Skeptic--I still haven't had the chance to try it. I have the ingredients (well 2% cheese and kale rather than spinach), but it's for lunches for me, and other things needed eating. Maybe
I was thinking that the squash might be better roasted. I think that their instructions are to make it as easy as possible for the cook. I'm not sure about how they cook the greens and the squash. When I do make it, I may put the "galette" into a ceramic tart dish--just in case there are leaks. I have also toyed with the idea of pre-baking the crust a bit in that dish.
What few dripping there were (you don't a lot from an eye of round after the fat's been trimmed off) I used for the gravy I made.
I do have some good beef stock in the freezer, I usually put some in a stir fry anyway.
On Wednesday, I baked the Springerle Shortbread dough that I made up on Monday. It does hold the design well. I had to let the dough soften before I could roll it. The hard part is pushing down firmly on the molds; I used the rolling pin to roll over the back. I did the imprints one at a time, used my bench scraper to cut it out, transferred it to the parchment-lined baking sheet. Repeat. The first tray needed almost the full 12 minutes; the second one got slightly over brown before 11 minutes had passed. I’m pleased that the designs came out well. They don't show as much when flat, but hold them vertically, and the detail is clear. (I used House on the Hill springerle molds.) My husband and I each taste-tested a cookie. They are, as the name implies, a cross between a shortbread and a sugar cookie. I’ll wrap up the others to put in the gift box for my sister and her twins.
After baking the Springerle Shortbread, I made dough for Molded Gingerbread Cookies, following a recipe in “Too Pretty to Eat,” the recipe booklet that comes with the molds. It uses vegetable oil. The dough is wrapped in the refrigerator.
I also found "Gma's Ginger Crinkle Cookies in the 2019 Christmas Cookie collection from WE (Wisconsin Electric), which is available online. Those cookies use oil and are rolled into balls and into sugar. The recipe does not say to flatten them.
I was looking at the recipe booklet that came with my Springerle molds (House on the Hill), and there is a recipe for "Molded Gingerbread Cookies" that uses oil, molasses and dark corn syrup.
The baking is back into Christmas!
We're on our third set of meals with the eye of round I roasted several days ago. I made some (instant) mashed potatoes and had a hot roast beef sandwich.
I worked on the gravy a bit, adding more water and butter, plus some salt, pepper, nutmeg and a pinch of rosemary Then I cooked it for several minutes to get rid of most of the vermouth taste. Much improved. (Julia Child used to say that you could fix almost any sauce with butter.)
I might take exception to the statement that apple growers breed for flavor, of the 12 most popular varieties of apples, there are several that have little or no flavor, and the taste of some of the others has gone downhill over the years as growers look for varieties they can harvest more readily (which usually means faster).
Once or twice a year I forget I have dough rising until it is well past the point where it will bake properly. Usually I just deflate it, reshape it, let it rise again, and bake it; most of the time nobody other than me would ever notice the differences.
I think it tends to produce a finer or tighter crumb, ie, one with fewer and usually smaller holes. That's because all the holes are formed during kneading, so anything after that can only result in fewer holes. (Boyle's law is the physical principle behind this.)
I was also looking at Thrive Market, but I don't see many products there I'd order: No semolina, no rye flour. Their prices appear to be a few percent below some other sites (like ordering direct from Bob's Red Mill), but I don't know what their shipping costs are, and I don't think you can get to that without joining.
Some of the Czech restaurants around here offer breaded and fried cauliflower. That is GOOD, especially with gravy. They serve it as a main course with the usual fixings.
Tonight will be leftover pork roast and pasta with some tomato sauce from my garden (from frozen). Oh, and some cauliflower.........
I made Martha Stewart's Noel Nut Balls. I will not decorate them yet (calls for drenching them in powdered sugar), I will freeze them. Some will be for Christmas day and others for New Years Eve. I'm thinking about dipping them in white chocolate instead of the powdered sugar. I would like to color some of the white chocolate green and some red but am not sure how the white chocolate takes to food coloring.
