[chocomouse]

Delicious dinner tonight! Penne with marinara and sausage, big chunks of onion and brll pepper, and a green salad. Leftovers will make a meal one night next week.

[chocomouse]

That sounds really good, Joan. I've been wanting a ham steak, but am also thinking about mashed potatoes with it.

[chocomouse]

Baker Aunt, a half a cup of butter seems excessive in a turkey soup! I assume it's to make a roux with the flour, so I wonder if the amount can just be decreased? Can you make a thickener with a little oil? What about KAF's Culinary/Signature Secrets or Clear Gel? I know some people have thickened soup with potato. I've put wild rice in turkey soups, but never thickened it; and, I prefer orzo.

[chocomouse]

I just located my notes from a bread that a group of us on the old Baking Circle made, back in February of 2010. Each week or so we all made the same bread, and wrote about it. We made the Wild Rice, Oat, and Polenta Bread on p. 338 in The Bread and Bread Machine Bible by Christine Ingram and Jennie Shapter. My notes say it had good flavor, a little dense, not much rise; the wild rice in the crust is very hard, crunchy. I remember the hard rice! It was not pleasant. The directions do say to cook the wild rice first, according to the directions on the packages. The good flavor was not good enough for me to want endure the crunchiness of another batch. I'm sure I have a photo of mine somewhere in my Old Photo File.

[chocomouse]

I thought all rice came from a grass, although "wild rice" is a different species than the "white" rice that is more common. I guess that would make all rice a grain? I remember reading quite a while ago that most wild rice on the market is cultivated, not really "wild". And that farmers/growers in the Great Lakes areas of Michigan and Wisconsin were trying to expand their production. I've not seen anything about that recently.

[chocomouse]

OMG They took a picture of the inside of my cabinet, the one next to the stove!! LOL Stained old pan and all. I too have a precarious stacked assortment of pie plates. I seem to have a different type of pie plate to use for each particular type of pie. Baker Aunt, I also have one of those large round pans with a hole in the center, and I ALWAYS bake every pie on it. It has saved me the chore of cleaning my oven several times. Actually, I have two of them, one came from my mother, the other from my mother-in-law.

[chocomouse]

That's interesting. I've used brown rice flour in my whole-grain mix, but that ends up being a very small percentage of the flour used.

[chocomouse]

Cleaning out the freezer dinner. Husband had beef stew and I had cauliflower soup. And we each a Bacon Cheddar Bun from the batch I made yesterday.

[chocomouse]

I tried a new recipe from KAF today, the Bacon-Cheddar Buns. I followed the recipe exactly, and they are quite good. They'll be great with a bowl of tomato soup. My brother is passing through the area tomorrow morning, so we are meeting at KAF. The only thing on my shopping list is the triple blend cocoa, but I love to look in the windows of the bakery to watch the bakers at work. And I can stand for hours in front of the bakery case - all those beautifully shaped goodies!

[chocomouse]

A favorite cookie of mine is lime-basil. It does have quite a bit of butter, 3/4 cup per 2 cups of flour. I don't remember how many it makes, and it doesn't say. The original recipe is for lemon-basil, and it is from BigLakeJudy on the old old Baking Circle. Somewhere I have a recipe for a citrus-rosemary cookie, but can't seem to find it right now. I'll post the lime-basil if you'd like it.

[chocomouse]

I can't imagine serving a turkey neck, or necks!! Although there is quite bit of meat on a neck. I usually simmer the neck with the giblets, and either strip off the meat and chop it up and add to the gravy, or put it in the soup made from the carcass. I'm eager to learn how a neck might be plated, or used.

[chocomouse]

My husband cooked chicken thighs and roasted potatoes on the smoker, and I heated up butternut squash from the freezer. It's down to 24* now, and still going down. Accumulating snow on Tuesday. Winter has arrived.

Mike, I miss the good food we had when we lived in Germany. Lots of spaetzle and veal.

[chocomouse]

Baker Aunt, I've made Apple Oat Bran Muffins several times recently. I don't know where it's from, but it's a recipe by Linda Greider dated October 12, 1988. I think it was connected to an article titled The Art of Baking with Oat Bran, and you might have posted that link? Anyway, we really like it. It is nice and moist.

Today I made another apple pie, trying to replicate my success from last week. This one is excellent, but not quite as good as the first. I knew the dough was a little on the dry side, and it was more difficult to work with. When I rolled it out, the edges were craggy, zig-zaggy instead of a smooth round edge. And it started to crack when I folded it and moved it to the pie plate. I think I should have added about a 1/2 teaspoon more of ice water. My husband said when he cut into the crust at the edge, where I had crimped it, it was a little crumbly. But still very, very good. Now I know the difference, I hope, between the perfect crust and one that is just very slightly not wet enough. I'll make a third one when this one is gone, to confirm this. Another new technique I've used on both of the successful crusts is to cut just the shortening into the flour etc, until it is pretty consistently pea size (I'm doing this part in the food processor). Then, I cut in the butter, which is is 1/2 inch cubes, and leave a lot of the chunks almost whole. I'd read somewhere, KAF I think, to do the shortening first and butter second. I wonder if that is making a big difference? Does anyone else do that? I'm not really willing to experiment and try doing both shortening and butter together -- I'm afraid I'd get a bad crust again!! I'm just so happy to be getting a good crust now.

[chocomouse]

Dinner tonight was salmon on the grill, with a Stonewall Kitchen honey barbeque sauce. With it we had asparagus, green salad, and leftover wild rice. It was snowing while my husband grilled!

[chocomouse]

I made two loaves of bread, using KAF's Harvest Grains. I subbed in one cup of whole wheat for a cup of AP, used honey instead of sugar, and added 2 tablespoons of flax meal.

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