[chocomouse]

I pulled a log of cranberry-coconut refrigerator cookies, made in December, from the freezer and baked about 3 dozen.

[chocomouse]

We had tuna fish sandwiches with soup from the freezer, split pea and broccoli-cheddar.

[chocomouse]

Pizzza!

[chocomouse]

I like the bread I get from my long covered baked, similar to one that KAF sells. It is clay, no enamel coating. I spritz it with water before it goes in the oven, and that yields a nice crisp crust. I do remove the cover for the last 10 minutes of baking to brown it. I would never have the patience to go through all that Mike is doing for his steam experiment!

[chocomouse]

I made banana bread and added 1.5 cups of blueberries and a little lemon, lime, and orange juice.

[chocomouse]

I made a seafood lasagna from delish.com. We liked it, and I will make it again, but with some changes. I added some chopped onion, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, and a tablespoon of Old Bay seasoning, having read several comments that said it needed "something", and I would make those same changes next time. I would decrease the lasagna noodles, and make two layers in a 9 x 9 pan. I would use the same amount of fish (shrimp, scallops, and I used imitation crab meat) but it needs more sauce. I think simply adding more milk would work without making it too runny as it was a little dry. We now have leftovers for another night and then I will freeze the rest in meals sized containers.

[chocomouse]

Leftover beef stew and Deli Rye Rolls from the freezer.

[chocomouse]

I have both of those books and also "Whole Grain Breads", plus Hamelman's "Bread" and a dozen others that I have looked at for bagels. There's no shortage of recipes or suggestions. I just need the time to try a few - and people to give them to. I use KAF bread flour, and so far have used just the barley malt syrup but I do have the non-diastatic malt powder on hand too. My dough is satiny smooth until I poke my finger through to make the hole. My finger sticks to the dough inside the middle of the bagel and pulls wrinkles on the outside; if that makes any sense. I need to try the rope method of shaping. The browning has been fine. Since I've tried the KAF "Bagels" recipe twice, I think it's time to try a new recipe next.

[chocomouse]

I made bagels again today, and used the same recipe (Bagels, by KAF) that I used before. This time I put brown sugar in the dough and in the boiling water bath instead of the barley malt syrup, and I added baking soda to the water bath. I boiled the bagels for about 1 minute each side, instead of 2 minutes, flip, then 1 minute more. The finished bagels are less brown, but not much. They are still "lumpy" looking, not smooth. They have the same crispy outside but soft inside. Basically, there is no difference between these bagels and the first batch I did a couple weeks ago. We like them, they are good, but not perfection. So, next batch I will try a new recipe. I do have a theory about the lumpiness, and will work on that.

[chocomouse]

Mike, I have an egg thief at my house too! I did not feel like cooking tonight, did not even want to think about it. So I made a big green salad with tomatoes, cukes, onions, red peppers, mushrooms. Searched the freezer for some "emergency" food and found a few fish sticks - perfect for the occasion and exactly why I have them in there. Served with fresh bagels. Problem solved.

[chocomouse]

We had Hirtensuppe, a German beef stew. It's has less common flavors: vinegar (to tenderize the meat), caraway, paprika, and garlic.

[chocomouse]

I made rye bread this morning. After I shaped it into a sandwich loaf, I planned to let it rise a minimum of 30 minutes, but most likely 60 minutes, since my notes from 2016 say it was a slow riser. I checked it in 15 minutes, and it had already split open on the top and one side, so into the oven it want because I didn't want to take the time to reshape it. It didn't get much oven spring, and it didn't split open a lot more. It doesn't look pretty, but tastes fine and it's bread!

[chocomouse]

We've not had deer eating our bird seeds. We do have squirrels and later in the early spring, bears. Do you have evergreen shrubs? Deer eat yews and similar greenery too.

[chocomouse]

Cucumber beetles are a problem for me too, but later in the season. The deer love beans, but I put up an electric fence this year. I grow lots of things, but less since we don't have kids living at home. Lettuces, spinach, kale and other greens, green and yellow beans, carrots, beets, onions, red, white, yellow potatoes, about 10 hills of each, 6-36 tomato plants, 6-12 bell peppers plus 1-2 hot peppers, eggplant some years, cucumber, zuchinni, summer squash, acorn, butternut, buttercup squash, (about 12 plants each of the winter squash), peas some years, 6 each of cabbage, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, watermelon and/or cantaloupe some years. No corn - you know why! The deer favorites are inside the electric fence; around the outside perimeter of the fence is a "second defense" of things they don't really care for most of the time, and around that plants that smell really bad to them or are prickly, spiney irritations. I'm planning to cut back more this year, and also try a lot of things in waist high planter on the deck. Gardening has been my life for 35 summers, sometimes 10 hours a day. I can't just stop.

[chocomouse]

I did some online reading about fava beans and Italian beans. Although my family has called our garden plants "fava" beans, I'm thinking they are "Italian" beans. They are flat, 3-4 inches long (picked young), green, tender, delicious raw or cooked, and are not, to my knowledge, grown for the bean or seed inside. Online, I saw them called pole beans and also bush beans. I call both of those kinds "beans", or green beans or string beans (although many varieties today are stringless!). Everything I found online about cooking Italian beans didn't use the flat green bean. Rather they used regular green beans with some kind of so-called "Italian dressing". I think I've been assigning the incorrect name to the beans I grow!! There's nothing like fresh (as in 15 minutes from the garden into the pot) green beans!

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