[BakerAunt]

That bread looks delicious, Mike.

With the weather starting to cool, I'm beginning to think about rye bread again. I really liked the Pumpkin Rye bread recipe on Ginsberg's blog (not in the book), which I made three or four times last year. I was able to buy three pie pumpkins at the farmers market on Saturday, so there is pumpkin rye bread in our future, especially if I can buy some additional pie pumpkins next week.

[BakerAunt]

Sunday morning breakfast was my own recipe for Wholegrain Waffles (whole wheat, cornmeal, buckwheat, wheat germ, and flax). I decided to wait to stir in the oil until after I mixed in the combined eggs and buttermilk. They seem to come out less soggy and crisper this way, so I will mix that way in the future.

[BakerAunt]

For Saturday dinner, I made my Spaghetti Squash-Turkey Casserole, which is a faux lasagna in that it uses spaghetti squash strands rather than noodles. I used the batch of sauce that I made earlier this week. The spaghetti squash was a 6 lb. one from today’s farmers market. The recipe calls for 4 lbs., but I went ahead and used it all after roasting it. This recipe is a favorite for fall and early winter. It is especially good tonight with cooler temperatures and drizzling rain. We wouldn't mind harder rain. Our area is in drought and the lake level is lower than it has been in the past five years.

[BakerAunt]

On Friday, I baked the first pumpkin bread of the season, albeit from pumpkin frozen almost two years ago. I used my adaptation of the Whole-Grain Pumpkin Bread recipe posted here at Nebraska Kitchen. As we are getting some cooler weather, I pulled out two Nordic Ware loaf pans with pumpkin designs and used those for two loaves. I will freeze one, but the other is slated for desserts for the next few evenings.

[BakerAunt]

The West Texas city in which I used to live had a glass crushing machine. The glass was very popular with people who used it in garden areas to prevent weeds. They never had any left. Then the machine broke, it would be expensive to fix, and that was that. Lubbock never did have curbside recycling--well, they did, but it depended on colored bags in the dumpster with the trash, and it turned out none of it was being recycled. We always took our recycling to a drop-off place, but there was the same problem with people not paying attention to what should go in what bin, and what should not.

Where we live now, in north central Indiana, there has been recycling for around twenty years, but the company does not make an effort to educate people as to what can be put into the bins and what cannot. It's on the company website, but a lot of people do not bother looking at the website. Mixing paper in with plastic cans, and glass means that everything has to be dry, or the paper and cardboard is ruined for recycling. The glass, cans, and plastic ae supposed to be empty and clean. So, that is already a barrier for people who want a quick fix.

One of our friends noted her neighbor's recycling bin had blown open. When she went to close it, she found it full of nice towels and linens. She pulled them out, washed and kept some, washed and donated others. The next recycling day, she looked inside and found lots of nice pots and pans--some much better than what she had, so she retrieved them, washed and kept some and donated the others. She decided to ask the wife. It's a summer/vacation home for them, and like a lot of houses around the lake, it was bought complete with furniture and contents. The woman told her, "I do not like using stuff that belonged to someone else." OK, but she had no clue that such items do NOT belong in the recycling bin.

More common errors are the pizza boxes, recyclables in plastic bags which mess up the equipment, the wrong numbers (and I get this last one because some of those numbers are hard to find and really tiny), or items that are the correct number but not actually recyclable with the same numbers.

Recycling is much more complicated than most place's "feel good" recycling bins imply. There needs to be an effort to create a use for what can be recycled, an effort to create a system for collecting it that works, and an effort to reduce what needs to be recycled (sometimes called pre-cycling). The pandemic has exacerbated the issues with the proliferation of plastic bags from the grocery, carryout containers, disposable masks and gloves.

[BakerAunt]

We're having the same meal as last night: soup and cornbread.

[BakerAunt]

I should have posted here before I placed that order! Sigh. From now on, Chocomouse, I will contact you first! We are devotees of dark maple syrup, and I use a cup every time I make granola, which is frequently, as it has become one of my husband's favorite snacks. In addition to pancakes and waffles, I've been using it more in my cooking and baking.

I try to avoid plastic when I can since I doubt that much of it gets recycled, since so many people around here are careless with what they put into their recycle bins, and if a load has too much contamination, it gets dumped with the trash. I thought that glass might not be as bad for the environment, which is why I have favored it.

I didn't realize that soap could affect glass and damage the flavor of the maple syrup.

I did buy a large jar of maple syrup this summer at the farmers market, as I did last year. They guy selling it is from Michigan and said that demand was such that the cooperative didn't think any would be left over to divide amongst them.

[BakerAunt]

In spite of the key hole, the bread still looks delicious, Mike.

I baked cornbread on Wednesday to go with the soup I made for dinner.

[BakerAunt]

I hope that your garden is ok, Mike.

With more normal temperatures on Wednesday, I made a pot of soup, using about 10 cups of the broth I made earlier this week. I used 1 ½ cups of the Bob’s Vegi-Soup mix of red and brown lentils, split peas, and barley, as well as sliced carrots, chopped celery, a red bell pepper from our garden, about 1 Tbs. dried onion, some dried parsley, and 2 tsp. of Penzey’s Ozark seasoning. When I tasted it after an hour, it seemed to be missing something, so I added a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce, and that fixed it.

[BakerAunt]

The comment about American yeast interests me. I have a bread book from a Swedish baker, and I noted early on that it uses a LOT of yeast. He does say in the introduction that he likes to use fresh yeast, but it is not clear from one recipe to another what he is using. I'm curious as to whether the Albanian baker was referring to fresh yeast or the freeze dried yeast.

[BakerAunt]

I've been holding back the oil and salt until most of the flour is incorporated. I usually have about 1-2 cups of flour that I mix with the salt and hold back until after a 15-20 minute rest, then I mix in the oil, then the reserved flour and salt. I agree that it makes a difference in the dough. Cass gave me that hint about holding back the oil until the yeast could get working.

[BakerAunt]

As a retired English professor, I agree with him on inexact word usage.

[BakerAunt]

What a great opportunity, Aaron! I look forward to hearing about further adventures in the bakery.

[BakerAunt]

I understand what you are saying about price, Aaron. If I get a chance to buy flour from a specialty mill, it would only be a small quantity with which I would experiment. What struck me, however, was that I prefer the Bob's Red Mill whole wheat over the King Arthur whole wheat, and I can usually buy it for less than a bag of the KABC whole wheat, especially if I can buy a case of it from Bob's--something that I hope will again be possible when the pandemic flour flurry finally settles down.

I'd be curious as to what KABC would have to say about this article. The article did not give us the numbers.

[BakerAunt]

In another slight tweak to how I bake these crackers, I've started baking them using the convection setting on my oven and baking for 12 minutes, turning half-way through. I bake them three racks up, which is above center. These changes seem to help the crackers bake more evenly.

After I remove the pan from the oven, I make sure all the crackers are separated from each other, then pull out the parchment and allow the crackers to rest on the hot baking sheet while I bake the next batch. The crackers should have space between them on the hot baking sheet, which will promote crunchiness. When the next batch is ready to exit the oven, I move the ones from the baking sheet to a rack to finish cooling.

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