BakerAunt
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The neighbors on our north, who come up most weekends in the summer, have a farm, and they gift us with sweet corn every year. Dinner on Wednesday was sweet corn and leftover pork and Michiana Green Bean Salad.
I mentioned my husband's cranberry plant in a tub "bog" last year. We harvested about a half cup of cranberries in the late fall, and I used them to bake muffins. The plants had lots of green berries on them this summer, and I was anticipating baking with them again. Note the past tense. The chipmunks, which are all over our yard apparently decided to eat many of the green berries. I hope they had the tummy aches to end all tummy aches. My husband is protecting what is left, but it will not be the harvest of our dreams.
On Wednesday morning, I baked a new recipe, "Blueberry Oat Muffins for Healthy Mornings," from the blog 31 Daily:
https://www.31daily.com/healthy-blueberry-oatmeal-muffins-recipe/
I made some changes by substituting white whole wheat flour for all the flour, using buttermilk, halving the salt, and adding 1 Tbs. each of Bob's Red Mill milk powder and flax meal. I replaced 1/2 cup of butter with 1/3 cup canola oil. I used about a cup of blueberries. I sprinkled the tops with Penzey's Cinnamon Sugar. I baked them in as six large muffins rather than twelve small ones. The flavor is excellent, and I will bake them again. However, next time I will increase the baking time by about ten minutes, because even though they tested done, the center area slightly collapsed about ten minutes after I removed them from the pan. I ate one and put the others back in the oven for another ten minutes. The issue, I suspect, was that I had larger muffins and needed to increase the baking time.
Aaron--I haven't tried using a peel for pizza except with parchment paper for the initial set, but some years ago, I was using one to bake round bread loaves on a pizza stone after letting them rise in a basket and turning it out. I think that I used cornmeal, and yes, it went all over the oven. At the time, I was in an apartment with an older oven, so I had an aluminum liner on the bottom, which helped contain the mess, although not completely.
When I began to use clay bakers, I tried semolina, but my experience is that it burns, not a taste I wanted, while I was waiting for the bread to bake completely.
These days, I use cream of wheat (farina), the regular breakfast stuff from the store. I got the tip from a King Arthur article some years ago. The farina does not burn like the semolina did; of course, a loaf of bread bakes longer than a pizza.
Thanks for the comment about the hot grains on the wood floor. We have an ash floor in the kitchen, which while it is a hard wood could be damaged. (It's also my husband's pride and joy, so I respect it.)
Tuesday's dinner: My husband cooked pan cooked boneless pork ribs, I roasted some sweet chunks of sweet potato and made another Michiana Green Bean salad to keep up with the overflow of green beans from the garden.
Temperatures on Monday were in the mid-70s with lower humidity. I seized the day and baked my sourdough pan pizza with the usual toppings, including a red bell pepper from our garden
It's leftover lima beans, brown rice, and ham for us.
We had another great rainy morning and drizzly afternoon, so Sunday was opportune for baking, which was good, since we are out of bread. I baked three loaves of my Whole Wheat Oat Bran Bread, which came out fine. However, I realized as it was on the first rise that I had forgotten to incorporate the half cup of flax meal. It made no difference in the dough, which did not need additional flour. I will note when we cut it tomorrow if the omission affected the texture.
I also baked my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers on Sunday from dough that was resting in the refrigerator.
On Saturday, I baked another blueberry coffee cake, using the same recipe as I did on Wednesday. The recipe can easily be doubled, but blueberry items can go bad fast when it is hot, so two separate bakes in the week work best.
We have green tomatoes on the plant I bought from the farmers' market, but the other two (from Gurney's and initially stunted by the grow lights) have only just flowered. My husband is thinking ahead about how we might protect them in September and October if cold weather occurs then.
We are eating red bell peppers from the plant that was started in a pot a year before it was planted outside. The green bell peppers that were on it when it was dormant on the enclosed porch turned red in the garden, but they also had what looked like green bell pepper inside. One was almost completely full of a green bell pepper, so I cut it up and used it along with the red.
My husband bought some honey nut squash from Gurney's. These are the small butternut squash. He planted those seeds. He then found some seed he had saved from some honey nuts we bought at the farmers' market and planted it. We have squash forming, but one of the Gurney's plants has produced two squashes with long necks that are definitely not honey nuts, and that vine is more aggressive. The other Gurney's seed and that from the farmers' market is producing fruit as expected.
Good one, Navlys!
Mike--my husband says that he has seen that aberration before, but rarely.
Our local sweet corn should be available any day now. However, this Saturday morning, we are having a thunderstorm with lots of rain.
Dinner on Friday was baby lima beans with brown rice, kale (from farmers market), red bell pepper (from our garden), celery, thyme, rehydrated onion, and ham. As always, I cooked the lima beans and the rice separately, then sautéed the vegetables and ham, before combining. The ham was left by my stepson, who left yesterday for California, and it needed to be used; otherwise, I would not have made this meal on a warmer day. We have enough leftovers for the next four days.
I also went to our woods with my husband in the morning and picked more wild blackberries. This year, we have picked about 5 quarts, so it is a great blackberry season, and the rain forecast for tomorrow should lengthen it. I seeded all the blackberries and made two batches of four jars of blackberry jam. I have enough seeded blackberries for an additional batch, although I only have three half-pint jars left. I have another 2/3 cup seeded blackberry, so I will need to find a use for it, and to decide if I want to continue picking blackberries.
My husband says it is a genetic aberration that allowed the leaf at each female flower to develop instead of being suppressed. While it wouldn't hurt to eat it, corn leaves do not taste good, so cutting it off was the way to go.
On Thursday, I baked a double recipe of the Oatmeal Raisin Cookies from Jenny Can Cook. The cookies are trip food for my older stepson who begins driving back to California tomorrow.
I made yogurt on Thursday.
For dinner, I made the Michiana Green Bean Salad again (have green beans, will use them), roasted some sweet potato chunks, and roasted some chicken thighs. I did the sweet potato chunks in the countertop convection oven at 350F for an hour. The lower temperature and longer roasting time made them soft and delicious.
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