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[Mike Nolan]

Here's a shot showing today's bread (above) and the previous bake (using a 50-50 ratio of flours).

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[Mike Nolan]

I am making semolina bread today, I changed the proportions of flour from 50-50 to 5 parts semolina and 3 parts bread flour. The recipe that I'm trying to reproduce lists these ingredients:

Water, enriched durum flour, enriched semolina flour, unbleached enriched
flour (which includes malted barley flour), less than 2 percent of each
of the following: rice flour, salt, sesame seeds, malt syrup, yeast.

So I'm figuring the durum + semolina has to be more than 50% of the total flour. I don't know what the rice flour is used for, possibly just lubrication under the bread?

[chocomouse]

Today I made a peach cobbler, after reading posts and sites by Joan, Swirth, Pioneer Woman, Tastes Better From Scratch, etc. I finally chose the "Quick and Easy Peach Cobbler submitted by Sheryle and posted here by BakerAunt. I selected this recipe because the intro states "It has more of a cake type crust instead of the more traditional biscuit." I did make a few changes. I cut the 1 stick of butter to 3/4 of a stick (and next time will try 1/2 a stick). I cut the 1 cup of sugar mixed with the peaches to 3/4 a cup, and it is plenty. I also baked it another 10 minutes because it just didn't seem to be cooked, and a knife inserted came out with wet crumbs on it. I figured it would absorb some of the apparently excess moisture (which it did!) but I'm trying to avoid a runny cobbler. This came out exactly the way we like it! It will be my go-to basic cobbler recipe from now on, just in time for blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries.

Joan's recipe is very similar, mostly just different proportions, but I decided against her recipe because I knew once my husband saw it, there would be none left for me!

[cwcdesign]

We may have gotten our last tomatoes as the plants keep dying. But we still have lots of cucumbers, eggplant, squash and basil. We have peppers but Will just picked his first fully ripe (red) Cajun Bell pepper - supposed to be hot but not too hot.

[BakerAunt]

I wanted a lighter lunch on Sunday, given the carb heavy breakfast, and I had a recipe, Balsamic Chicken, White Bean and Carrot Salad, from a recent Washington Post email from “Eat Voraciously,” written by Stephanie Witt Sedgwick. I adapted it by not first poaching a chicken breast—I opened a 10 oz. can—and I did not cook the carrots in boiling water until crisp tender. (Note: both steps, which then throw away the water, waste nutrients.) I was going to stir fry the carrots, then thought, what the heck, and used them raw. I had 16 oz. of white beans that I had cooked a while back, and I had thawed them in anticipation of making the recipe. The combination of ingredients, along with the dressing of balsamic vinegar, red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, chives (I used dried), sugar, and a bit of pepper and salt, is tasty and goes well with crackers. I like the crunch of the uncooked carrots. I will file this recipe for summer lunches.

[Mike Nolan]

Tonight we had eggs Benedict. It has been a while since I made a Hollandaise (my wife doesn't like it, she had hers without the Hollandaise), and of course the sauce broke, so I had to rescue it with another egg yolk and some water.

[BakerAunt]

A neighbor gave us an unused bag of coleslaw mix (cabbage and carrots). I looked up a buttermilk dressing recipe on the internet and settled on this one from J. Kenji Alt-Lopez:

https://www.seriouseats.com/buttermilk-slaw-recipe

I like that it uses less mayonnaise and more buttermilk. I mixed it together on Wednesday evening, so it could set before we would start having it for dinner the next day. I had to delete the onion and go easy on the pepper in deference to my husband. We had it with dinner tonight, and I will make this dressing again. Having to leave the onion out makes it blander than I like. I may add ¼ tsp. onion powder next time.

I also roasted cut-up red potatoes, tossed in olive oil with Penzey’s Mural seasoning, and my husband pan cooked pork to complete the dinner.

[BakerAunt]

Sigh. I wish that I could get good peaches locally. The lady who sold honey--and had organic peaches in good years (not hit by freeze)--does not come to the farmer's market any more. I am down to the last of the peach jam I made from the bumper year three years ago.

I baked Cranberry Scones on Wednesday evening using Elizabeth Alston’s base recipe in Biscuits and Scones (pp. 32-33) but substituting 1/3 cup canola oil for the 8 Tbs. butter. I also used half King Arthur AP flour and half of KA’s Irish Whole Meal flour. I reduce the baking powder from 4 to 3 tsp. I added a few drops of Fiori Di Sicilia as I had no orange peel. I did have frozen cranberries in the freezer. I bake it in the Nordic Ware scone pan. I froze six of the eight for quick future breakfasts.

