Bike Fuel

Lately, I've been having sleep issues (well, technically, sinus issues, but those are causing sleep issues), so I haven't been getting up early enough to eat breakfast before heading out ... and, in fact, I just don't generally like to eat until I've been awake for half an hour or so. Likewise, it's Fall (more or less), and everyone knows that Fall means one thing...

Okay, one thing other than cyclocross.

Okay, okay — one thing other than cyclocross and getting the winter bike ready to roll and the Ride to Conquer Cancer and the CIBA Hilly Hundred and so on and so forth. Oh, and every U.S. cyclist's favorite holiday, Thanksgiving (which is really just an excuse to carb-load on Thursday, then take an extra-long ride on Friday ... right?).

BUT FALL ALSO MEANS ONE OTHER THING, AND THAT'S BAKING, OKAY???

Ahem. Sorry. Now, where was I?

So, in light of both these developments, I decided yesterday to whip up some breakfast-cookie-type-things, whereupon I found an excellent recipe on http://www.allrecipes.com, to whit: Apple-Oat Breakfast Treats. Pictures forthcoming; the one I took this morning didn't turn out as I had hoped.

I have yet to run these through a recipe analyzer to get a sense of the calorie content and so forth, but I will say that one makes a good breakfast which will keep you rolling 'til it's time to refuel (though if you're planning on heading out for a tough ride, you might want to eat two). Yes, like cookies, they are made with butter and sugar, but the main ingredient is plain ol'-fashioned oats.

I made this batch with apple pie filling (the Kroger brand is made without high fructose corn syrup), but I plan to use dried apple pieces in the next batch instead. I also added roughly one quarter-cup of dried cranberries, because if dried cranberries were regulated by the Federal Government in the same way as, for example, opium, I would have to buy mine at thirty-seven times the current rate from that sketchy-looking fellow on the corner.

In retrospect, I should have added more dried cranberries, because they did not disseminate evenly throughout the cookies, and as such are unnoticeable in many. As things stand, I am short a quarter-cup of dried cranberries, and they don't make anywhere near enough impact in most of the cookies to make it worth my while.

In other news, my kitchen is totally out of control, so I'm going to try to get it clean tonight so I can take a long ride tomorrow morning and do a bit of exploring. One of the guys at the shop mentioned a nice route involving a Big Farking Hill, but I think I'm going to wait on that one a bit more. A ride over the bridge sounds like it might be nice, as might a long, solitary ride on the MUP.