BakerAunt
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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.
Monday night dinner was salmon and couscous with Penzey's Greek seasoning and microwaved fresh green beans from our garden.
We cut into the pie tonight, and no runniness, so the extra tapioca helped.
Today we picked almost ten pounds of blueberries. I washed them and am drying them on half-sheet pans lined with paper towels. Later tonight, I will put 4 cups to a bag and freeze them. We are expecting a visit from a blueberry pie fan in September.
On Sunday evening, I baked my adaptation of Carole Walter’s “Blueberry Crumb Pie.” I used my buttermilk oil crust that I parbaked first. I have had some issues with the pie being too watery, so I added an extra tsp. of tapioca to the filling. (The blueberries we pick at a local farm have the most wonderful taste, but they also tend to have more water.) I used just ½ Tbs. of butter to dot the pie before adding the streusel, which I made with 1 Tbs. butter and 2 Tbs. avocado oil. I also used white whole wheat flour in the streusel. I experimented and baked at 375F convection rather than 400F regular oven. The pie is tented with foil for the first 45 minutes, then finished for ten minutes without to allow the streusel to brown.
Convection appears to have worked very well. When I removed the foil after 45 minutes, the pie only needed another 5 minutes, as it was bubbling, and the streusel was browned.
It looks as if we are going to need yet another Covid-19 thread. What to name it?
In my county only 36% of people are vaccinated, and that is not for lack of available vaccine and appointments.
Hugs, CWCdesign. The first anniversary of the loss of someone is particularly hard.
To go with leftover soup for dinner, I baked the Scottish Style Scones (Barley) that I modified considerably from a recipe that appeared in a special Scotland issue of Bon Appetit. (The recipe is posted here at Nebraska Kitchen.) I used avocado rather than canola as the 1 Tbs. of oil this time. I baked the six and one small seventh one in the countertop convection oven. I put the rack to the middle position and did not lower the temperature. I baked for 15 minutes. While these will never be as light as a biscuit, they are a nice healthy alternative. I will have the two that are left for breakfast tomorrow with some of my jam.
Sigh. We are still waiting for our first red tomato.
We have two spaghetti squashes. One is yellow, the other green. both are a good size.
We have two small honeynut butternut squashes starting.
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