[BakerAunt]

Ah, that sounds delicious, Joan!

Mike--I am also a sesame seed fan. My husband, alas, is not.

My elder stepson left behind partial containers of blackberries and blueberries, and there were still a few strawberries left from the quart I bought at the farmer’s market. The combination was not enough for a regular pie, but I pulled out a four-well mini-pie pan (with removeable bottoms) from Chicago Metallic and decided I had enough for four small pies. I have a recipe for Triple Berry Pie, which came from Bon Appetit (June 1993), so I guessed for the filling ¼ cup sugar and 1 Tbs. plus 1 tsp. tapioca. I made a three-quarter recipe of my oil pie crust and rolled out four small crusts to fit into the pan. I let the crusts rest in the refrigerator for an hour before a 5-minute blind bake (using small basket coffee filters filled with beans), then putting a bit of panko on the bottom before spooning in the filling. I forgot about making a topping. I baked for 10 minutes at 425 F, reduced the temperature to 375F and covered with a sheet of foil, and baked 10 more minutes until bubbly. Because the pies are so small, we did not have the long wait we would have had with a large one. We were each eating one, with a scoop of low-fat frozen vanilla yogurt--about thirty minutes after they came out of the oven.

[Mike Nolan]

I need to go check the east side of the house tomorrow, it is mid-June and there may be some black raspberries to pick. I don't think I've got any elderberries left, they got crowded out by bigger plants, we have several maples and at least one oak that have taken over that part of the yard. I tried planting some elderberries I ordered online last year in another part of the yard, but they didn't get delivered until mid-July when it was in the 90's every day and none of them made it to fall. I don't think I'll contact the nursery I ordered them from (direct gardening in Bloomington IL), but I'll never order from them again, the order seemed to be oddly handled right from the start.

[Mike Nolan]

The 11-strand braid came out fairly well, probably the best of the 4 I've done. My wife thinks I overdid the sesame seeds a bit, though. (But I love sesame seeds on bread.)

The chocolate pecan meringue cookies came out pretty good, too, I lowered the temp from 350 in the recipe to 325 and baked them for about 22 1/2 minutes, they're just a little chewy in the center and that's how we like them.

[BakerAunt]

Great looking bread, Mike!

Later on Sunday, I made my adaptation of Ellen’s Famous Burger Buns to use for dinner sandwiches. I also made dough for Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers (aka Baker Aunt’s Famous Crackers). I will bake them late in the week.

[cwcdesign]

To make you all feel better - it is hot here and we are still getting tomatoes, peppers and so many cucumbers! Will has been making refrigerator pickles like crazy.

We have squash, eggplant, kale, basil and a few carrots to share - oh and tomatoes. We had a big harvest of beans earlier in the week.

Will was able to fight back our powdery mildew, but we keep losing the tomato plants to bacterial wilt - we are not alone in this. There is one member of the community who farmed in West Georgia - he says it is completely different here and he is losing tomato plants as well. As you drive through the garden, you can see that many people are having similar issues.

We were finally able to convince the person who started the project (but never had time to help) to give up the two plots. So, someone will pick up the empty plot shortly and we will give up the other one when our harvesting is done. Then we will all garden in containers on our own properties. It will be much easier to manage.

Last one, my flower bed - we planted short sunflowers, cosmos and zinnias - everyone is looking great - the sunflowers have lots of buds and the zinnias are already flowering.

[chocomouse]

I learned in the Master Gardener course years ago that tomatoes (and peppers) set fruit only when the nighttime temps stay between 55 - 75, and daytimes temps below 90. I remember a year when the temps were quite warm every night for most of a week, and I lost a lot of blossoms.

[BakerAunt]

My husband drove the elder son to Midway this morning, leaving shortly before 4 a.m. (Public transportation to the airport has not recovered yet from the Pandemic.) That meant no Father’s Day breakfast. When I got up, I made breakfast just for me, a half recipe of Cornmeal Pancakes, using Bob’s Red Mill coarse grind cornmeal and white whole wheat flour. I had two leftover pancakes, which my husband had with honey after he got back around 9 a.m. (Apparently, even on a Sunday morning, Chicago traffic is bad.) Next Sunday, I will make him his delayed Father’s Day breakfast of Cornmeal-Pumpernickel Waffles.