Search Results for '("C'

[Mike Nolan]

I am making chicken stock/broth with a whole chicken plus about 5 pounds of backs. I think that was the last of the 40 pounds of backs I bought a couple years ago, so I'll need to order more at some point if I want to keep using them for stock/broth. (With all those bones it is probably closer to stock than broth.) I should get at least 6 quarts of liquid to freeze, maybe more like 8.

I'm going to use the chicken meat that I pulled off the bones a little while ago for chicken salad for supper.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Yes. Happy Birthday to your husband Joan.

Well, Violet and I cut and baked the checkerboard cookies. Our are 4x4s instead of 3x3s. I could not figure out Duff's method nor could Violet for putting these together so I pulled out my KAF (they were still F not B when I bought this book) cookie book and used their method to make things kind of, sort of, work.

KAF has illustrations and Duff does not. I like illustrations to go with words. And I bet there is even a blog post of the KAB website these days but I didn't think of that until too late.

The dough is good. It is a sable cookie recipe.

Kind of wonky but they'll be better next time! And they taste good. They could use browned butte.

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[chocomouse]

We had burgers grilled on the deck (on an inch of fresh sleet/ice) and fries.

[Mike Nolan]

Time to start thinking about what plants to put in the garden for 2023.

UNL is looking for some candidates in Nebraska to test gardening practices, not sure if I'm going to sign up for it. It's a two-year test program.

Thinking ahead to starting seeds indoors (around the end of March), I've already got some Amish Paste seeds for 2023 and some Porter (an indeterminate roma-type tomato that was developed for Texas climates so it may be more heat-tolerant.)

I need to find some First Lady seeds, other than Reimer I don't know who carries it. The original First Lady seems to have been replaced by First Lady II and/or First Ladies. I tried both some year-old First Lady II seeds and First Ladies last year, wasn't sure which worked better.

I'll go with Fourth of July again, that turned out to be the most productive tomato in the garden again last year. The Celebrity and Rutgers were disappointing, the Italian Heirloom were good, but were really slow to grow, probably due to the cold weather we had the week after I put the plants in the ground. I'll probably do some Rutgers just because Diane likes them.

I'll do eggplant again, mostly because I like seeing them grow, we don't really eat a lot of eggplant. The white ones were really productive, the miniature purple ones were disappointing, I may try a full-sized variety.

We didn't like either of the melons I grew last year, so I may switch back to Athena. I've been thinking of doing some spaghetti squash, I really like it and Diane is at least willing to eat it, though I think she prefers pasta.

[chocomouse]

Joan, you did hit the jackpot! Here, eggs are 4.89/dozen (down from 5.89) and 2% milk is the same, 4.89/gallon. I need to shop on Wednesday, and I'm not looking forward to it.

Tonight we grilled ribs on the deck, and also had roasted veggies and cauliflower salad. Three nights ago it was -17, and today it was mid-30s.

[Joan Simpson]

Our neighbor gifted us some fresh oysters in the shell and we shucked them (not fun) but the taste was amazing ,we had oyster stew.

We had to go to town and I found Eggland's Best 18 count eggs at Target for $5.89 a carton ,I got 2. Milk was $2.99 a gallon got 2.I felt like I hit the jackpot.

[Mike Nolan]

Several years ago I switched from using beef broth to using chicken broth for onion soup, I think beef tends to dominate the flavor profile, and of course I keep the salt down.

I haven't had a really good bowl of onion soup in a restaurant since the Playboy Club closed in Chicago, a LONG time ago. Usually the dominant flavor is salt. 🙁

[BakerAunt]

For dinner on Saturday, and in the coming week, I made butternut Squash, Farro, and Kale Soup. I got this recipe from an email from Tasting Table, which I do not think exists on the internet anymore. They shared it from Food, Health, and Happiness, a cookbook from Oprah Winfrey (or probably, her chef). I follow the basics but omit the onion and tomatoes in deference to my husband. I also change it around by adding browned ground turkey. I omitted the garlic this time as well. I had no celery but used an orange bell pepper. I add 2 tsp. cider vinegar at the end to balance the kale.

I also made yogurt on Saturday.

It is warming up here and probably got to 40F today, although the water dripping at the doorway is freezing on the pavement.

[Mike Nolan]

I've used several different semolinas over the years. I used to buy either Bobs Red Mill or Hodgson Mill, the latter brand seems to have vanished completely from stores here. Then I was buying it in bulk at the coop, so I don't really know whose it was.

