[chocomouse]

Tonight we had venison steaks with roasted root vegetables: parsnips, carrots, butternut squash, sweet potato, white potato, and onion. I drizzled them with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and added rosemary and thyme.

[chocomouse]

Aaron, I'm anxious to hear how your sausage turns out. Mike, I married into a family of hunters, and have eaten a lot of venison sausage in my lifetime. We always took our deer to a butcher (not always a professional, trained butcher, it might be just another hunter who learned how to process the meat, and enjoyed doing it and earning extra money) and got roasts, steaks, ribs, stew meat, hamburg and sausage. It seemed that each butcher used a different recipe for the sausage, and there was some "competition" for who had the tastiest concoction! They usually had a "hot" and a "mild" version, and I recall they added some ground beef or maybe pork to the mix since venison is so lean. Tonight we actually had venison steak from my grand-daughter's first deer, which you probably know is a right-of-passage in some parts of the country.

[chocomouse]

Skeptic, I can't really express how much I love that pizza pan, even more than the two Lodge cast iron bread pans I have! I do not pre-heat it, it makes a very crisp crust, absolutely perfect, without pre-heating. It works even better than a regular cast iron skillet. I'd love to be able to get that crispness back when reheating leftovers the next day, but haven't managed to get to that yet. I put so many toppings on a pizza that even with my peel it is difficult to transfer a loaded pizza to a stone or steel. It is a very large pan, so we always have leftovers. I'm lazy and love having leftovers, even when they are not as good as fresh. I love that it has handles on either side, making it easier and safer to handle in and out of a hot oven. The only problem with the pan is it weighs a ton! I have a lot of cast iron, so I'm used the weight, and would never let the weight stop me from using it. I did have a problem last month after surgery when I was not allowed to life anything heavy - but I just had to plan ahead or get help.

[chocomouse]

Good question, Italiancook! I don't pre- cook any of my veggies (onion, bell pepper, mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, well, dehydrator-dried!, broccoli, artichokes, etc). I also do not pre-bake the crust. I make the sauce from tomatoes from my garden, and garlic, oregano, basil, thyme - whatever catches my eye on the spice racks. I layer the dough, sauce, meat, any veggies except the onions and peppers, and then mozzarella and cheddar cheese. The sliced onion and bell peppers go on top of the cheese, and then it is all sprinkled with some sort of pizza seasoning. One of my most favorite Christmas gifts ever was a Lodge pizza pan. Large, about 12-14 inches diameter, heavy, almost too heavy for me to lift - but makes a perfect crispy crust. We like a thick crust, but it's gotta be crispy on the bottom and edge. I have only eaten pizza in a "pizza parlor" once in my over-70 years (Mike: ever go to Buffo's, in Highwood?), a highly rated pizza place in a suburb just north of Chicago, and have once-in-a-while tasted pizza at office parties - the home-made version is so much better! The dough, the toppings, the cripsness, minimum salt, no grease! Does anyone make their own sausage? I'm thinking about that as a way to further reduce the salt. I've checked Penzey's seasoning mixes, but the first ingredient listed is salt! But I don't have a good formula for the spices and herbs to use. I'd love some suggestions.

[chocomouse]

Mike, yes, you should make your own marinara! I make about 40-50 quarts of frozen tomatoes with onion, peppers, and celery every summer, and use them a dozen ways throughout the year. I don't use any salt, just other spices and herbs so we don't miss the salt. I reduce the amount of salt in many baked goods, including breads, and don't find any major change in flavor or rising times. I just started a while back with a cardiologist, and got a pacemaker 4 weeks ago. They found my heart was beating only about 40-45 times per minutes, and sometimes stopped for 10-12 seconds. So far, I've not had to make any changes in my diet, which has been a pretty healthy diet for many years. I do need to find a way to prepare eggplant without the salt prep, however!

[chocomouse]

Welcome, Blanche! I"m sure you will enjoy our conversations. King Arthur Flour has a number of whole wheat recipes on their website. I've tried several of them and the rise and crumb was excellent. You might also do a search of the site for spelt and other flour recipes.

