[BakerAunt]

For Tuesday night dinner, I made a stir-fry combination of cooked ground turkey, mushrooms, carrots, broccoli, green onion, ½ tsp. dried Penzey’s garlic, ¼ tsp. celery salt, black pepper, and half a package of mushroom noodles bought at Aldi’s. My husband liked it. I found it a bit bland, and I think that I’d like it better with some sort of sauce. I thought of trying to make a yogurt sauce but decided that experimenting in a rental kitchen without my usual assortment of pantry items might not be a good idea. The combination was still good, and it gave me the assortment of vegetables that I had been craving.

Navlys--that's why I keep the small sample bottles from Penzey's; they are perfect for travel. Otherwise, write on the baggies. 🙂

[BakerAunt]

Skeptic--my large food processor (probably a 10 or 12 cup?) is a 30-year old Cuisinart. I like it for pureeing baked pumpkin. I also like it for grating zucchini or carrots for baking, which it accomplishes with no wrist fatigue and so much more quickly than I could grate it by hand. However, for a small amount, I would grate by hand, as the food processor is more work to clean. I like it for chopping cranberries for relish or baking. It's great for making a graham cracker crust. I have used it to chop almonds for cookies. The large processor does not do well with small amounts, so I have a small processor (about 2-cups) that I use for grinding oats when I need oat flour. It comes in handy for grinding oat bran, which makes the oat bran finer, so that the finished product is not dry. I even have a little 1-cup Cuisinart that I use for grinding powdered milk that is in granular form--or caked espresso powder. If my Cuisinart were ever to break, I would replace it. Once the house is remodeled, I'm going to try the pasta attachment my mother also gave me years ago, and which I've not used.

That said, I could get along without it, but I would prefer not to do so.

You have an excellent point about recipes that seem to require a specific piece of equipment. As this is the second Stella Parks recipe that "requires" a food processor, I'm wondering if her next cookbook will revolve around it. Len and I were able to bake her Maple Pumpkin bread using our mixers, and the breads came out great. I do have a fuzzy recollection that Peter Reinhart's latest wholegrain bread baking book uses this soaking technique, but I think he does the rest of it by hand. I'll check the book when I get home.

King Arthur Flour can be particularly irritating about not giving alternatives for baking dishes for some of their recipes, which then becomes an issue when they stop selling those dishes or pans. Usually, I can figure out a workaround that yields just as good of a result.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

Chocomouse--since you mentioned in an earlier thread that you had bought buckwheat flour, you might want to give this English Muffin recipe a try:

Easy Buckwheat-Oat English Muffins by sue/theviewfrom…

It's my favorite, and the one I always make when I want English muffins.

[BakerAunt]

On Thursday, we made our yearly trek to Honeymoon Island, a state park that has a number of beaches, including one where dogs are allowed, as well as a trail from which people can see ospreys in their nests. Last year, every osprey we saw seemed to have a fish in its bill. The end of the trail was closed, as once again there is a bald eagle nest that can be seen from a distance.

Before going to the park, however, we made our pilgrimage to the National Bakery (founded 1925) in Tarpon Springs--the subject of this thread a year ago. This year we bought a long loaf of whole wheat bread, which we both like a lot. We bought a bag of anise-sesame biscotti for me, as I am running out of the low-fat items that I brought with us. I will limit myself to one per day, as I'm not sure what is in them, although I don't think they are butter based. My husband wanted to buy some Koulourakia, but he instead ended up with a circular cookie, which has what I think it an almond taste. (It is probably a good idea to ask for exactly what you want.) I looked longingly at the pastries but passed them by.

If you are ever in this area, do go to this bakery.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

For Saturday night dinner, my husband cooked pork chops in a skillet. I diced some Yukon Gold potatoes, rubbed them with olive oil, then sprinkled them with Penzey’s Sunny Paris blend. This oven is definitely cooking cooler than the set temperature. I started the potatoes at 400F, when I checked them at what should have been halfway at 25 minutes, I decided to increase the temperature to 425F. I checked them at 20 minutes, then let them go an additional 20-25 minutes, then let them sit in the oven while my husband finished the pork chops. They came out well, but it was a long cooking time. We also had fresh green beans done in the microwave.

