BakerAunt
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I roasted my second, and last, acorn squash on Wednesday, then stuffed it with some of the leftover filling from when I did the first one. Again, it was lunch for me, and I will have the other half tomorrow.
For Wednesday's dinner, I made Crispy Oven Fish and Chips again, which we had with the rest of the dill tartar sauce and microwaved frozen mixed vegetables.
Joan--I am hoping I won't need your tip about dish soap and Q-tips, because I am going to try VERY hard not to get another tick, but if it happens, I'll now know what to do.
Mike, I haven't bought any accessories for my Ankarsrum just yet. It did come with an additional hard plastic mixing bowl, which is a kind of doughnut shape. A post us attached in the center of the base, and that bowl goes over it. Two sets of beaters also came with it, one for beating egg whites, and another for cakes. Neither set was recommended to be used with cold butter. The joined pair of two beaters snaps onto the post. I think that I wrote about it when I made my birthday cake, as I had to beat together the eggs and sugar and the oil and vanilla. However, I moved that mixture to a bowl before adding the flour, fruit, chocolate chips, and nuts by hand.
I have been tempted by the pasta roller and cutter attachments.
Recently, Ankarsrum has introduced two new beater sets. One is whisks, the other is beaters that can work on cold butter. However, it requires buying a metal bowl that like the hard plastic one is a doughnut shape. The new beaters cannot be used with the plastic bowl. The new beaters were introduced in a special initial offering on Pi Day, with only 200 available, and they sold out within two hours. The beaters will become widely available in a later release. I think that they did the special release on Pi day to call attention to it for making pie crust.
I'm not sure that it would make sense for me to get the new beaters, as I would also need to buy the special metal bowl. I rarely have occasion to cream butter.
One intrigues me about the pasta roller is that it would be nice to make my own lasagna noodles, and it might also be a way of rolling out cracker dough without a sheeter. King Arthur sells the pasta roller along with a pasta cuter that does noodles.
I made an unexpected trip to the doctor's office on Tuesday morning after discovering late last night a tick embedded in my lower back. Scott tried to remove it, but part of it was too firmly attached, so I needed the doctor to do it. I am now on an antibiotic for the next week as a precautionary measure. I probably picked it up last Friday when we did a walk in our woods. I realized, as we were walking that day, that I had not thought to spray myself with Picaridin, but Scott said it was too early for ticks to be out. Apparently not.
I made yogurt after we got home. For dinner, we had more of last night's chicken, the rest of the goat cheese pasta, and microwaved fresh broccoli.
I stocked up on some 10 lb. bags in the fall, so I am set for a while. I did not see the kind of prices that kimbob and Aaron are reporting in my shopping foray last week.
I know nothing about beef tallow, Navlys, but I had to smile when you said it looked intriguing, so you bought it. That has often happened to me at T. J. Maxx and Ross.
I suspect that the health claims for beef tallow are overblown, to say the least.
I baked the Orange Sweet Rolls this morning. I was pleased with the texture of the bread. I think, however, that I used too much cinnamon in the filling, and I would cut back to 1 tsp. next time. I like the blackberry jam in the filling. I made the glaze with orange juice, but next time, I will just do my straight vanilla glaze because I think the rolls need the contrast. I reduced the glaze recipe by 25%, which I do for all my sweet rolls. I will make another attempt at this recipe next year when the Cara Cara oranges are in season again.
My husband made it clear that he had no desire to eat any of the two acorn squashes that I bought last autumn, so it fell to me, on Monday, to use one of them for lunch. I was able to go with all sorts of ingredients that Scott cannot or will not eat. I cut one horizontally and roasted it. I also cooked a pot of black beans that I had soaked overnight. To stuff the squash, I made bulgur (1/2 cup to 1 C water) that I mixed with sauteed onion, red bell pepper, and garlic, a can of Del Monte tomatoes with hatch chilis, black beans, and ½ tsp. of Penzey's new spice blend, Resist. I mounded filling in each squash half, added 2 Tbs. low-fat shredded mozzarella to the top of each, then roasted another 10 minutes. The result is tasty. I will warm up the other squash half for lunch tomorrow. I have enough filling to stuff the second squash when I roast it later in the week, as well as some to eat plain.
