[BakerAunt]

Now is a great time to stock up on holiday food specials for later.

On Saturday, I cooked Skillet Chicken Thighs with Broccoli and Orzo, a recipe that appeared in The New York Times cooking section, and modified in line with reviews. I like this recipe a lot, but it does mean a major cleaning of the stove afterwards, as the grease splatters from cooking the chicken. We had a bit of leftover coleslaw on the side.

[BakerAunt]

On Friday, I baked the Ginger Pumpkin Braid recipe from King Arthur. I use my own pumpkin puree (from last year's peanut pumpkin), so I find that I need to increase the flour, and I like to use more whole grain, so instead of 4 ½ cups bread flour, I used 2 ½ cups white whole wheat, 2 cups bread flour, then ended up adding ½ cup whole wheat flour and about an additional 1/3 cup bread flour. I also add 1/3 cup special dry milk and ¼ cup flax meal. I replace 4 Tbs. melted butter with 3 Tbs. avocado oil. I increase the candied ginger from 1/3 to ½ cup, and I use golden raisins. I cut the salt from 1 ½ tsp. to 1 ¼ tsp. I use my own mix of spices instead of a pumpkin pie blend: 1 ½ tsp. cinnamon, ½ tsp. ginger, and ½ tsp. freshly grated nutmeg. The bread machine can just handle that amount of dough. I did the best six-braid bread that I have ever done. It is cooling, and I am looking forward to slicing it at breakfast tomorrow.

[BakerAunt]

I envy you the great tomatoes, Mike.

For dinner on Friday, I made the Crispy Oven Fish and Chips again, which we had with the leftover dill tartar sauce and the coleslaw.

[BakerAunt]

Thursday evening, I baked Scottish Oatcakes. I wanted to make sure to have something to have with my afternoon tea. We had three inches of snow overnight, our first significant snow of the season.

[BakerAunt]

We finished the turkey-spinach loaf. I roasted one of our honey-nut squash to go with it, and we had microwaved fresh broccoli as well.

[BakerAunt]

I made yogurt on Wednesday.

[BakerAunt]

I also love offers for a percentage off on products. That is partly why I still have a good supply of cinnamon chips in the refrigerator, and King Arthur has not sold them for at least five years. (They still taste great.) I go through cheese powder quickly, due to my husband's fondness for my cheese crackers. I still have some lime powder, which I have perhaps used twice. I am working my way through cocoa powder. For some reason, I appear to have a lot of the natural cocoa powder.

What I miss about King Arthur is that they used to have a lot of "little" sale items that did not cost a lot that could be thrown into the cart to make the shipping or the sales requirement. KA even had a special feature that would show them to you. That is long gone, along with such items.

[BakerAunt]

Some Greek yogurts are better than others. I like Chobani and Fage for eating, but I usually stir in some fruit or a bit of my homemade jam.

I bought two 2-quart jugs of low-fat buttermilk when we did our big shopping run yesterday, so I should be set until our next shopping trip.

[BakerAunt]

I tried a new recipe at breakfast this morning: "Oatmeal-Buttermilk Pancakes," from the Tres Joli Bakery Café in Oakton, Virginia. It appeared as a recipe request in the August 1999 issue of Bon Appetit (p. 30). I found it in my pile of to-try recipes. I halved it and reduced the salt by half more. The pancakes are mostly old-fashioned oats, with a ratio of 1 cup to ¼ cup AP flour. I replaced 2 Tbs. butter with avocado oil, and I used avocado oil on the pan. I let the batter rest for two hours, then cooked about 2/3 of it. They are fragile, although I managed to get them turned and onto the plate in one piece. (That may also be a problem with my old non-stick griddle, which has build-up I cannot clean off of it, and probably needs to be replaced.) The recipe says that the batter can be prepared a day in advance, so I will see how the remaining batter cooks tomorrow, when I will use a better non-stick skillet. The recipe says these are served with lingonberry preserves, or with blueberries and whipped cream, which is likely why the batter contains vanilla. I used s bit of maple syrup and might omit the vanilla next time. I'm not sure that I will make the recipe again; it depends on the texture and taste when I cook the rest tomorrow.

[BakerAunt]

We decided to do a big shopping trip to the larger town northeast of us on Tuesday afternoon, so I needed a quick dinner, which meant the stew that I had planned would not work. Instead, I made a turkey-spinach loaf and roasted sweet potato chunks. We also had coleslaw.

I started the meatloaf, which cooks for an hour at 350, then added the pan of sweet potatoes chunks fifteen minutes later. After I took out the meatloaf, I let it stand. I turned up the heat to 375F and roasted the sweet potato chunks for another ten minutes. They came out really well.

We were supposed to have snow today, which is why we did not do the big shopping trip this morning, but our area just got some blowing flakes, and they started predicting the snow for Thursday, so we decided just to go today.

Kroger had turkeys at 69 cents a pound for people with their card. I also found Bob's Red Mill whole wheat flour for $4.99, and the King Arthur was on sale and much cheaper than the price at Walmart.

[BakerAunt]

I made coleslaw on Monday, which we had with Oven Baked Crispy Fish and Chips with Dill Tartar sauce.

[BakerAunt]

Chocomouse--I recall that I also used pecan meal in the cinnamon chip biscotti recipe that King Arthur had some years ago. I found it easier than trying to slice the logs with pecan pieces.

[BakerAunt]

It's leftover pizza night for our Sunday dinner.

[BakerAunt]

We were out of bread, so I baked two loaves of that great Semolina Rye Bread recipe that Len posted at Nebraska Kitchen. That's one loaf to begin eating tomorrow and one for the freezer.

[BakerAunt]

On Saturday, I baked my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers from the dough I made on Monday.

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