[BakerAunt]

We've been fortunate to have a milder June with most upper temperatures in the low 70s. That is welcomed after the 90F days in May. Rain comes in periodically, and the spinach we thought was lost (some kind of bug likes it in hot weather) has started to come back nicely. My bell pepper plant has two little peppers on it.

I would be remiss not to mention my lime tree which wintered over in the bedroom of the garage apartment, with the temperature set at 47 and a sunny window. It is now outside, and there are lots of limes forming on it. I don't know how many will be viable.

[BakerAunt]

Hi, Skeptic 7. The recipe is posted here at Nebraska Kitchen:

Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers

I included a note about the amount of sourdough starter. I have a thick but still liquid starter that came from a recipe in Sunset Magazine over 25 years ago. It gets fed with KAF flour and 1% milk. However, I think that other starters would also yield a good result.

Let me know if you try these. And if you are ever in northern Indiana, come over for soup and crackers.

[BakerAunt]

Monday’s dinner was Salmon and Couscous. I added 1/8 tsp. of celery seed as well (Mike mentioned doing that, so I thought that I would try it), and I like the flavor, so I will do that in the future.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

I pulled out some frozen pumpkin on Monday and baked Toffee-Pumpkin Snack Cake, a recipe that appeared in Better Homes and Gardens Fall Baking (2017), p. 28. The recipe makes a 13x9” cake, but I halved it and baked it in an 8x8 inch pan. It uses some buckwheat, spelt, and chia seeds, as well as AP flour, and I added 2 Tbs. powdered milk.

I also made a double recipe of dough for my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese crackers. I will bake them in a few days, after the dough sits in the refrigerator.

[BakerAunt]

Saturday night I rolled out the rye crisps and baked them.

[BakerAunt]

Saturday night dinner was supposed to be stir-fry with rice, but I got caught up in my project of researching the history of our house, and my husband did not want to wait for rice to cook, so I used half of my last package of spinach linguini. I sautéed orange bell pepper, sliced celery, and some kind of long garlic strands from today’s farmers’ market (did not impart a lot of garlic flavor) in grapeseed oil. Then I added mushrooms, then snow peas (also from today’s farmers’ market) and broccoli. I cut up the rest of the roast I made earlier this week and added it and its drippings. After the noodles were cooked and I stirred them in, I added sliced green onion (also from the farmers’ market).

[BakerAunt]

This Friday evening, I've made the dough for Rye Crisps, a cracker recipe that I adapted from KAF's The Baking Sheet 13.1 (Holiday 2001), pp. 18-19--that would be before KAF went to the color, glossy format. I've posted my version on this site. The dough will rest overnight in the refrigerator, then I will bake the crackers tomorrow. While my husband adores the sourdough cheese crackers, I feel the need for some variety.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

Skeptic7 and Wonky: I've posted the Lemon Nut Biscotti recipe on this site.

[BakerAunt]

Late Thursday afternoon, I baked Brickle Bars--a fudgy brownie with an almond brickle and mini-chocolate chip topping. The recipe is from Better Homes and Gardens New Baking Book, p. 219. I've baked it a couple of times previously. It was still warm when we had dessert, so we used forks to eat it.

[BakerAunt]

Thursday morning I baked a new recipe, Scottish Buttermilk Scones, from Beatrice Ojakangas' Breakfast with Beatrice (pp. 199-200). They are lower in fat than regular scones or biscuits (2 Tbs. butter to 2 cups flour), and they use baking soda and cream of tartar as the leavening--something which might interest Italian Cook, as she needs to avoid baking powder. Dividing the dough into twelve pieces was a bit messy because I was weighing it, and the dough is sticky. Next time, I will try a 2 Tbs. Zeroll scoop.

I split the baked biscuits with a fork, which prevents crumbling and keeps the texture. They were very good with butter and fresh strawberry jam--but of course almost anything would be wonderful with fresh strawberry jam made from such wonderful strawberries.

My one change was to use nearly 1 cup of whole wheat pastry flour in place of 1 cup of the regular flour. Barley flour might be nice as well.

This cookbook is new in that it is just published in 2018. It seems to be a compilation of recipes from her other cookbooks, and I think that the publisher may be doing that as a series with other cookbooks.

I was going to try the cream scones, but I used up the rest of the heavy cream yesterday in my soup.

[BakerAunt]

When I used fresh tomatoes to make a tomato sauce, I put them in boiling water (maybe a minute or two), then into ice water so that the skins would come off easily. Now that you mention it, I think that they did hold together.

[BakerAunt]

We only have room for a small garden. I envy your large one, Chocomouse! Does the fishing line also work for the young deer?

My husband has some land in the Indiana classified forest program, and the deer are often destructive of his trees--and also of some rare plant life (like eating endangered orchids). In our yard, they also have chewed on non-garden plants that we are trying to keep. It seems to help with those if we scatter coffee grounds around those plants. The deer do not seem to like the smell.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

On Wednesday afternoon, I made four cups of strawberry jam, using my Bell jam maker and the Bell large electric canning pot (pot sits on a base and has a spigot for draining into the sink). I had about 1/3 Cup left over, so I refrigerated it, and I’m thinking it will go well with biscuits or scones tomorrow morning. As an experiment, I did my canning in the garage apartment kitchen. It worked well in that I was away from distraction. The downside was that due to some delays, I had dinner in the oven, so I had to do some running back and forth, and the meat got a bit overdone. These strawberries, maybe because they are so fresh, made absolutely magnificent jam (I licked a spatula), and my husband who walked in and sniffed said, "That smells amazing!"

The recipe I use is the lower sugar one from the booklet that came with the jam maker. I like the jam maker, although it only makes four cups or so at a time, because I do not have to stand over the stove and stir. Since we do not eat a massive amount of jam, small batches work for us.

I've not tried canning anything other than jam and blueberry pie filling. Perhaps the Farmers Market will inspire me. We do freeze a lot of blueberries.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

For lunch on Wednesday, I made Curried Butternut Squash Soup with some butternut puree I froze last October. I used 3 Cups puree, 2 Cups chicken/turkey broth, 1 tsp. Penzey’s Now Curry, and a few Tablespoons of heavy cream. We will be going down to one refrigerator/freezer when (if?!) our renovation starts, so I need to see what should be used.

For dinner on Wednesday, I made another attempt at cooking a Top Round roast. I decided to do roasted potatoes as well. I have matching small rectangular Emile Henry baking dishes, so I cut up yellow potatoes, rubbed them with olive oil and put them in one dish (I used cooking spray) and sprinkled them with rosemary. I baked those for 30 minutes at 400F. I used cooking spray in the other dish as well, then rubbed the 1.25-pound roast with Worcestershire sauce on both sides and sprinkled it with garlic powder, onion powder, Penzey’s Paprika Smoked Spanish Style, and sprinkled on rosemary. I reduced the oven temperature to 300F. and put the roast in next to the dish of potatoes for an hour. That was a bit too long for the meat; 40 minutes would probably have been better. However, it still tasted good.

[BakerAunt]

On second thought, I'm moving what I posted here to a canning thread.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by BakerAunt.

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