BakerAunt
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It was a day for cookies, Mike. I baked Soft Ginger and Molasses Cookies on Sunday, so that we would have them for teatime this week. I adapted the recipe from King Arthur to use avocado oil rather than butter, and I also use white whole wheat flour. I remembered upon eating two that they are a little too sweet. Next time, I will cut back the sugar by 2 Tbs. I made 35 cookies, which I hope will last for longer than the last batch of 15 oatmeal cookies did.
For dessert at dinner, I made Marianne and Marliss' Peach Crisp, a recipe that my college roommate and I freely adapted from a King Arthur recipe when we visited her and her husband at the end of April. I had about 9 large peaches, which I think was about 3 lbs. that I bought yesterday at the farmers market. I had intended to use half, but I realized they needed to be used quickly. I had about 8 cups of peaches cut into pieces. I doubled the other filling ingredients, except that I used 1/3 cup of sugar rather than half a cup. I made the full amount of crisp topping and used whole wheat pastry flour in it. We had some warm with low-fat frozen vanilla yogurt, and we will be eating it for dessert the next few nights, as it filled a 9 x 13 Emile Henry baking dish.
These peaches came from Michigan. No local peach trees produced this year because unseasonably warm weather in the later spring, then a freeze, affected the trees. (These events are among those becoming more common with climate change.) The vendor told me that in Michigan, some peach trees, including the variety she favors, were affected by the late freeze and so did not produce fruit. These peaches were a little odd in that the stone in the center of most of them had started to rot. I had to cut the pit out of all but two. I would grade these peaches a "B" in terms of taste, but they worked fine in the crisp.
We had more of the Turkey-Zucchini Loaf for dinner on Sunday, along with microwaved fresh broccoli.
In the afternoon, I made three jars of refrigerator dill pickles. I had only intended to make two, but Scott brought in some more cucumbers from the garden, and I still had a few in the refrigerator, so three jars it was. I hope that we can eat them fast enough.
Stay cool, Joan. We have been having very high humidity for the past week and a half, but at least the temperatures are not as high as yours.
I receive the King Arthur emails and also did the free subscribing to their Substack. However, I usually just skim both of them because the target audience does not appear to be practical bakers. While a baking challenge can be great, that is all they seem to offer these days. The Substack appears to be more of a 'because marketing told me that I have to do this" rather than an effort to engage with people. I've commented a few times, but it does not seem like a place where a community would form.
King Arthur still has some items that I buy, such as the golden wheat flour, and they are my source for pumpernickel flour since Bob's Red Mill stopped carrying it. The non-melting sugar and the sparkling white sugar are important ingredients for me. I also get my dutch processed cocoa and cheese powder from them. I don't like what King Arthur has done with shipping prices. I'm always calculating whether a percentage off a certain amount offsets the high shipping cost when they run a special.
I buy the Bob's Red Mill bread flour and whole wheat flour, and some of their other flours, through Vitacost/I-Herb. I'm not sure if the I-Herb merger is increasing the cost of the flours, or if the cost is just going up like other costs.
On Saturday, I baked Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese crackers from the dough I made last week. Surprisingly, Scott still has some of the previous batch of crackers left, so I am ahead.
For dinner on Friday, I made Turkey-Zucchini Loaf with Peach Dijon Glaze. I grated a large zucchini from today's farmers market for it and have some left for baking next week. I had the rest of my sliced salad with it, while Scott had microwaved frozen peas. The original plan was to have sweet corn, but due to rain today, some vendors did not come to the farmers market today, so no corn was available, nor cherry tomatoes or green onion for the bean salad I hope to make later in the week.
On Friday, it was cooler (upper 70s), so I baked a loaf of my Rustic Sourdough Whole Grain Bread in a Cloche.
I agree with Joan, Mike. That sounds so good.
