[BakerAunt]

To read again about Skeptic's wonderful Thanksgiving pizza, go to this thread:

What are you Cooking the week of December 1, 2019?

And yes, it was not easy to locate, but I persevered!

[BakerAunt]

I baked Len's Rye Semolina Buns on Friday, so that we could use them for chicken salad sandwiches at dinner.

[BakerAunt]

I had bones in the freezer from a whole chicken and from several meals with bone-in chicken breasts, so I gathered them together and made chicken broth on Friday.

I also roasted three smaller butternut squash and processed them to for soup tomorrow.

For dinner, I made chicken salad with the leftover chicken breast meat from earlier in the week. I think it was my best chicken salad yet, probably because I slightly increased the Dijon mustard. We had the chicken salad on freshly baked Whole Wheat, Rye, Semolina Buns.

[BakerAunt]

That is great looking bread, Joan. I wish that I could taste it. Did you use any yeast, or did you use only sourdough starter? I ask because I always chicken out and add some yeast to my sourdough bread, but, if I can get it really going, I am toying with trying it without yeast.

[BakerAunt]

I made stir-fry for dinner on Thursday, using leftover pork from last night, soba noodles, carrots, celery, green onion tops from my husband's onion pot, two red bell peppers from the potted pepper plant that we now have inside, mushrooms, broccoli, and deglazing from cooking the pork yesterday.

[BakerAunt]

Navlys: Maybe Chocomouse could weigh in on the size of scoop she uses. She said cookie-sized in her post of two weeks ago.

I use the 1/4 cup scoop for my 8-well scone pan, and it fills nicely.

[BakerAunt]

I realized at lunch on Wednesday that we were running out of bread, so I baked my adaptation of Pompanoosuc Porridge Bread.

While the dough was rising, I baked Pumpkin Snacking Cake for dessert tonight and the rest of the week.

[BakerAunt]

For dinner on Wednesday, my husband pan-cooked boneless pork slices. I roasted cubed potatoes tossed in olive oil. Microwaved frozen peas completed the meal.

[BakerAunt]

What a great neighbor you have, Joan!

For dinner on Tuesday, I roasted the only three honey nut squashes our garden produced. It was a disappointing harvest numerically. One squash was the expected size and the other two were much smaller. However, the flavor of the squashes--cut into chunks, tossed in avocado oil, and roasted for 30 minutes at 350 F in the countertop oven--was excellent. We had it with leftover roasted chicken breast and microwaved frozen peas.

[BakerAunt]

Earlier this year, Vitacost mistakenly sent me a package of Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Muffin Mix instead of the BRM pumpkin seeds that I had ordered. Their customer service was excellent, in that they refunded the price of the pumpkin seeds and told me to keep the mix. It had a November expiration date, and I hate to throw anything away, even though I am not keen on gluten-free foods, so I baked them for breakfast on Tuesday. The package included suggestions to vary the mix, and I chose the Pineapple Coconut option. While it called for ½ cup of drained pineapple, the can had about 2/3 cup, so I used all of it. I cut the oil back from ½ to 1/3 cup. I used ½ cup BRM shredded coconut (at some point, I'll use it up) and added some chopped pecans. I baked them for 25 minutes as six large muffins in muffin papers coated with non-stick spray. The warm muffin I ate this morning was very good. I froze two and have kept the other three out for breakfast over the next three days.

If you need to bake for someone who must be gluten-free, this mix is a good choice. If you are baking for a group that is mixed with gluten-free and gluten-eating people, it would satisfy both groups. Of course, I am partial to the variation I followed.

My only complaint is that I find the muffins overly sweet.

[BakerAunt]

Navlys--Is there a typo? A 1/4 cup scoop seems rather large for mini-scones.

[BakerAunt]

Like Joan, we re-ran last night's dinner, which gave me time for other endeavors. However, we did add some applesauce.

We drove to our favorite orchard on Friday and came home with a half-bushel of Ever Crisp, which is our favored eating apple, a half-bushel of Winesap, which is my favored baking apple, and two half-bushels of seconds that were on sale and recommended for applesauce or apple butter. From the seconds, I selected a bag of Newtown Pippins (a variety that Thomas Jefferson had in his orchard), and Razor Russet, which was discovered in Kentucky in the 1970s. I made applesauce on Monday, using about 5 ½ lbs. of apples, divided evenly between the two. The Razor Russets are a sweet apple, so I added only ½ cup plus 1 Tbs. of sugar. I froze one container and put the rest in a bowl for us to have with dinner tonight and tomorrow. I like the blending of these two apples.

Here's a good site for apple varieties:

https://www.orangepippin.com/varieties/apples

When I made the applesauce, bits of the skin were getting through my food mill yet again. I went to the Pleasant Grains website and looked at tomato-apple processing. (I had looked at it last summer in connection with blackberry processing.) I have ordered a Westen Deluxe Tomato Strainer and Sauce Maker, which can be used for applesauce and for berries. I looked at another hand-crank model for which one could buy a motor adaptor, but I think that the Weston, which is not a clip to the table model and has the motor as part of the unit is more of what I need, not just for processing my apples but for processing blackberries next summer. I will pause my applesauce making until it arrives.

[BakerAunt]

I made dough for Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers on Monday. My husband has had to avoid crackers due to his last dental procedure, but we are hoping he will be cleared to eat them after his appointment on Wednesday. It will be five or six days until the dough is ready. My starter really needed to be fed!

[BakerAunt]

I made yogurt on Sunday.

For dinner, I roasted three bone-in chicken breasts (rubbed in oil and coated with Penzey's Justice blend). I also roasted two sweet potatoes after cutting them in chunks and tossing them in olive oil. I was able to buy fresh broccoli at the farmers market yesterday, so we microwaved some of it as well.

[BakerAunt]

I decided that baking would be therapeutic on Saturday. I made a loaf of Whole Wheat/Rye/Semolina bread (Len's recipe), using my older bread machine to do the mixing and kneading but letting it rise in a dough bucket and in the pan before baking it in the oven. I plan to send the recipe to my younger bonus son and his wife to try in their bread machine. I was also confirming that the recipe would be a good one to take with us when we travel and I take along the bread machine to use where we are staying.

My second bake on Saturday was Baked Pumpkin Spice Doughnuts with Maple Glaze. I thawed a cup of pumpkin overnight so that I could bake these. Today's cartoon in Pearls Before Swine suggested that it was meant to be:

https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2024/11/09

I could have just sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar, but it has been a hard week, so maple glaze it was. I limited myself to one for dessert tonight. My husband had two, but he did spend much of the day raking leaves.

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