Search Results for '("C'

[Mike Nolan]

I use a dry-roast for eye of round (low and slow) but not for bottom round, I prefer a braise for it. Bottom round is a good cut for Italian Beef, but you really need a slicer to cut it really thin. I generally used bottom round for boeuf bourguignon, though I've used top round for it, too. I like top round for shiskabob.

[BakerAunt]

I'll post it later today, Skeptic. They remind me a bit of biscuits.

I use 1/3 cup canola (or sometimes olive oil) in place of butter. Of course that does not work for every recipe. (I've had to give up a lot of cookies and shortbread.) Butter is a big one, since a single tablespoon contains 7 g saturated fat, and most women should limit themselves to 11g per day. I try to make sure that the saturated fat that I do consume includes some healthy fats. Canola oil has 1 g saturated fat per Tablespoon, and olive oil has 2 g, but both contain other healthy fats. Ditto with eggs.

For cheese, I stick with small portions of 2% pre-grated cheese (I can't get it ungrated where I live) or low-fat mozzarella (no more than 3g per oz.). Some low-fat mozzarella cheese sticks are 1.5g saturated fat, and they do give a nice calcium boost, so I include those as snacks. I drink 1% milk. While I use about 3/4 cup whole milk when making yogurt, it gets combined with 1% milk and some milk powder, so the saturated fat remains low, and I do need the dietary calcium.

I still use some butter--in streusel toppings, but I usually halve the streusel and keep the butter to a minimum.

We do not eat much beef, and we stick with less fatty pork. We eat a lot of chicken, as well as tuna and salmon. I cook my chicken on a rack and pour off the fat and do not eat the skin. (I do however roast whole chickens on potatoes and carrots, so some fat is included there.) I try to incorporate more beans, but my husband and most beans do not get along, so I do most of those recipes for myself for lunch. We do a lot of lean ground turkey, which I try to pair with ingredients that will make it not so bland.

I eat steel-cut oats for breakfast almost every morning. My cholesterol was 25 points lower last year (and that was with having eaten breakfast). I'm curious as to what it will be at my next doctor's visit.

[chocomouse]

Skeptic, I do remember you said you like to have your syrup in the cans, not plastic. Years ago (1980s, we made about 15-20 gallons a year then, just for family), we put our syrup into empty liquor bottles, and asked friends and relatives to save their empties for us. My son, in grade 7, was part of a local church youth group that provided a breakfast following Easter sunrise services, and he donated some of our syrup. Easter morning, he walked down the center aisle of the church with a half-gallon Jim Beam bottle in each hand! I was told there were many loud gasps from the congregation. He was completely oblivious to what was happening. In the end, there was plenty of syrup for all the pancakes they served. When the liquor companies began using plastic instead of glass, we lost our cheap supply of bottles and started using mason jars!

[Mike Nolan]

Recently I've been making a full recipe of Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake, putting 60% of it in a 10x10 pan and 40% in an 8x8 pan. I make a double batch of frosting and split it the same way. (I actually tried it with a triple batch once, and my wife said I finally managed to make one with too much frosting on it, though I though it was great!)

I usually freeze one of them, it handles freezing very well.

[BakerAunt]

To go with the rest of the soup for Sunday dinner, I decided to try baking the recipe for Classic Scones that appeared in the May 2004 issue of Bon Appetit (p.90). These are a Scottish scone which only calls for 1 Tbs. of oil and no butter. I have written about it in the thread where I first asked about it: British vs. American Self-Rising Flour. These are delicious, and I will do more experimenting with the recipe.

[BakerAunt]

I did some additional research by pulling out Shirley O. Corriher's Bake Wise and reading about self-rising flour--the American kind. She is an advocate for buying self-rising flour because the leavener is evenly distributed, which she says is hard to achieve. She mentions that self-rising flour is usually lower in protein than AP flour. She also notes that "commercial flour companies have more leaveners available to them than home cooks, and they have complete control over the time that bubbles are produced" (p. 57).

So, any substituting we do for self-rising flour will inevitably not equal what the self-rising flour would do.

I also looked at two examples she gave of recipes where the author apparently did not realize that self-rising flour contains leavening. Those recipes looked a lot like the one in Bon Appetit. Corriher gives the leavening guidelines as 1-1 1/4 tsp. baking powder per cup of flour in the recipe or 1/4 tsp. baking soda per cup of flour in the recipe. From what I can gather, self-rising flour also contains salt.

I decided, based on this information, that Bon Appetit made an error years ago and included leavening that should NOT have been included.