Also am making my sandwich buns. They are in the first rise right now and I am pondering what shape to do.
I kneaded the sourdough this morning for 8 minutes and it passed the window pane test.I got it in the 9x5 loaf pan rising for a couple hours and my friend called,she was driving her 95 year old aunt to put flowers on her husbands grave and car wouldn't crank.So my husband and I went to help.Ended up calling a wrecker (my husband thinks fuel pump is bad)because the battery turned over with no problem.Now back to my bread,I forgot about it or I would have put it in the refrigerator.when I got home 3 hours later it had risen a good inch and a half over the top and had fell to the side like handles.When I slashed the top it fell to even with the top of pan and didn't rise back up all the way but it's still a good loaf of bread.I wish it hadn't sat on the counter so long but all's well.I'll be happy for fresh toast in the morning.
We used to make a curry dip that was very good with raw cauliflower, but then my wife decided curry was causing her problems, so we haven't made it in years.
My wife like a lot of lemon on steamed broccoli, I eat it plain, not even salted. But steamed cauliflower without cheese sauce seems pointless, and the cheese sauce probably cancels out the healthy benefits of cauliflower.
I'm not that fond of black beans by themselves, though I'll eat a little black bean soup when I make it for my wife. (Bean soups in general aren't my favorite soups, my mother made them frequently and cooked the beans until they were mush.)
But I did like the chili I made a few weeks back with black beans and I like the black bean meatloaf I make a lot.
-
This reply was modified 6 years, 4 months ago by
Mike Nolan.
My husband does not care for cauliflower. I like it raw, particularly with a dip. I also like it cooked and pureed into a soup. Otherwise, I don't work with it in the kitchen. I've seen recipes for roasted cauliflower but have not tried it.
For lunch on Monday, I made a “leftovers” vegetarian chili, with a few non-leftovers. I started by sautéing chopped onion, celery, and carrots in olive oil, then adding two cloves garlic. I added 1 cup of turkey broth leftover from last night, about 1 ½ cups liquid leftover from cooking the lima beans last week, and 1 cup crushed tomatoes leftover from that pizza bean casserole. I added 15 oz. of black beans from the freezer, 1 heaping Tbs. tomato paste, ½ tsp. chili powder and a dash of cayenne and a dash of adobo seasoning. After cooking it for 30 minutes, I added the rest of a bag of Christmas pasta (durum wheat and semolina), brought to a boil, simmered five minutes, then let sit covered for another five minutes. I could go “wild” on this chili, as my husband would not be eating it. (He does not care for black beans, onions are giving him issues these days, and chili powder and cayenne are absolutely forbidden,) He happily ate his canned salmon sandwich, which he eats almost every day. I enjoyed my chili, which is perfect for a cold day in which we awoke to an inch of snow and already have a fire in the wood stove.
The drop site near me is probably someone associated with the 7th Day Adventist Church, since it appears to be close to the Union College campus, if not on campus. (They show you a big blue circle on a map and give a name and a phone number, but not an address.)
The church became the host site for the Sunday's Farmer's Market two seasons ago, and it appears to be a good working relationship for them, though I liked the old site better because it was closer to us and had a lot of shade, which is really helpful in the summertime. We used to go nearly every Sunday, this year I think we went less than half the time.
I probably won't decide whether to order anything from them until after the holidays, which will probably mean a pick-up date later in January, so I may defer until spring. It sounds like depending upon the drop site coordinator, you need to show up ahead of when the truck is due, which you may not find out until the day before it gets there. I may contact the local coordinator by email and sound her out.
-
This reply was modified 6 years, 4 months ago by Mike Nolan.
I finally found a map that showed the truck route. There do not appear to be drops close to me, but the truck route is through the town where we do our major shopping (no drop listed), and that highway is the one we pick up from here when we go through Indianapolis. It's an intriguing possibility. If you decide to try it, I'll be interested in what you report.
-
This reply was modified 6 years, 4 months ago by
BakerAunt.
