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Sunday dinner was stir-fry using leftover chicken, soba noodles, celery, carrots, onion, garlic, red bell pepper and snow peas (both from our garden), mushrooms, and broccoli. I did not have any drippings to add, so I used a bit of soy sauce to enhance the flavor.
On Sunday morning, I made another batch of my Scottish Style Scones (Barley) for breakfast. They bake well in the countertop convection oven. I made them so that I can use up small bits of jam leftover from canning.
Kimbob--You did the best that you could for as long as you could. For the majority of people with Alzheimer's or dementia, staying at home with family and caregivers is not possible after a certain point. We went through this with my husband's mother, a friend and her father went through it with her mother, and another friend went through it with her husband. You did what you could as long as you could. I am glad you were able to find a safe place for your mom, and I am glad that you can still visit her.
It is always irritating when a product on which we depend is discontinued, especially when we are not sure if anyone else carries it.
In honor of our eleventh wedding anniversary, I made my adaptation of KAF’s Whole Grain Baking Book’s Cornmeal-Rye Waffles. (I replace the butter with 1/3 cup canola oil and halve the salt.) for breakfast. We ate them with maple syrup combined with blueberry sauce leftover from the pie I baked earlier in the week
On Friday morning, I baked Lemon Blueberry Loaf Cake from Jenny Can Cook. I substituted 1 cup of white whole wheat flour for that much AP flour and added 2 Tbs. Bob’s Red Mill milk powder. I used buttermilk but still added the lemon juice. The loaf tested done at 55 minutes. I had to run a plastic spatula around the sides before removing it from the pan. Next time I will check it at 50 minutes, as the outside may have been a tad overdone. We sliced some for dessert tonight and enjoyed it, so I will bake this recipe again.
I also baked my healthier adaptation (less saturated fat, less salt, and more calcium) of the multigrain crackers from the King Arthur Whole Grain Baking book.
On Thursday, I made yogurt. I also made broth from the bones of the chicken we roasted last night and the bones from the turkey that were in the freezer. We re-ran last night’s dinner, except that we had microwaved fresh broccoli instead of green beans.
Home canning supplies seem to be in short supply, just as they were last year. I had stocked up on lids a few years back, so no problem there. I am running short on 4 oz. and 8 oz. jars for jam. I looked in Walmart last week and found none. Either there has been an increase in the number of people canning or there are a lot of canning jars from last year gathering dust in people's storage units.
I have one more jam session planned, and I will likely use at least one pint jar, since I am running short on the 8 oz. ones.
I have several sizes of similar flat whisks. I use them for sauces and for making gravy.
My husband thinks that we should cook them when they are ready and then see if they are edible. That yellow one is very large.
I made peach jam on Wednesday and canned six 4 oz. jars and one 8-oz. jar. I use the peach jam in the glaze on my turkey loaf, so it made sense to can it in the small jars. I am running out of 8 oz., jars, and I used up all available 4 oz. ones. I had bought six peaches at the farmer’s market (how the vendor sells them), and it turned out that I was short what I needed for the lower-sugar peach jam, so I had to stop and run to the local store. The peaches there were not ripe enough, so I bought a bag of frozen peaches and defrosted them, but they were still rather tough to smash for the jam. However, I got it done.
For Wednesday night dinner, I roasted a chicken. I made a pasta salad, following the general recipe at Olive Tomato for the Greek salad with rotini. I used cucumber, green onion, a purple bell pepper, cherry tomatoes, black olives, feta, and seasoned the olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing with 3 tsp. of Penzey’s Sandwich Sprinkle blend. I had been craving pasta salad, and it was delicious. I knew it would not work for my husband’s stomach, however, so I cooked some bulgur in the broth I got from cooking the chicken neck (sometimes it is included and sometimes not), and I made gravy with the chicken drippings. He was happy. We also had microwaved green beans from our garden. There are plenty of leftovers for the next few days.
Has anyone grown spaghetti squash? We have two that have developed. One was yellow from the very start and continues to grow. The other one was green from the start with stripes. It is also large. My husband planted seed from a spaghetti squash that I bought last year at the farmer's market, probably from a couple who sells some of the excess produce from their garden. He is thinking maybe the seed was a hybrid.
I have googled spaghetti squash and read about ten articles. I know that it takes 90-100 days before it can be picked. These would be just past 60 days. The yellow one cannot possibly be ready, even if it is yellow. According to one site, they are ready when the stems start to crack.
My husband--who has charge of the garden--was not happy with how the spaghetti squash were trying to take over, although he anticipated the issue, planted them on the perimeter and trained the vines onto the fencing. I do not think he will plant them again.
I would not call it whining, Chocomouse. You said what many of us are thinking as well.
This article helps contextualize where we are at in terms of the pandemic:
As Mike noted, it was always going to be a longer war on the virus, even with people doing everything right. Not doing everything right likely extended that time frame.
I thought that the CDC should have kept the mask guidelines in place until an area had a certain percentage of vaccinations. Of course, we are dealing with new data, and guidance has to change as the data suggest.
For about five years, I have wanted to try the recipe for Oat Bran Bread in Peter Reinhart’s Brother Juniper’s Bread Book (pp.102-104). He developed it for an American Heart Association annual cooking demonstration, back when oat bran was the new healthy ingredient. I hesitated to try it because with 8 cups high gluten flour and 2 cups oat bran and ½ cup wheat bran, it is not a high fiber bread, and I prefer more wholegrains. On Tuesday, I decided to see if I could develop a more wholegrain version. I used four cups of Bob’s Red Mill whole wheat flour in place of that much of the bread flour. I replaced the wheat bran with flax meal. I used 1 cup high-gluten flour and needed just 2 cups of BRM bread flour instead of four. I reduced the honey, the yeast, and the salt. I doubled the buttermilk and reduced the water to compensate. The bread used a lot of yeast. I cut it to 4 ½ tsp. and I cut the honey to 5 Tbs. I reduced the salt by a third. The first rise took less than 45 minutes. The second rise was also fast at 35 minutes. (The house temperature is 76F.) The bread registered 193F after 43 minutes. These are two big loaves (9x5 pans). I will freeze one, and we will slice the other at lunch tomorrow.
The chicken I was going to roast had not thawed completely, so dinner on Tuesday was salmon patties, leftover brown and wild rice, and microwaved fresh green beans from our garden.
The 70% was never medical but logistical. It worked in that the capacity to give the vaccine to that percentage was available. That so many people would be so slow to get vaccinated was surprising to me.
CWCdesign has a point in that if people had been willing to follow the mask guidelines and to get the vaccine, the Delta variant might not have gotten the foothold that is leading to a new surge.
That boosters might be required is not a surprise, since other vaccines also require boosters.
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