Search Results for '("C'

[BakerAunt]

I made salmon and couscous for dinner, using 1 tsp. of Penzey’s Mural Seasoning. We microwaved frozen peas to go with it—the first time we’ve eaten frozen peas in probably two months. (The beans are slowing down.)

So far, it seems to be a bad year for baking pumpkins in my area of Indiana. I only got one slightly anemic "peanut" pumpkin last week, which I was assured will ripen up in the next few weeks. I have it on the sun porch to help it along. This week the vendors were all about the decorative pumpkins. I'm bemused by the people who were spending time trying to find three to stack for their doorsteps. Sigh. Can you say food waste--and probably not composted?

[BakerAunt]

To go with leftover Panko Chicken for Thursday night’s dinner, I cooked BRM farro in 3 cups broth. (Next time, I will use just 2 ½ cups.) Microwaved broccoli completed the meal.

[Mike Nolan]

We've had coyotes here, too, though I haven't seen one lately. We also had a river otter once, he was truly lost as the nearest river or stream is a good mile away. But that was after several days of heavy rains and flooding and we were guessing he got flushed away from his usual haunts and went overland to try to get back home. And there was an elk that animal control followed through the neighborhood a few years ago before it broke a leg jumping a fence around the corner, we figure he almost had to have gone through our back yard to get to that fence.

For a while we had raccoons using our deck just outside the master bedroom door as a latrine, but between redoing the deck and cutting back on the trees that they were climbing up on to get to the deck, we seem to have discouraged them.

We also stopped feeding squirrels on the deck, as they were starting to eat the decking (composite wood) itself. That cut down on the number of raccoons and possums, too. Didn't seem to affect the cardinals much, but there are all sorts of berries for them to eat along the back fence.

The area where I put in elderberries about 10 years ago has kind of gotten overgrown with volunteer trees, mostly maple but one oak, so I'm planning to order a number of bearing elderberry plants next spring and put them in along the east side where we used to have a full row of dogwoods, but only a few of them survived being cut back several years ago.

The black raspberries have spread to that side of the yard, but I think we're going to rip them out on that side, we haven't gotten any berries the last several years, some years because the birds got them all first and other years because we were busy and didn't check to see if they were ripe yet until after they peaked. We seldom got more than a couple cups of them, anyway.

[BakerAunt]

Aaron--I'm glad that you are your family are helping to subsidize the dairy and cheese industry! I'm sure that there was a notable drop when I gave up most butter and much of the cheese I enjoyed. While I really miss cookies (shortbread, drop, rolled cookies)--sometimes I want to cry when I look at my extensive cookie cutter collection--I miss the variety of cheeses more.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 7 months ago by BakerAunt.

[chocomouse]

I made another Berries N Cream Cake, this time raspberry (last week I made blueberry). It is so easy and quick, but different. It's made in a spring-form pan with a dough base, then a quart of berries spread on top of the dough, and a sort of custard poured over that and baked for an hour. I'll post the recipe later.
I also made a batch of raspberry muffins, for the freezer stash.

[chocomouse]

I do "lazy composting", having tried all possible methods over 35 years. I have 3 open bins: 1. building this year's pile 2. sitting for a year 3. ready to use. I don't turn then, use a thermometer or worry about the brown-green ratio, just let them sit knowing it will take a year (they don't breakdown over the winter in Vermont). I collect garbage in a special small composting bucket on the kitchen counter, and transfer it when full to a 5-gallon pail on the deck, and then to the garden pile. We rarely have a problem with critters scavenging in it, not since the first few years (and after we stopped growing corn!). I do not put meat scraps in it, but do compost egg shells. Vermont has a new law in effect that we must compost all food scraps, including meat, we cannot toss them out with the trash, so I am searching for a commercial composter who will take my meat scraps.

[Mike Nolan]

I see recipes for cauliflower that use dill, chives, nutmeg, thyme, tarragon, garlic, cayenne pepper and paprika, though not all in the same recipe. 🙂

The spices I think of as Mediterranean or Italian (oregano, basil, marjoram, rosemary, sage, bay leaf. saffron and cumin) don't seem to show up in cauliflower recipes, I haven't checked the Indian/Asian spice groups, but I doubt they would, either, though raw cauliflower is good with curry dips.

[Mike Nolan]

If you've never tried the oatmeal crisps (chocolate chip oatmeal cookies) recipe I have posted, I still think it is the one of the best cookie recipes I've ever tasted, especially if you have milk to dunk them in. This is the second most requested thing I bake after the Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake. You do need to use Crisco as opposed to butter, though.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks for the tip about pounding the dough. Pie dough is on my list for this week.

After all our discussion last week I made English muffins. My boys love them. My daughter not so much. My wife might try one... The recipe calls for buttermilk but I used powder so there isn't any buttermilk tang. I let the dough rise on the counter for 24 hours instead of following the recipe so I have some fermentation flavor. Next time I will use some more flour as the dough was a little too slack. I will also sub out a cup of bread flour for WWW flour.

My wife volunteered me to make oatmeal cookies for the cross country team this week. It's an out-of-town meet so only 10 kids are going, thank goodness. The coaches here take as many kids as want to run so our boys XC team has about 130 kids. And after a 5K (plus warmups and cool downs and just in general) they can EAT. I may try the apple oaties I just saw here or I may just make my usual oatmeal cookies.

[Mike Nolan]

Something they had us do in pastry school was to pound the disc of pie dough with the rolling pin a number of times before starting to roll it out. Apparently that 'shocks' the butter or other fat, which is a semi-solid (if fully thawed), so that it rolls out better.

[BakerAunt]

Wednesday night’s dinner was Panko coated chicken breasts (first lightly rubbed with light mayonnaise, then dredged in ½ cup Panko, ½ tsp. Penzey’s roasted onion powder, a bit of garlic, celery salt, and pepper). We had it with bulgur, cooked in some of the chicken/turkey broth I made last week and with more fresh green beans from our garden that seem to appear every time my husband turns around.

[RiversideLen]

BakerAunt wrote:

Shakshuka–or is that too close to poached egg? (I really want to try making this dish sometime.)

On the new episodes of Good Eats, Alton Brown did Shakshuka, the episode just aired this past Sunday.

Right now I'm watching on Bon Appetit's app on Roku, 59 ways to cook an egg. It's fast but interesting.

[Mike Nolan]

We had some black bean soup (adding the carrot rounded out the flavor profile nicely, though I think a touch of lemon juice would brighten it up a lot) and some leftover chicken.

[BakerAunt]

Sunday dinner was a re-imagining of leftovers. I cooked some freekeh (an ancient grain I got from Bob’s Red Mill). While it cooked, I sautéed some green onion and a red bell pepper from our garden in grapeseed oil. I added the diced leftover pork from Friday’s dinner, along with what I de-glazed from the pan (and some that I had frozen from another time). I cut up and added kale leaves, then cooked until it was wilted. I mixed in the cooked freekeh and heated it a bit longer. Other than pepper, I didn’t add any spices. I would have liked to have tried something, but I wasn’t sure what to use, and my husband has been particularly sensitive to some seasonings lately. It still made a delicious meal, in part due to the deglazing liquid.

On a side note: It looks as if Bob's Red Mill has discontinued offering coupons on their website. I wanted to print one for quick oats, but there is no longer a link for coupons. 🙁 I see an online order in my future.

[BakerAunt]

Our neighbors have a hummingbird feeder out, so some have gone there. We've seen some at our Veronia (a purple stalk flower) on our terrace, but we've not seen more than one at a time. Yesterday's bird was tiny, even by hummingbird standards.