[chocomouse]

cwdesign, thank you so much for posting about the Moroccan chicken recipe. I love to cook in my tagine! The traditional flavors are so different from what I normally use - cumin, cardamon, coriander, cinnamon, nutmeg, etc. I'm going check out the recipe and site right now!

[chocomouse]

I hope those lifestyle changes make a difference for you, Mike. I enjoy spending hours online looking at food sites - and mostly thinking "who eats that junk?" Everything is loaded with cheese, and bacon, and salt, and on and on. It actually makes me feel good to look at it and know I won't be eating it. And then I feel good about eating plain veggies, with no cheese or sauce, or a salad spritzed with balsamic vinegar.

[chocomouse]

Our Saturday dinner was venison sausage and pancakes, with blueberries frozen from our garden and maple syrup from our sugaring operation last spring. It won't be too long before it is sugaring season again here!

[chocomouse]

Yesterday I made a big pot of corn chowder; it will give us several meals of leftovers. Dinner tonight is boneless chicken breasts simmered in my "garden special", which is tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, celery, diced carrots and/or zuchinni and/or summer squash or whatever else was ripe and left in the garden at the end of the season. It will give us a couple more meals with the final remnants made into soup.

[chocomouse]

I baked two loaves of my standard sandwich bread, based on a recipe from The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook by Beth Hensperger, the Honey Oatmeal Buttermilk recipe. I subbed in one cup of whole wheat flour in place of a cup of AP, and added 1/2 cup of KAF 6 Grain Mix. It's good, a no-fail recipe.

[chocomouse]

Christmas Eve dinner with our two children and five teen-age grandchildren was spiral sliced ham, pineapple, mashed potatoes, corn, baked beans, dinner rolls and garlic knots. Dessert, after opening gifts, was assorted cookies: molasses, orange, lemon, cranberry-coconut cookies, pecan pie bars, Buckeye bars, chocolate crack.
Dinner on Christmas Day with my sister and her husband was roast beast, mashed potatoes, yams, turnips, roasted green beans, garlic knots and dinner buns, and chocolate-peanut butter cheesecake.
Too much food, but all was delicious.

[chocomouse]

Aaron, of course, there are a number of factors. I think most important is catching the dough at just the right point of proofing; under or over proofed is not going to work. You won't get any oven spring if the dough isn't just right. It takes years of experience to figure out just the right point, and I still get it right only about 90% of the time. Another main factor, in my opinion, is that wetter dough rises better; not too wet, but wetter than most recipes call for. Again, experience is key. I always use a bread machine, just to knead the dough. And, I always use Vital Wheat Gluten in my rye breads. Keep on playing with dough! and having fun!

[chocomouse]

Mike, I scraped the insides of the baked squash halves into strands. Then, I just added the pizza topping ingredients on top of the strands, ending with the cheese. We ate it directly out of the squash skin. The number of squash per plant depends, of course, on the weather - heat, water, and the gardener's energy level. This was not a great year for squash, nor for the gardener. I've been quite ill for the past year. spending more time in the hospital than in the garden. But, I got about 2-3 squash per plant, and they were a good size; I gave away most of them. I did however, get tons of tomatoes and peppers. I bet I have about 10 one-gallon size zip-lock bags of peppers - halves, strips, chopped, diced. I'm putting lots of peppers in everything!

[chocomouse]

Baker Aunt, I used Lahotfoot's recipe! And I've used it before, and it worked fine. My husband has eaten most of the small edge pieces - and they were even chewier than the center pieces. I'll check to see if the crust has softened at all. Meanwhile, the Buckeye Bars are pretty good crumbled over ice cream.

A new disaster to report - I made candied orange peel, dumped it all into a strainer to drain, and now all the strips are hardened together and stuck to the strainer! I cannot pry them apart. Hard as a rock. I think I'll try setting the mess in a pan in a warm oven to melt/soften up and then I can get it apart to chop for cookies.

I think tomorrow I'll just clean house. Yuck.

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