I baked the recipe for these Classic Scones using half barley flour and half General Mills AP. (I might try it with half WW pastry and half regular pastry flour next time.) My idea was to lower the protein of the flour and use half whole grain--and I like how barley flour performs in cakes. I used 2 tsp. baking powder and 1/4 tsp. baking soda, and 1/8 tsp. salt. I used buttermilk in place of the whole milk, and I used canola oil for the one Tbs. of vegetable oil.

These baked very nicely. They are tender but substantial--one was enough at dinner tonight with soup. I would bake this variation again. I plan to try a blend of whole wheat pastry flour and white pastry flour next time to see if I can create an additional variation.

Thank you to CWCdesign for helping to point me in the right direction as I was thinking about this recipe. It's nice to have other bakers and cooks to consult when I get stumped.

[BakerAunt]

That bread looks delicious, Mike.

With the weather starting to cool, I'm beginning to think about rye bread again. I really liked the Pumpkin Rye bread recipe on Ginsberg's blog (not in the book), which I made three or four times last year. I was able to buy three pie pumpkins at the farmers market on Saturday, so there is pumpkin rye bread in our future, especially if I can buy some additional pie pumpkins next week.

[BakerAunt]

Sunday morning breakfast was my own recipe for Wholegrain Waffles (whole wheat, cornmeal, buckwheat, wheat germ, and flax). I decided to wait to stir in the oil until after I mixed in the combined eggs and buttermilk. They seem to come out less soggy and crisper this way, so I will mix that way in the future.

[Mike Nolan]

Report on Avergne Rye-Wheat Boule (Ginsberg pps 111-113):

Recipes without pictures put you under less pressure to produce a loaf that looks like the carefully styled picture, which may be the best of a dozen or more loaves produced before the photo shoot.

Ginsberg calls this a boule, which usually means a circular shaped loaf, but he specifies making a football shape and I, of course, made it more rectangular.

The recipe makes around a kilogram of dough for one loaf. (I got about 30 grams less dough than the recipe called for, I guess I didn't scrape the starter bowls enough.) The post-bake weight after cooling was 820 grams.

I did have to add a little more water to the rye starter, it was at 100% hydration and it just sat there for a few hours, before I stirred in a little more water. By morning it was very active.

The dough comes together easily, shapes easily and rises well. It takes an interesting approach to the question of whether you add dry to wet or wet to dry, you stir the two starters into the water and then add that to the dry flour. That has the advantage that it doesn't cause a cloud of flour from the mixer, which is often the case if you put the starter in the bottom of the bowl and the dry ingredients on top. I may have to try that with other starter-based breads.

I lowered the temperature a little more than the recipe specified after the steam pan came out, it came out with a nice dark crust.

The interior is also nice and dark, the crust is quite firm but it slices easily.

My wife says it doesn't have much of a rye smell after cooling, she thought it smelled more like a beer bread. I thought the aroma had pleasant smokey notes to it, most likely due to the charring of the crust.

It has a strong but not overpowering sourdough tang to it, and it toasts very well. It probably wouldn't make a good sandwich bread, but I could see eating a slice of it with a hearty bowl of soup or stew.

Update: This rye bread actually went well with the baked ham I made today, it has a very different flavor profile than a deli-style rye, the ham brings out sweet undernotes in the Avergne wheat-rye.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[chocomouse]

Vermont is a leader in the sustainable living movement. We have superb recyling facilities and programs, and a lot of education around the issues. As of July 1, we could no longer put food scraps into our regular trash, and that led to many towns scrambling to locate central collection points. If you compost (as we have, for 35 years) you are allowed to put meat and bone scraps into your regular trash. There are now many new collaboratives formed to collect and process all food scraps. However, I suspect there are still a lot of people who will not make the effort to separate food from other recyclables. It's all matter of attitude and effort.

[BakerAunt]

The West Texas city in which I used to live had a glass crushing machine. The glass was very popular with people who used it in garden areas to prevent weeds. They never had any left. Then the machine broke, it would be expensive to fix, and that was that. Lubbock never did have curbside recycling--well, they did, but it depended on colored bags in the dumpster with the trash, and it turned out none of it was being recycled. We always took our recycling to a drop-off place, but there was the same problem with people not paying attention to what should go in what bin, and what should not.

Where we live now, in north central Indiana, there has been recycling for around twenty years, but the company does not make an effort to educate people as to what can be put into the bins and what cannot. It's on the company website, but a lot of people do not bother looking at the website. Mixing paper in with plastic cans, and glass means that everything has to be dry, or the paper and cardboard is ruined for recycling. The glass, cans, and plastic ae supposed to be empty and clean. So, that is already a barrier for people who want a quick fix.

