Thanks, Rottiedogs, nice to see you posting again.
Everyone here should feel free to adapt this spreadsheet and let us know what you use it for. And let me know, either online or off-line, if you need help tweaking the spreadsheet. Excel has a lot of powerful features, I'm sure there are many features I've never used at all or to their full extent.
Several BBGA members have Excel spreadsheets that handle multi-stage formulas (ones with a starter or soaker) and that more closely resemble the BBGA formula standard.
I keep thinking there should be a way to do the BBGA formula standard as a webpage, but I don't think there's an easy way to do it in WordPress. I've looked at using Drupal, their built-in form tool isn't quite robust enough to do it, either.
In computer technical terms, it is a bill of materials system, and a multi-stage one if it handles starters and soakers. A really complex one, that handles multiple independent products, can be used to drive the daily production planning of a bakery.
I made a turkey breast (a Butterball boneless) and had it with chicken veg soup.
Dinner tonight was a seafood casserole (shrimp, lobster, and "chowder fish" which is the trimmings from various cuts of fish in the seafood department) on rice and cole slaw.
CWCdesign--It sounds like the Meyer Lemon Cake is an oil-based cake. If that is correct, you might want to stir in the flour mixture by hand. I picked up this tip from either a Bon Appetit or Epicurious email (before they started charging for access), and it has been a game changer for the oil-based cakes I now bake, in that it gives them a light texture.
It looks like the center light bank (4 bulbs) will go from about 160 watts to around 50 watts, the outer banks, which don't get used as often, would be twice that. Not sure that'll make a visible change in our electric bill, but the kitchen sure is a lot brighter now.
We've switched a number of lights from incandescent to LED; there are a few fluorescent fixtures that will probably get changed to LED over time, but that's usually a bit more work. We just switched a string of cable lights from halogen to LED, they're 16 feet off the ground so we had to find someone with a big ladder to get up there.
I never did report in about the Lemon Meyer Bundt Cake - Life got in the way. It is a really good cake, but I think I over mixed it. Claire used a hand mixer but I only have my stand mixer - it was denser than I'd like and a little dry - I think I would also use a skewer next time instead of a toothpick - the glaze didn't sink in very far - all very doable fixes. I did use olive oil, might try avocado as well, but I discovered yesterday that I need to toss my current avocado oil as it has gone rancid - I've had it a while so not surprised.
The day before I left for Atlanta, I woke up to a text from Will that said the washer was leaking - so I had to scramble to find neighbors who'd let me use their machines - I have wonderful neighbors! Our new one arrived on Friday - it's an LG stacked front loading washer dryer in green (my choice) - it's really nice. We've been catching up on doing the laundry we didn't want to impose on our neighbors - they let us do 4 loads over the course of 2 weeks.
Friday morning, I made jalapeño corn muffins from a mix we carry in the store. It's a pancake waffle mix and I didn't know until I saw the vendor in Atlanta that you could make muffins from it. They weren't bad, but perhaps a bit dense probably due to the mixing. I think if you're used to packaged mixes you would not notice.
I have been reading, but not posting lately. Last Monday I made a grain bowl with roasted vegetables from Barefoot Contessa's latest book Go To Dinners - it came out well - it was pretty much a blueprint recipe where you can change up all sorts of things. It said it served 4 - Will and I ate large amounts the first night, then I had another Tuesday and Wednesday and then I turned what was left into a version of tabbouleh and had dinner and lunch on Friday.
Last night I made Cianfotta (Mixed Vegetables) a recipe I got from a cooking class with Nancy Verde Barr before Nathaniel was born! It's a stovetop braise in a way, very simple - garlic, onion, potato, peppers and tomatoes, but you can always add other things like eggplant or zucchini. Last night I added Tuscan Chicken Sausage and green olives - dinner again tonight.
