I've been paying 3.99 for a dozen large eggs for about 6 months now, but 2 weeks ago the price was up to 4.49. I noted that there were some low supplies or empty shelves then, also. King Arthur flour was on sale for 2.50 for 5 pounds (just a couple of the basic flours) so most of that section was empty. Chicken was 1.49 (that is not a typo!) on sale for boneless breasts and thighs; it's usually over 3.00 per pound, so I bought several packages. This is at a small, northeast only, chain store. I'm going to do my biweekly shopping trip today, I do not want to see my total.
I'm planning another batch of croissant dough this week, for chocolatines. I talked about it more in the weekly 'cooking' thread.
This will be the third time I've used the hand laminator, hopefully I've got it figured out by now. The final roll-out will be 4 mm thick, because it's about a 40 layer dough and the ideal thickness for laminated doughs is 0.1 mm per layer. (Below that the butter doesn't stay a solid layer, it breaks up.)
We had ham steak with pineapple and some steamed broccoli tonight.
Friday is Diane's birthday and I'm planning veal Marsala. Finding veal was a real challenge, though. (Wrong time of year, probably, though it is getting hard to find in general.)
I'm also making a large batch of chocolatines for her Alexander class's Christmas party on Friday. I'll mix up the detrempte tomorrow and do the lamination on Thursday, that way all I have to do Friday morning is final roll-out, cut the dough into rectangles, roll them up with the chocolate sticks inside, let them rise for around 90 minutes and then bake them. They should still be slightly warm when we take them to the party.
I'll probably make another chocolate cream pie for dessert on Diane's birthday, too, but this time in a standard butter crust rather than the chocolate pate sucree I used last time. She though the meringue was over-beaten, I think it was because I used a 2-1 sugar to egg white ratio as that is supposed to prevent weeping. It also makes the meringue stiffer and not as light, so I'll drop back to 1-1 this time.
I can't say I've noticed a shortage of cornstarch, but I buy it in big containers at Sams Club and haven't needed to buy one lately.
I see a lot of open spots on shelves throughout the grocery store, though. I was at one store today that had NO granulated sugar on the shelf except for a couple of 10 pound bags, at $7.99.
And although the government says retail prices moderated in the last month (as if we can trust anything the government tells us), egg prices are out of sight. 2-3 weeks I bought some at Aldi for $2.19/dozen, but it took me two trips, the first time they were totally out of eggs, this past weekend they were $3.48/dozen, and I saw an article online that said the WHOLESALE price of eggs in the midwest is now over $4.50/dozen.
See https://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/pybshellegg.pdf
Broccoli prices have soared, too, Hy-Vee had it for about $4.50/bunch the other day.
For dinner on Monday, I roasted a small (3.17 lb.) chicken. I also roasted a honey nut squash from the farmers' market (we ate all of the ones from our garden). We had microwaved fresh broccoli, some of the last from the farmers' market. That broccoli was so good that it will be hard to go back to the store broccoli, which is shipped from California, no matter what time of the year.
Congratulations on your baking success--and growing baking reputation--CWCdesign! I had a similar experience at Christmas bakes sales at a church I attended in California years ago. My Limpa bread sold just as I took it out of the bag. (It helps to have people of Swedish heritage.)
I'm glad that your cake came out well on the repeat.
My apologies that I never wrote back about my remake of the Irish Chocolate Cake last Wednesday. It was a success. I used the melted butter/cocoa powder paste to grease the larger of my two bundt pans. I made sure my butter was soft and mixed everything through the eggs with the stand mixer. I then added the flour and liquid by hand and it was the right texture to go in the pan. I baked it for 50 minutes and it wasn't quite done so I baked for another 5. I didn't want to over bake again so I took it out. It un-molded beautifully. So after it cooled, I wrapped it and put it in the freezer. On Friday, I took both cakes (the rum cake and whiskey cake) out of the freezer and wrapped them for the bake sale - I borrowed large saran from work so you could see the cakes. One neighbor saw me taking them to the car for delivery to the sale with pretty ribbons and all and got excited about the sale. When I got to the gardens, everyone wanted to buy them then - we don't allow members to buy early. Turns out my neighbor asked a friend to get there at 9:00am on Saturday and she got my rum cake - I guess the members kept looking for it after that!
On Thursday, I made bourbon balls with crushed cookies (Chocolate Bourbon from a Bakery we buy from for the store - they had passed their best by date, so we had to damage them out - you can still eat them, you just can't sell them.), pecans, powdered sugar, cocoa powder, maple syrup and of course Bourbon for a neighborhood Christmas party. I rolled half in sparkling sugar and half in chocolate sprinkles. Everyone wanted the recipe and one neighbor asked if he could pay me to make them. I said I was sorry, no, but I'd happily give him the recipe!
I made my adaptation of Cornmeal Pumpernickel Waffles for breakfast on Monday. I had previously halved the salt, cutting it from 2 tsp. to 1 tsp. Today, I further cut it to ¾ tsp., given that the recipe (from King Arthur's Whole Grains baking book) also has 2 tsp. baking powder and 1 tsp. baking soda. We did not miss the extra salt. I usually make waffles on Sunday, but yesterday was the last day, for two weeks of duck hunting season, and hunters set up off of our lakeshore, so I needed to take the dog over to our Annex, as she is terrified of the gun noise. As it turns out, no ducks showed up, and the hunters packed away their decoys and left around noon. There will be two more weeks of duck season starting December 26, provided the lake has not frozen. However, there have not been that many ducks for several years.