One of our friends noted her neighbor's recycling bin had blown open. When she went to close it, she found it full of nice towels and linens. She pulled them out, washed and kept some, washed and donated others. The next recycling day, she looked inside and found lots of nice pots and pans--some much better than what she had, so she retrieved them, washed and kept some and donated the others. She decided to ask the wife. It's a summer/vacation home for them, and like a lot of houses around the lake, it was bought complete with furniture and contents. The woman told her, "I do not like using stuff that belonged to someone else." OK, but she had no clue that such items do NOT belong in the recycling bin.

More common errors are the pizza boxes, recyclables in plastic bags which mess up the equipment, the wrong numbers (and I get this last one because some of those numbers are hard to find and really tiny), or items that are the correct number but not actually recyclable with the same numbers.

Recycling is much more complicated than most place's "feel good" recycling bins imply. There needs to be an effort to create a use for what can be recycled, an effort to create a system for collecting it that works, and an effort to reduce what needs to be recycled (sometimes called pre-cycling). The pandemic has exacerbated the issues with the proliferation of plastic bags from the grocery, carryout containers, disposable masks and gloves.

[Mike Nolan]

Looks like they came through the cold OK, but 7 cages had blown over, the wind was coming out of the northeast (usually comes from the west/northwest) and gusting up into the high 20's. Too wet to try to pick tomatoes today, and it is supposed to rain most of the day again on Thursday, too.

My first batch of lacto tomato water didn't work, I'll have to try it again. I wonder if I can make green tomato lacto water?

[chocomouse]

I made the Apricot Oatmeal Bars that BakerAunt often makes. I used raspberry jam which I made from our fresh picked berries. I made a few slight changes, mostly increasing the ingredients a bit to fill a 9 x 12 pan, and subbing in white whole wheat. They are delicious, and I will definitely make again. I am thinking about a thin layer of melted chocolate on top of the jam (raspberry or apricot) then sprinkled with the topping.

[chocomouse]

We had a decent syrup season last year -- not "wow", but not bad. Comparisons for us are difficult, since we spent over 100,000 on a new building, all new, high-tech equipment, etc. And last year was our first year as a "commercial" official business. We had also planned to tap many new trees, thus increasing our capacity, but that didn't happen due to unexpected issues. I have not heard any talk about a shortage of syrup; most years there is surplus, which is stored for the future. However, I would expect usage is up (parents working from home and feeding home-from-school kids pancakes!) so pressure is on supply-demand.

We sell our syrup for $10.00 a quart (I hear you "gasp"; I keep telling my husband he needs to raise the price a little! But he wants to make it affordable, and doesn't need to make a ton of profit). Three quarts fit into the USPS pre-paid $15 shipping box, so you get 3 quarts for $45.00. We ship only in the plastic bottles, to avoid the inevitable breakage.

I know you said you do not like the plastic; that's why I didn't offer to sell you any syrup the last time we talked about this! I don't know why you don't like the plastic, but you can repackage it.

You can easily pour the syrup into glass containers (we personally use mason jars) and reseal them. That means heating the syrup up to 180*, pouring it into sterilized jars (think canning) up to about 1/4" from the top, put on the lid and screw band, then turn upside down for about a minute to seal. Syrup that is processed this way will keep probably forever, although many folks say three year. Once it is opened, it must be refrigerated. However, if your syrup ever does get mold growing on it, just scrape off the mold, and heat the sryup to 180* and reseal or refrigerate.

We have only the "dark robust" grade of syrup. That used to be called B grade. A lot of folks believe that means inferior syrup - it is not. It's the only kind I use, and is preferred by most Vermonters and bakers. All syrup has to meet certain standards. All syrup that meets those standards will have the same density - measured with a hygrometer. The flavor may differ somewhat from farm to farm, depending on the terroir. If there is an off-taste, something is terribly wrong- like re-using a mason jar that once was filled with pickles! We do not reuse plastic jugs. We do not wash our glass jars with soap - that can impart an odd taste. Glass is not impervious. Or, using sap from a maple tree in late spring after the tree has budded; it gets a bitter, sharp taste.

Please let me know if you have questions, or want to order some syrup!

[BakerAunt]

I read this article on the growing popularity of the homemade cookie business:

https://www.rachaelraymag.com/whats-new/cookie-artist-trend

Of course, many of these home businesses bake cookies that make the standard chocolate chip cookie look like health food. People want a special treat and reason that it is "just one."

I'm amazed at the cookie decorators, as I would think that much decorating would be very hard on the hands. (I'm saving my hands for stitching.) I'm sure that they charge a justifiably premium price for their creations.