I like Ina Garten's recipe from her cookbook, Foolproof. It uses a 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes. Her recipe calls for orzo and saffron, neither of which I use. It also calls for a tablespoon of kosher salt - since I use Morton's, I use 2 teaspoons. I also add 1 teaspoon sugar to cut the acidity and 2 teaspoons of Italian Herb mix (Penzey's) in place of the saffron.
Creamy Tomato Soup
I'm not sure where I found this recipe. I halved the original recipe to make 5 cups, so doubling it to make 10 cups would work well. Use the oil and seasonings of your choice. I have not tried it with homegrown tomatoes yet, but it should work.
1/2 Tbs. olive oil
1/2 medium onion, chopped
2 tsp. Italian seasoning (I use Penzey's salt-free Tuscan Sunset)
1 (28 oz.) can crushed tomatoes (I like Muir Glen organic)
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 cup chicken or turkey broth
3/4 cup (6 fluid oz.) low-fat evaporated milk
pepper to taste
In 4-qt. saucepan, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add onion and sauté until tender. Stir in Italian seasoning; cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add tomatoes and cook a few minutes. Stir in baking soda. Add broth and bring to a simmer for 10 minutes.
Remove the pan from the heat and use a stick blender to puree until smooth. (You can also use a regular blender if no stick blender is available.) Stir in evaporated milk and heat to simmer. Add pepper and salt as desired.
Sure, I'd like to see the recipe.
We got a sprinkling of snow, but the temperature fell through the floor, it was 8 degrees when we were coming home from the theatre tonight. (We went to see "On Your Feet", the Gloria Estefan musical.) The forecasted high for Sunday is 11. Good day to stay home, bake some cookies, and watch the NFL playoffs.
Yes, you can use Baker's Math to rescale any recipe, it doesn't even have to be a recipe that uses flour, just use whatever the main ingredient is as the 100% basis. Some people feel that if you are doubling a recipe you might not need to double the yeast, though that's mostly because older recipes often use too much yeast because yeast has improved since the 60's. (Salt is another ingredient that I've seen that suggestion on, I often go with 75% of the recommended salt anyway, though, because my cardiologist wants me to limit my sodium intake.)
The fluorescent lights and/or starters in our kitchen have been failing over the last few months, and I've been trying to get the electrician we use out to replace them. Finally got him to rewire them on Thursday, replacing the T8 bulbs with LED bulbs that are 10-15% brighter. (And should last as long as we're here, as they're rated at 25000 hours.)
We can SEE in the kitchen again! I also replaced over half of the under-counter lights a couple of weeks ago, so they're back to essentially full strength, too. (I didn't replace two of them in the corner above the microwave oven, it blocks most of the light there anyway.)
I made meatballs (not Italian style) and had it with rice and broccoli.
On the mid day news they said the country's largest egg producer profits are up 600%. So it seems that the big increase in prices isn't all due to bird flu, etc. It looks like they took a page from the oil companies playbook.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner! Boneless thighs marinated in a Greek type dressing, roasted Brussels sprouts with bacon and maple syrup (the only way my husband will eat them!), and a salad with lettuces from under the gro lights.
My grocery store had advertised large white eggs at 4.89 a dozen. I was excited that the price had come down. But that section of the egg cooler was EMPTY!! No eggs less than $6, and most were over $7. Now I wait 2 weeks for my next shopping trip, and hope the price is down around $4 and there are eggs to buy.
When I was in college, I spent a summer as an engineering aide on an Army base near home (one of LBJ's Great Society programs), basically assisting the engineers and playing around with the drafting equipment. Two of my HS classmates worked as draftsmen, and all summer I was getting pointers from the head of the drafting room. I learned more about drawing plans that summer than I did in a course on it at college. They would draw the plan in pencil then ink over it, both skills that are obsolete now.
A standard thing to do for birthdays and such was to order a batch of cinnamon rolls from a bakery in a nearby town. It was a full 18x24 sheet pan and I think it had 24 rolls. My birthday is in early September and Northwestern is on the quarter system and the fall term doesn't start until around the 3rd week of September, so I ordered a batch to celebrate my birthday that summer the last week I was working there.