I do not usually make two big dinner projects in a day, but I still needed to cook for Monday's dinner. I thought that I had a package of six chicken thighs from the freezer, but it turned out to be eight, although one was small, which caused me to scramble my plans and use a 12-inch diameter pan. I decided to riff off of my recipe for Chicken Thigs with Broccoli and Orzo, which I had adapted from a recipe that Aaron Hutchinson developed for The Washington Post. I did not have broccoli to use, so I sauteed some mushrooms that needed to be used up and sauteed some kale as well. It came out very well, and I would do it again, although I forgot to add the thyme. I skinned the chicken, smeared each piece with mayonnaise, and coated the top in toasted Panko. The orzo in my pantry turned out to be whole wheat, which was a nice surprise.
Our weather has also been yo-yoing, but nothing like what Mike is getting. We had snow last week, then warmer days that climbed into the 70s. Tonight, we are back to the 30s and rain.
Glad to hear that the loaves came out looking great, CWCdesign.
I still have Cara Cara oranges, so on Sunday, I am trying a new recipe, "Glazed Orange Sweet Rolls," by Kristen Hartke, that appeared in The Washington Post recipe section a couple of years ago. I also printed off detailed commentary by "Jack_in_CT about his experience with the recipe. He said that it needed an additional cup of flour. I found that I needed another half cup of flour, but I also used 2 cups of whole wheat flour and added ¼ cup milk powder and 3 Tbs. flax meal. The recipe used almond milk but said regular or low-fat milk would be fine. I used buttermilk. I do not usually proof yeast in buttermilk, but I did this time, and it worked fine. I replaced 1 tsp. Kosher salt with ½ tsp. regular, replaced ¼ cup butter with 4 Tbs. avocado oil. I also used special gold yeast in place of regular active yeast. The filling called for 2 Tbs. orange marmalade combined with 1 Tbs. of butter, but my husband is not that fond of orange marmalade, so I took the author's suggestion of substituting jam. She recommended raspberry, but I used 2 Tbs. of my blackberry jam. After the jam is spread over the dough, it is sprinkled with a mixture of 2 tsp. sugar and ½ tsp. each of cinnamon and nutmeg. I increased the sugar to 2 Tbs. and the cinnamon to 2 tsp. but left the nutmeg alone. I used the 13 x 9 pan option as opposed to the other one of two 8-inch round pans. Instead of 14-16, I made 12 rolls. I covered the glass dish with saran, and I will let it do the second rise overnight in the refrigerator.
I made Crispy Oven Fish and Chips with Dill Tartar Sauce for Sunday's dinner. We also had microwaved frozen peas.
Very nice, Mike!
On Saturday, I finally baked the Apple Crumb Pie that I did not get baked in time for Pi Day. Scott finished the last piece of his chocolate birthday cake today, so tomorrow we will slice the pie after it rests overnight. I was glad that my Winesap apples are still in good shape, but I have rather a lot that I need to use.
We had the remaining pork slices for dinner on Saturday. I made goat cheese pasta to go with it, and we had microwaved fresh broccoli.
Belated birthday greetings, Kimbob. Those sound like great pizza choices.
Friday night's dinner was pork slices coated with pecan meal after dipping into a mixture of egg, Dijon mustard, and smoky paprika, then roasted. I also roasted sweet potato chunks separately in the countertop oven, and we had microwaved frozen vegetables.
We did our major shopping run to the county seat today, which in addition to shopping three grocery stores also involves dropping off our recyclables, stops at Marshall's and Ross for me and TSC for Scott. Scott also got his second shingles shot. Fortunately, we had leftovers from last night, so we could relax in the later afternoon.
I made dough for Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers on Wednesday. I held back 12 grams of flour this time, as the dough has been drier when mixing with the Ankarsrum. I was happier with the consistency this time.
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