[BakerAunt]

Chocomouse--I've not made buckwheat pancakes with only buckwheat flour. My favorite recipe uses it in conjunction with some other flours. I have heard of little buckwheat pancakes, cooked in a special skillet that has small round wells so that they hold their shape. These are then eaten with a topping such as cream cheese. Elizabeth David has such a recipe in her English bread book, but I've yet to try it.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

Thanks, Aaron for posting this notice.

I would usually have Gold Medal unbleached flour on hand, but the stores here did not have their usual sales on flour in November and December, so I did not stock up. Then I had a coupon for Bob's Red Mill flour that made their 5 pound bags a better price than those of General Mills.

[BakerAunt]

I looked at that KAF Breakfast Cookie recipe, but even before I was watching saturated fat, I thought that the fat content is high, and it seems to me the nutritional value lower than it should be for a breakfast that gives energy.

The Easy Italian Honey Whole Wheat Breakfast cookies are good, but they are not in themselves a breakfast. I like to have one with my coffee after a bowl of oatmeal. I also like them for afternoon tea. The graham crackers I baked fill a similar niche.

I've looked at baked oatmeal recipes, but I have not yet found one I wanted to try.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

Hmm--at the very least I should bring an oven thermometer, but I do have an infrared thermometer that I bought for testing pan temperature when I make English muffins....

Maybe we need a thread on cooking essentials needed when traveling. 🙂

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

I roasted four whole chicken legs for dinner tonight. The oven at the place where we are staying was not accurate, and we ended up putting them into the microwave to finish cooking. We had the chicken with spinach noodles and steamed broccoli.

[BakerAunt]

On Monday, I made my adaptation of my mother’s hamburger stroganoff, which we had over brown rice with microwaved peas on the side. I find it handy to bring my rice cooker on vacation, since it is never certain what kitchen equipment will be available.

[BakerAunt]

I'm on vacation without my baking stuff, so I don't know that I will be doing much baking. We are across the alley from a French bakery and cafe. I tried to buy a wholegrain loaf there this morning, and the customer service gal must have been new, because when I got to the cashier, I learned it was garlic bread. I noted the basket for wholegrain was empty. I went ahead and bought it for $3.20, but I doubt my husband will eat it. I'll go earlier next time. They had been open for four hours.

[BakerAunt]

Wednesday evening, I baked Oat Bran Pumpkin muffins from a recipe I posted here. I made six large ones, so that we can have them for travel breakfasts. We stay at Day's Inns, mostly because they allow dogs, and there is a complimentary breakfast, but these vary. The first one really didn't have anything that we could eat. The second one had funny tasting oatmeal, which we both had. I had an egg, which must have been made from liquid eggs, as it was yellow and round, some orange juice, and a Yoplait non-fat vanilla yogurt. Then I went back to the room and had my own coffee and a muffin.

[BakerAunt]

My husband's cousins spatchcocked a turkey for our October family reunion. The cousin who cooked it also used a LOT of butter, and I think gauze was used, perhaps it was soaked in the butter then spread over the turkey? There were so many people in the kitchen that I kept out of the way. The turkey was delicious, but I did wonder what the butter was doing to my low-saturated fat diet.

[BakerAunt]

On Tuesday, I baked another recipe of the Easy Italian Honey Whole Wheat Breakfast Cookies. This time I again used ½ tsp. vanilla, but I only used 3 drops of the Fiori di Sicilia; I also baked the double recipe of Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers from the dough I made last week. As an experiment, I did not sprinkle them with Kosher salt. We will see if reducing the salt in this way works for us.

Thanks, Chocomouse. It's too late for this trip, but I'll check it out for baking when we get back. I've been buying my buckwheat flour (and much of my specialty flours and grains) from Bob's Red Mill by the case (four in a case), which reduces the individual package price. I wait to order from them until I'm buying enough for free shipping, and sometimes they run discounts.

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