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Note on Wednesday: the peach jam is a bit runny. Next time, I will increase the cooking time on the jam maker by 2 minutes if I have particularly juicy peaches. The only drawback to the Ball jam maker is that increasing the default cooking time must be done in advance; it is not possible to add time at the end.
What a beautiful loaf, Mike!
We did our big shopping run to a nearby small city on Tuesday, where we also had other errands to run. After lunch, we did our usual local shopping trip. In the afternoon, I made peach jam, using Michigan peaches that I bought at the farmers market last Saturday. I ended up with four half-pints and one 4 oz. jar, as well as some in a jar in the refrigerator. I am not certain how well it set, as the jam in the refrigerated jar is runny. I will see what the canned jars look like tomorrow. I was glad that we had leftover chicken for dinner tonight along with microwaved broccoli and more sweet corn, the latter a gift from our neighbors to the north who have a farm. They said that raccoons got their first planting, but this second one escaped the marauders.
I noticed at breakfast on Monday that we were almost out of granola, so I baked a batch later in the morning.
For dinner on Monday, I roasted six chicken thighs. Scott skinned them for me, then I rubbed the tops with a bit of low-fat mayonnaise, then dipped them in ¾ cup of toasted panko mixed with 1 tsp. Smokey Paprika and ½ tsp. onion powder. We had the roasted chicken with the last two ears of sweet corn and some microwaved frozen peas.
On Saturday, I baked Banana Oat Muffins for breakfast to use up four small overripe bananas. I baked them as six large muffins and froze two. In the afternoon, I made dough for Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers, which I will bake next week. I did not realize until this morning that Scott was going to run out of crackers after today, or I would have made the dough earlier in the week.
I had good intentions, but I decided to take the day off on Saturday from jam making. For dinner we had more of the Turkey-Zucchini Loaf with our first sweet corn of the season from the farmers market. It was wonderful.
Hi, Navlys--Yes, I do a water bath for the jam. That is ten minutes at boiling, then turn off the heat, remove the lid and allow to rest for 5 minutes before removing from the water bath onto a towel on the counter to rest. I check the seals the next day.
Joan--I am beginning to think that poker is secondary to food at your poker games, which suggests that you all have your priorities straight!
Replacing butter with oil is tricky, Joan. In cakes or breads, I use 1/3 cup oil per 1/3 cup butter, but that does not work as well in cookies. For the Soft Ginger and Molasses Cookies I just baked, I used 1/2 cup avocado oil plus 2 Tbs. water in place of the 1 cup of butter. That would probably be my starting point.
Your coconut pie and cornmeal cake look delicious!
I always look forward to seeing what you bake for the poker game, Joan. Those cookies look so good. I followed your recipe link, and now I am wondering if I can engineer an oil-based version. I will put it on my list of future experiments.
Scott and I went back out to the meadow area in our woodlands and picked blackberries for two hours on Friday morning. Due to the drought we had last month, the blackberries are not as abundant as they were last year, but we still picked four quarts. I hope to go out once more on Sunday. After lunch, I began deseeding blackberries, starting with the ones from our last outing and ones I picked on our terrace. Once I had two four-cup containers, I did another 12 oz. and froze those for later use in my blackberry brownie recipe. Then I made a batch of jam before dinner, which yielded three half-pint and one 4 oz. jar. After dinner, I made the second batch, which yielded four half-pint jars. I heard all the jars seal, which is a glorious sound.
In between my jam making sessions, I made Turkey-Zucchini Loaf with Peach-Dijon Glaze for dinner. I used a golden arrow, which is the yellow zucchini squash, and I grated the whole one in, as it was getting old. Scott really liked the flavor, and it is a milder one than the green zucchini. We had the meat loaf with the rest of the green bean salad and a maple-oat roll. I am tired but looking forward to more jam making tomorrow.
Your dinner looks great, as always Joan.
Len's pizza also looks good. Interesting that you shaped it by hand. I find these days that I am less and less likely to reach for a rolling pin when shaping dough for pizza, sweet rolls, or bread. I primarily save the rolling pin for crackers and pie crust.
I made another jar of refrigerator dill pickles on Thursday. This jar uses pickling cucumbers and dill, both from our garden. We will let them rest in the refrigerator for two days before we start eating them.
For dinner tonight, we had more of the green bean salad, and we finished the chicken salad, which we had as open-faced sandwiches on the Maple Oat buns that I baked today.
A thunderstorm with a cool front arrived on Wednesday evening. That allowed me to head back to the kitchen to bake on Thursday, which is good, as we were out of cookies. I baked "Soft Ginger and Molasses Cookies" (no butter), which is a recipe that I adapted from one with a cup of butter on the King Arthur site. I use ½ cup avocado oil plus 2 Tbs. water in its place. I replace the AP flour with white whole wheat flour and add 4 Tbs. milk powder. The recipe uses equal parts ginger syrup and molasses. (I hope King Arthur does not stop selling the ginger syrup, although with my luck, they will.) The recipe made 31 cookies, so that may get us through the week.
I also baked a new recipe, "Maple Walnut and Oat Rolls, from The Baking Sheet XXIV, no. 1 (Winter 2013), p. 7. [Note: If you have the back issues of The Baking Sheet, it incorrectly says XXX for the Volume,] I have taken to paging through my notebooks of The Baking Sheet and pulling out recipes to try. I make a list so that I can find them again. As always, I made some changes to the recipe. I increased the whole wheat flour by ¼ cup and decreased the King Arthur AP by ¼ cup so that it is exactly half whole wheat. I added 2 Tbs. special dry milk and 2 Tbs. flax meal and reduced the salt from 1 ½ tsp. to 1 tsp. I replaced 1 cup of the water with buttermilk and omitted the maple extract. I added 2 Tbs. avocado oil because I think some oil keeps bread softer for longer. The dough, which I mixed and kneaded in the bread machine, was a little dry, so I added 1 Tbs. of water. Next time I will increase the ¼ cup of water to 1/3 cup, as the dough was a tad dry when I was shaping it. I made it as twelve rounded rolls. The rolls are delicious, although they do not have a noticeable maple taste.
I had some cucumber salsa for lunch on Wednesday. The cucumber flavor is stronger than I would have expected. It is ok. I am not sure if part of my disappointment is that my taste buds really want corn chips with it. I will need to see if I can engineer a cornmeal flatbread.
I made yogurt in the morning. For dinner, I made, for the first time this season, the Green Bean, Cherry Tomato, and Feta salad we like so much. We have been waiting patiently for the green beans, and at last we had the necessary pound. I used our ripe, multicolored cherry tomatoes, along with some from the farmers market. We had the salad with open-faced chicken salad sandwiches and pumpkin bread from the freezer for dessert.
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