What are You Baking the Week of March 1, 2020?

[skeptic7]

I'm not cooking or baking anything. I'm visiting my father and he insists on doing all the cooking. I was trying to get a plumber to come while I was visiting. I thought there were lots of plumbing that needed to be fixed especially as my father and his friend are enthusiastic amateur plumbers -- but they have more enthusiasm than skill. The kitchen sink had drained very slowly on my last two visits. The upstairs bathtub drain is locked open, the shower head is ancient lacking a top cap, the toilet rocks -- Dad and his friend installed it, the downstairs bathtub overflow drain lacks a rubber gasket. The plumbers came and Dad drove them out screaming that everything was fine. The kitchen sink at that time was taking hours to drain. It had been bad when i arrived three days before, and the enzyme treatments I had tried didn't help, and Dad tried using a plunger which made it almost completely plugged.
Since it was Dad's house, the plumbers couldn't do anything without his permission.
i had tried cleaning out the P trap under the sink on Monday and then running a snake down the pipes. there was some debris in the P trap but not enough to be responsible for the slowness. I couldn't get the snake to go more than a foot or so into the pipe. This didn't fix the problem and the sink continued to drain very very slowly.
However on Wednesday since Dad had driven the plumbers away and I was desperate i tried snaking the drain again, and again and again. I finally got the snake to go further down and I twirled it around and withdrew it. I fastened every thing back up and tested it. Didn't work. Took the P trap apart again and tried with the snake and tried and tried. This was a drum snake with a handle and a crank to go around. Still didn't work. i read the directions again and started twisting the snake around and pushing into the drain at the same time, and tried again. finally the snake went down and down. i twirled the snake around and push it in. finally there was about 6 feet of snake down the pipe and twirling and pushing wouldn't make it go any further. i rotated the snake and pulled it up and rotated some more. This time when I put everything together the water drained straight down quickly with a nice whirlpool affect.
Now the rest of the plumbing problems are still unfixed and beyond my expertise. Dad is almost completely deaf so I can see why he doesn't call plumbers on his own. However I want to use the bathtubs when I visit without worrying about water leaking everywhere.

[Mike Nolan]

The last time our kitchen sink backed up, the major clog was some 20 feet down the line.

I've never had much luck with the enzyme treatment, I use bleach because that's what our plumbers recommend. I've been tempted to try Green Gobbler, one of those 'as seen on TV' products' that always sounds too good to be true.

[skeptic7]

I think the enzyme treatment works well if there isn't a blockage. I got my first house 6 years ago and have been doing monthly enzyme treatments since then. The drains are all running well now but there were three times when I had to call the plumber to remove an obstruction and a couple of times that I cleaned up one on my own. I like the enzymes since it doesn't hurt the pipes, and it isn't a danger to me or the plumber if I have to try something more drastic. I really believe that the drains are working better with the regular treatment.
I use the little screens to prevent debris from going down the kitchen sink, and the plastic covers to prevent hair from going down the bathtub.
It was so hard getting 6 feet down the drain line, I'm so glad that I didn't have to try to break through something further down.

[RiversideLen]

Aaron, your pizzas look awesome.
Mike, your breads look awesome too. I bought a sandwich loaf from Whole Foods, their 8 grain bread, and saw that one of the ingredients is triticale. Thanks to you, I know what that is.
I made a batch of pizza dough on Sunday and had pizza on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. On Monday I took some mushrooms, chopped them up and then cooked them down. That went on the pizza with some ground beef and red bell pepper. Tuesday and Wednesday pizzas were ground beef, thin sliced onion and red pepper. I also made a batch of my sandwich buns, half of them plain and half with KAF everything bagel topping.

[BakerAunt]

Earlier in the week, I sorted through a stack of recipe pages, discarding the ones that dietary restrictions will no longer allow me to make. Sigh. About half the stack went into the trash, but I found some promising recipes as well. On Saturday morning, I baked “Walnut-Topped Spice Cookies,” from the “Too Busy to Cook?” column of a February 1999 issue of Bon Appetit (p112). It’s a Sephardic recipe, submitted by Rebecca Levy from Los Angeles that uses vegetable oil.. I followed the recipe ingredients, although I suspect that my 1 Tbs. of natural creamy peanut butter may not be the same as her 1 Tbs. creamy peanut butter. I used a Zeroll cookie scoop (#40). Instead of topping each cookie with a walnut and brushing with egg glaze, I used a shamrock cookie stamp dipped in fine sugar. The recipe made nineteen, and they baked well in the time specified. With 9g saturated fat total in the recipe (8g from the oil and 1g from the peanut butter), they are fine for a serving of two each, and they are COOKIES! I let them cool on the baking sheet. They are delicate, so I did not stack them when I put them in a container. We each had one tonight for dessert. They have a pleasant “sandy” texture, and the combination of a little peanut butter, almond extract, cinnamon, and cloves combine beautifully while still being distinct. I will definitely bake these again.

[BakerAunt]

I found a link to the cookie recipe. I was going to edit my post, but as that seems to cause them to go to junk mail, I'll give the link here:

https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/walnut-topped-spice-cookies-5920

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