I plan more cookie baking this week, but today was about bread.
I was looking through my pile of untried recipes and came across "Mixed Grains Bread," which Martha Rose Shulman contributed to Zester, a newsletter and recipe site that went out of existence some years ago. In the headnote, she said that it was her signature bread when she began cooking in the '70s and was still a family favorite.
We were out of bread, except for a loaf of Challah in the freezer, so on Sunday, I decided to try baking this bread. As an added advantage, it called for quinoa flour or millet flour, and I have some millet flour taking up freezer space. I made a few changes. I used just 200g of water and replaced the other 475 g with buttermilk. I used bread flour rather than unbleached white flour, since the bread is mostly wholegrain. I reduced the salt from 20g to 15g. Her instructions were for kneading by hand, but I used my stand mixer. It is a heavy dough, but my Cuisinart 7-qt. mixer has the power to handle it. I added the salt with the final flour addition. The bread had a biga stage, and it also had two risings before it is panned for the final rise. I left off the light sesame seed topping in deference to my husband, but I had some egg wash left from two projects late last week, so I did the two egg washes. It baked in 50 minutes. The 9x5 loaves had good oven spring and have a rustic look. I look forward to slicing one tomorrow, at which time I will report on taste and texture.
Note: I tried to find a link to the recipe, but since I printed it eleven years ago, and Zester is no longer a site, I could not find it online anywhere. (This might be a job for the Way Back Machine.) If anyone is interested, I can post the recipe here, with my re-worked instructions to use a stand mixer.
Alton Brown was in Lincoln this week for one of his shows (I wouldn't call it a cooking demonstration), and there's video of him pouring chili on a cinnamon roll, taking a big bite (which he apparently didn't like) and proclaiming that 'Nebraska Style'.
Nope!
The cinnamon roll has to be dunked in the chili. And it takes the right kind of chili (not too spicy) and the right kind of cinnamon roll (not too sweet or heavy on cinnamon) or the combination just doesn't work. It doesn't appear what he had met either of those conditions, and then of course he did it wrong, so it really doesn't surprise me that he didn't like the results. No Nebraskans I know would do it that way, either.
See https://journalstar.com/entertainment/dining/nebraskans-cringe-as-celebrity-chef-alton-brown-visits-lincoln-pours-chili-on-cinnamon-roll/article_6aa83dba-afb3-5043-9766-4288ab9730dd.html#tracking-source=home-the-latest
My older son is a big Alton Brown fan, I'm not, I find his recipes overly seasoned and sometimes just weird. He gets too busy trying to do things HIS way or what he think the 'science' should be, and with very mixed results.
He can be entertaining and some of his scientific explanations make sense. But I prefer Kenji Lopez-Alt's way of experimenting with food science.
When Susan Reid of King Arthur was in Kansas City for her laminated dough demonstration, she talked a little about Alton, who was one of her students back when she was working at a culinary school. Let's say it sounded like she had a mixed opinion of him.
I found an internet article on my homepage that had ten recipes for German cookies. I looked through them and the Zimtsterne (Cinnamon Stars) did not call for butter but relies on finely ground almonds. So, on Tuesday, I baked the recipe, using Bob's Red Mill almond flour I had in the freezer. My star cutter must have been twice the size of hers, as I only got 14 stars and one smaller circle rather than 36. The recipe called for a meringue glaze, but I did not want to mess with it, so I used a half recipe for a Clear Cookie Glaze that was among my "to try" recipes. I substitute vanilla for the almond or orange extract. I probably could have made just a quarter recipe. I stuck the remaining glaze in a bowl in the refrigerator. I might try warming it up to see if I can use it on something else. The cookies were to bake 8 minutes, but given the size of mine, I let them bake for 15. I will sample one tomorrow.
For dinner on Monday, I made Lima Beans with Ham, Brown Rice, and Kale (also celery, the last of the red bell peppers, dehydrated onion, and sage). I made yogurt on Monday as well.
I may do some banana muffins today. (But I've been saying that for a week or longer.)
For dinner on Wednesday, I used leftover turkey, which I added to sauteed mushrooms and red bell pepper, before adding a bit of broth, 1 tsp. rehydrated onion, then the rest of the gravy from Thanksgiving. I boiled some mushroom noodles (German ones that I bought at our last T.J. Maxx visit) and added fresh broccoli florets for the last 2 minutes of cooking. Once drained, I added it to the gravy mixture and tossed. I had some grated Parmesan on mine. We have enough for another meal tomorrow.
Joan--Your pie sounds like a gourmet Reese's Peanut Butter Cup!
We had more leftover turkey for dinner on Tuesday, along with roasted sweet potato chunks and microwaved frozen combo of broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots. A member of the contractor crew fixed my utility cabinet today. (The back was pulling away from the sides.) I am now re-arranging the contents of that cabinet to see if I can organize it more effectively.
