  learning, teaching, communal living and hitchhiking across the country.  To this day I love Gerard.    I was eight years his junior and because of it, he was the teacher and I the student.   There were few similarities between us.  Gerard was attending college courtesy of the GI Bill, he had not been home long from time spent as a Navy Seal in Vietnam.  I had graduated high school a year early and left home to complete one semester at Brigham Young before deciding I didn’t fit in.  I returned to California and enrolled myself at the local Junior College Gerard and I attended.  He was funny and outgoing, at times over the top outgoing.  I was quieter and took everything, including myself, too seriously.  He was BIG.  I was not so big.  He knew the Tarot, I Ching and the Martial Arts.  I knew Ballet, Shopping and the Fine Arts.  I drove a small European car, he drove a VW bus.  But when we were in sync everything worked.  We were good. 

Much of the time I felt as though as were running to keep up.  Always the willing and eager pupil, I did my best to take it all in, be as mature as possible.  I embraced his teachings the way I danced.  Fully and completely present.   I became engrossed in the esoteric.  We took classes together in alchemy and TM.  I tagged along with him to his Tai Chi classes, easy for me.  Yes I was becoming pretty “cosmic.”  But  when you haven’t yet learned to balance a checkbook, pump your own gas, or think to save a tea bag so you can use again for a second or third cup of tea AND you’re running from car-hopping to school to dance class you can feel a bit overwhelmed.  You get a little spacey, head in the clouds as you consider the principals of time and space occurring simultaneously.  I was even spacey by nature.  I’m a Pisces and we’re dreamers who spend a lot of time in our own heads.  And perhaps I was a little spacey because I was deliriously happy.   So if you’re a busy, happy Pisces you may keep friends waiting in the car while you run back into the house two or three times to get something.  Or abruptly burst late into the wrong classroom.  You may even show up to the cast party on the wrong night.  But they’ll still let you in because you brought your own booze and munchies. 

   It was after such a day as the one described, yes that all happened in one day, my beloved Gerard bestowed upon me the nickname “Cosmic Muffin.”   Afterall I did eat muffins, all types of muffins every morning.  I really didn’t mind in the nickname in the least.  Gerard’s tone was playful and loving.  Besides, I liked Cosmic Muffin much more than Space Cadette.  So it is my homage to Gerard and our roommates on Moody Road, I created The Cosmic Muffin.

Cosmically holding up the sky



Can't you just see how in love we are?