Our dinner on Thursday and again on Friday were the coated pork chops, which we had as sandwiches on the rolls I baked earlier in the week. I had my sliced tomato, onion, and cucumber salad both nights as well. Scott had microwaved frozen peas on Thursday and microwaved fresh broccoli on Friday.
Italian Cook--I hope you find some interesting items while thrifting. (That's a good "ing" word!)
On Wednesday morning, I baked six Blueberry Oat Muffins using the rest of the blueberries from our two bushes. These are small berries, and I probably had about ¼ cup, so I made a half recipe and made sure that berries were in each muffin.
On Wednesday, I made a sliced tomato, cucumber, and onion salad like my grandmother and mother used to make. I made it several years ago, with Sara Wirth's help, but I had not written down the recipe. I used the search function at Nebraska Kitchen and found where she told me that she used equal parts vinegar and sugar. I then watched some YouTube recipes of different versions but decided to use her ingredients and proportions, with ½ tsp. salt. However, I did learn not to slice the vegetables too thin but about 1/4 inch each. The two tomatoes came from the farmers market, as ours are not yet ready. The cucumber was in a bucket marked "free" when I walked last week, so I took one. The onion is a regular yellow one from the store. I used a large, deep ceramic quiche dish for the salad (my mother and grandmother probably use a Tupperware Pie holder) and stirred it around a couple of times during the day.
I had some of the salad with dinner on Wednesday. I used cider vinegar, but next time, I may do half cider and half white. Scott, who is not a fan of cucumber (unless I make refrigerator dills) or onion, had microwaved broccoli for his vegetable. I also made pecan-coated boneless pork chops and roasted potato chunks tossed in olive oil. The potatoes are also from the farmers market.
We had more rain and thunderstorms in the late morning and early afternoon. Annie is hanging in there, with the help of her fan set to medium or high to make the thunder's noise bearable.
Dinner on Tuesday was a repeat of Monday's chicken salad sandwiches on the buns I baked. We had some weather uncertainty in the early afternoon when severe thunderstorms developed. Then we got a tornado warning on the phone and also the tornado sirens. Scott checked it on the computer, and no tornado had been spotted, but some places were getting straight line winds that can also do a lot of damage, so the idea was to warn us.
At the local thrift store, a couple of weeks ago, I found a heavyweight, square muffin pan, with a capacity of 6 cups, that makes 12 muffins. The brand name is Technique. I decided to bake Ellen's buns on Monday and to divide the dough into the pans. They baked about 3 minutes faster than when baked in a 10 x 10-inch pan. It made great little sandwich buns for our chicken salad tonight.
As I was heating up the oven anyway, I also put together a double recipe of my adaptation of the Soft Oatmeal Cookies from Jennie Can Cook. I usually use white whole wheat flour, but this time I decided to use whole wheat pastry flour, since I have to buy it in 8 lb. bags. I have not tried the cookies yet, but Scott had one after dinner, and he gave great reviews to the new, softer version, so I may be making that substitution from now on. With the increase in electrical utility rates, I am trying to plan my baking, so that I use an already heated up oven for a second bake.
Italian Cook--I thought about your question overnight and pulled out my copy of The Elements of Style (Strunk and White), the only book on writing and grammar that I think is worthwhile because it is easy to read, well organized, and nice and short. I'm puzzled as to what your teacher meant, as I do not think that there is any rule about overusing words ending in "ing." Now, words ending in "ize" are another matter, as Strunk and White note. Those should be used sparingly.
So, I would say, go ahead and use words ending in "ing" as much as you wish.
On Monday, I de-seeded the rest of my blackberries. I got 12 oz. to freeze for my brownie recipe and 8 oz. to freeze for my coffee cake recipe.
I made chicken salad for dinner with the rest of the roast chicken breast. We had it on the rolls I baked.
On Sunday, I made dough for Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers. I divided it into four pieces, wrapped each in saran, and refrigerated them. I will bake the cracker later this week after the dough rests in the refrigerator for three or four days.
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