A few years ago I bought a 50 pound bag of it (ardent mills or bay state, probably) and in the last year or so I've bought two 25 pound bags of Bobs Red Mill. All of these were typical semolina, almost granular and mostly endosperm.

I currently use 5-8 pounds of semolina a month for bread and pasta, less pasta in the summer but more bread.

The most recent purchase was from Azure Standard, and unlike the other semolinas this is much more finely ground and also includes most of the bran and germ. (The details on their website says they filter out the large bran particles, removing about 12% of the bran.)

It would probably be most accurate to call it a (nearly) whole grain durum flour rather than semolina. I've baked enough with whole grain flours that I'm familiar with the differences, and this one definitely handled and baked like a whole grain flour, and we can taste the bran. (It's not a bad taste, it just is a different taste. My wife calls it more nutty, I would call it more bitter.)

I haven't decided yet if I'm going to look for another source for 'real' semolina, I may try tinkering with the recipe first. I'm sure I can find uses for 25 pounds of whole wheat durum flour over the next year or so anyway. I'm curious to see how whole grain durum affects pasta.

I've been trying to set up an account with Sysco, but they don't like dealing with serious home bakers or home-based cottage industry bakers. (You can't even look at their price catalog unless you have an account, which makes doing a detailed business plan for a home-based bread subscription service difficult.) Restaurant Depot in Omaha also prohibits retail customers.

Webstaurant has 50 pound bags of semolina for $31.99 but the shipping to Nebraska is $36.42.

KAB AP is $8.99 for a 12 pound bag at Costco here as of a few days ago. But it was $5.99 for a 12 pound bag a year ago.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making a few changes that SHOULD be behind the scenes to my Google analytics and search engine optimization plugins.

If anything starts behaving weird, let me know.

[Mike Nolan]

The last time I did tuna melts (with the last of the summer's tomatoes), I used havarti cheese, it was quite good. Costco has sliced havarti in 2 pound packages.

We're having fish and broccoli tonight.

[chocomouse]

For dinner this Wednesday evening, we had venison liver, roasted veggies (parsnips, carrots, Brussels sprouts) and a green salad. We'll be eating comfort foods for the next few nights, with the forecast of -12 to -17*.

[Mike Nolan]

The Wall Street Journal has a story today on how people fed up with the high price of eggs are buying chicks and raising them.

It often turns out to be a lot more expensive than buying eggs at the store, and a lot messier and smellier, too. (We had a small chicken coop and 4-5 chickens when I was young, so I know the downsides!)

[Mike Nolan]

I've been thinking of a two-phase process, first a Q&A form that asks what you're making, ingredients, percentages (or quantities), number of stages, etc, then takes all that information and builds an Excel spreadsheet.

Not sure how it would handle things like a frosting or glaze that isn't directly tied to the yield, but the BBGA format doesn't seem to deal with that, either.

Most people who maintain a sourdough starter would need to just measure out the amount of starter the recipe calls for, so they may not need to know the weight of the individual components in the starter. It is still useful to know things like the hydration level of the starter to compute the hydration of the overall recipe, though.

There are probably some tools like ansible or terraform that could be used to do this. Don't know if Google Forms has the ability to do that or what other Google/Microsoft products might have that capability.

When I start using a new recipe, my wife often enters it into a program that computes carbs per serving, myfitnesspal. But the ingredients database it uses is user-maintained and sometimes it is tough to find an entry that works for the recipe, and there are entries that are just plain wrong. (And the program has a nasty habit of losing the recipe mid-way through it if you hit the wrong key.)

One of the interesting things about building a formula using baker's percentages and then computing individual ingredient quantities needed to produce the desired yield is that you don't need to worry about how many grams or ounces are in a cup, etc., since everything is by weight, or even whether the yield is in grams, ounces, kilograms or pounds.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks Mike. I'm trying to figure out how to add starter to my formula. I'm still not sure about how much of a percentage of the whole it should be.

Google and Microsoft (and others too, probably) both host online forms that can link in their spreadsheets. I don't know how easy it would be to pull that into the BBGA website but that would be a neat way to go. Build a form that queries you for ingredients and percentages and then fills in the recipe in the right format.

But the BBGA is tech challenged and not great about taking members up on their offers of assistance, I think.