BakerAunt
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I made a large stir-fry for dinner on Saturday, using farro cooked in turkey/chicken broth, leftover turkey, mushrooms and red bell pepper from the grocery, baby carrots and napa cabbage from our farmers' market, and the leftover gravy. We have enough for two nights of leftovers for dinner, which I consider a win!
Mike is correct about finding unsweetened yogurt with live cultures in small containers. Even with the large containers, a lot of yogurt these days is thickened with food starch, which is cheaper for the manufacturer but reduces the nutritional value of yogurt made completely with milk. I can only find the quarts of Stonyfield yogurt that I use as starter for my own yogurt, and I had to settle for full fat, as no store close to us sells the low-fat that I could easily find at stores where we lived in Texas. Indeed, my frustration led to my dusting off a yogurt maker I had never used and getting into making my own, six small jars at a time. It also turned out to be more economical, as well as more nutritious.
Yogurt has a different kind of "tang" from sourdough or from buttermilk. I usually replace yogurt in bread recipes with buttermilk. I doubt that the active cultures in the yogurt (does buttermilk have active cultures?) can replace a levain, but it does make breads more tender and helps the rise a bit. S. Wirth (I think of her often) told us that buttermilk increases the "keeping quality" of breads.
I seem to recall that Paddy had a recipe for a buttermilk-based starter, but I never explored it, as I have a milk-based one that I have kept going for about thirty years.
I improvised a soup for lunch on Friday by first sauteing onion, celery, carrots, mushrooms, and garlic in olive oil. I added some leftover turkey/chicken broth and the broth I made on Sunday from the turkey giblets. I added a can of tomatoes with Hatch chilis, 2/3 cup brown lentils and 1/3 cup red lentils. For spices, I added ½ tsp. chili powder, 1 tsp. Salsa & Pico, ¼ tsp. cumin. I remembered that I had about 10 oz. of broth from black-eyed peas in the freezer, so I tossed it in along with some of the leftover water from cooking muddled mashed potatoes last night. The soup is mildly spicy, which is how I prefer it, and tastes great. I will have lunches from it into next week.
Thanks for posting the link, Mike. I know that we have at least two kinds of bees here. I've seen the big bumble bees, and there are little bees that are adept at pollinating our squash.
My husband started the tomato plants today, so now we wait to see if they come up. There will not be any transplanting until later in May. We are in a warm spell right now, with temperatures yesterday and today hitting the low 80s in the afternoon. However, next week is forecast to be much cooler. I'm ok with cooler, as long as there is no freeze. After all, it is supposed to be spring.
I roasted one of my two remaining butternut squashes on Thursday and made it into puree. I have a cake recipe in which I plan to use it.
For dinner tonight, I made muddled mashed potatoes to go with the leftover turkey and gravy. We had microwaved frozen peas and leftover applesauce too.
Those impromptu stir-fry dishes are a favorite at my house, too, Len!
I made yogurt on Wednesday. For dinner, I roasted sweet potato chunks tossed in olive oil, which we had with leftover turkey and microwaved fresh broccoli.
Thanks for the reports, Aaron and Mike. I think that Einkorn would be an interesting flour to try, but I will have to wait until it is more readily available and, if possible, less expensive.
I can recall my mother going to and hosting Tupperware parties back in the 1960s, Tupperware did get on board with what I would call the virtual Tupperware party, as more women shifted into the workforce. My sister participated or hosted some of these where people at her workplace or relatives like me could order, and there was a shipping option as well. Both methods did seem like a lot of pressure for the dealers to sell more and more.
However, most of us have limits to how much Tupperware we need. There are also lots of plastic options out there available more conveniently. Some people are concerned about plastics for environmental and/or health reasons. Some of my older pieces have developed plastic smells.
One thing that Tupperware had going for it was that it was possible to replace lost or damaged lids, sometimes for free, and sometimes buying them. I have had several Rubbermaid tops break, and there is no replacement available. While I gave one to my husband for bailing out the rowboat after it rains, I do not like getting stuck with a perfectly good container with no top.
You and your husband will be in my prayers, too, Joan.
On Monday, I baked two small loaves of the Mostly Whole Wheat Maple Buttermilk Bread. It is particularly wonderful in ham sandwiches.
I also baked my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers from dough I made up about a week ago. I expect my husband to plow through them in short order. 😊
The article seems more about product advertising, via the links, than about serious baking.
Most flatbreads are best eaten right after they are made, as they become stiff when they cool.
That third loaf looks like a quick bread. I would not want to use it for sandwiches.
I'm not sure she used her homemade self-rising flour for the second loaf, which seems to be Jim Lahey's bread. One does not need Tick Tock to bake it.
None of these recipes will inspire people to bake and to keep baking. A regular simple yeast loaf, such as the Austrian Malt Bread or Paddy's bread, would be more likely to spark a desire to keep baking.
King Arthur appears not to have received the memo on cupcakes, as yesterday's email from them featured cupcakes:
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