It's an appliance apocalypse!
We finally got our upstairs toilet issue resolved. The third time the plumber was here, he determined that the leak came from a cracked tank. (It was two years old!) Today he installed a new one, so that problem is resolved.
Now, if we can just get the contractor crew back to work on the garage apt. renovation....
I made a big pot of tomato soup (the Watts Tea Room recipe posted by jej on the obc) and corn bread. The rest of the soup will go into the freezer for chilly fall evenings.
On Sunday I had my brother over and made pork loin roast on the BBQ. I seasoned it on Saturday with a little celery seed, Hawaiian smoked salt and Gateway to the North (both from The Spice House, Gateway is a blend of maple sugar, brown sugar, salt, pepper, garlic, onion and green onion). It turned out real good and am looking forward to tonight's leftovers.
When we got up this morning, two of the window hummingbird feeders had their bottoms knocked off, with sugar water all down the window and on the deck.
Our back patio security camera shows that around 3:30 AM a group of at least 3 raccoons were prowling the back patio, and one or more of them climbed up on the window ledge and knocked the feeder bases off.
So I've moved the feeders up about a foot and refilled them. Fortunately, nothing broke. The hummers waited, oh, maybe 30 seconds after I rehung the first feeder before they were at it.
I wasn't aware raccoons had a sweet tooth, not all mammals do. (Cats don't, for example.)
I did an eye of round with some mashed potatoes and gravy for supper tonight.
Her shoulder and arm are improving slowly (though her physical therapist thinks it is going faster than he anticipated), but an hour of therapy really wears her out.
The orthopedist thought the X-rays looked good on Friday, one more follow-up X-ray next month.
She may be having therapy for another two months.
Well, the 8x8 is for today and the 10x10 is for our anniversary on the 17th. (This will be #49 for us.) I just need to figure out where I have space in a freezer.
Happy Birthday, Mike! Today is also my stepdaughter's birthday, and she flew into Chicago and was picked up by her dad at the airport, so she is here. I am about to start the White Chocolate Cream Cheese frosting for her cake.
Saturday morning, I baked my variation on Ellen's Buns recipe as sixteen rolls (10x10-inch pan).
On Friday, I baked the Lemon Ricotta Cookies again, but I messed up the amount of flour. They are flatter than usual. I need to re-type the recipe so that it is clear. Fortunately, they still taste great and the texture is fine.
I made dough for WWSD Cheese Crackers. I am trying to get ahead on crackers, as we will be having visitors over the next two weeks.
Friday’s final baking project was the KABC Favorite Fudge Birthday Cake, which I baked this evening. I will not be using the chocolate ganache, as my stepdaughter arrives for a weeklong visit tomorrow, and for her it is the white chocolate cream cheese frosting that makes the cake her favorite. I once used a recipe for a chocolate butter cake but moved to this one to cut at least some saturated fat (plenty in the frosting!). I bake it whenever she visits, just as I would do for her birthday. This time, her birthday actually is tomorrow, so that makes it doubly special.
On Thursday, I finally baked my Rye and Barley Crispbread, using the two new Vollrath baking sheets (see Extra Large Sheet Pan thread at Nebraska Kitchen) that I bought earlier this summer. I was able to roll the dough to 30x50 cm (a bit tight on the 50cm), and the brown baking parchment I bought from Rye Bakers was almost a perfect fit for the pan. (Of course, now that company no longer sells to individual bakers.) I discovered that my Knackebrod rolling pin docked the dough perfectly. With the new pans, I had to decrease baking time from 30 to 25 minutes, as these pans are not as thick as my regular baking sheets.
The hummingbirds are here in force now, too many to count, probably well over a dozen visible at times.
Most of them are females, but we've seen at least one male. (The hummingbird migration site says the males arrive later.)
One of the females has decided that a plant my wife has sitting on the table near two of the feeders is a great place to sit and guard those feeders.
Attachments:
You must be
logged in to view attached files.
We have happily bought wonderful potatoes from an organic vendor at our farmer's market, but I noticed he did not have them this year. I asked, and he said that they were hit by potato bugs, so no crop this year.
🙁
Baker Aunt mentioned the sharing of recipes and the aid we all gave to help people find old favorite recipes in her post of a recipe for Original Crunchy Nut Bars. I was amazed a few months ago to see a recipe I posted about beigli mentioned in a KQED story about making a vegan version of beigli. My sister told me of looking for a Hungarian almond cookie recipe like our mother's on line and finding our mom's own recipe in my recipe file on the baking circle. A wonderful lady called Laura (who lived in Virginia at the time) and I worked with someone to get the right propotion of rice flour in a Vietnamese baguette recipe. If you googled "Vietnamese baguette" there was only one recipe that came up due to the many five star reviews it received. Most of the reviews were along the line of ' Sounds great, can't wait to try it" so were less than helpful. I don't remember where the lady asking for help lived but it was a long way from Virginia and Ohio. I pictured a big triangle of bakers working together and it felt good.
A month or so ago, I adapted Peter Reinhart’s Oat Bran Bread (from Brother Juniper’s Bread Book) by incorporating buttermilk, flax meal, replacing 4 cups of the bread flour with that much whole wheat, using a cup of high-gluten flour in place of 1 cup of bread flour, replacing brown sugar with honey, reducing the yeast, and reducing the salt. I also changed the mixing method. The recipe is now my own. My husband and I loved the taste, but the bread was not as soft as we would like, which led to lots of crumbs. I wanted to try fixing that, so this time I incorporated 4 Tbs. olive oil after adding all the flour and then kneading. The recipe had made two large 9x5-inch loaves. This time, I made it as three 8 ½ x 4 ½-inch loaves, a size we prefer for our sandwiches. I baked for 40 minutes at 350F. They look good but a tad smaller than I would like. The recipe could probably be scaled up slightly.
I made grilled soy-basted chicken thighs (boneless,skinless) with spicy cashews. I baked it according to "Nan's best" grilled chicken with cashewsv recipe. It was originally a nyt recipe. It was very good.
Some kind of bug damage on this maple? (We have someone trimming the trees, he didn't recognize it, but we have an arborist coming out later today, she should know what it is, probably some kind of gull from bugs.)
Attachments:
You must be
logged in to view attached files.
