[chocomouse]

Salads night here: potato, bean, seafood.

[chocomouse]

Mike, that sounds like a great meal! Last night I made a bean salad, adding some cauliflower, all from the garden. Today I made a potato salad. My husband grilled ribs to go with it all for dinner.

[chocomouse]

I've always used a wood peel, lightly dusted with semolina. It's worked fine for me.

[chocomouse]

The ice cream pie needs some adjustments. The flavor was fantastic, chocolate and caramel. But the crust was supposed to be "gooey", and mine was dry and a little hard. I plan to shorten the baking time by 5-7 minutes next time. Maybe it was just the heat of the day and house, but the ice cream started melting very quickly as I scooped it into the crust. I had skipped the recipe directions which said to "allow the ice cream to soften out of the freezer while the crust cools for 15 minutes." It would have been pure soup at that point. The ice cream was not rock hard when I took it out of the freezer, so today I will be relocating my thermometer from another freezer to this one; I really hope I'm not facing trying to buy a new freezer at this time, with all the distribution issues I've been reading about.

[chocomouse]

Blackberries in our back yard. The stick is to hold up that branch, trying to prevent it from breaking off. This is one bush in 50 foot row. We'll start picking tomorrow (photo taken July 16). We freeze them on a tray, then bag when frozen; my husband eats them on his Frosted Flakes every morning after all the fresh berries are gone and until he runs out of them next spring.

Well, I can't upload the photo; I'll try to reduce it to less than 512 KB. Now trying again, with reduced photo.

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[chocomouse]

The .58" of rain last night is really going to help the garden to grow! although we are still in a drought. And we've ended the 5 days of temps in the 90s. We cannot keep up with everything. We're picking a couple quarts of blueberries every day, and a handful of raspberries, and the blackberries are ready to pick tomorrow. We're eating zucchini, summer squash, broccoli, cauliflower, cherry tomatoes, green and yellow beans, along with the every present lettuce. Purple beans will be ready tomorrow, and there are a couple of cabbages ready to eat. The planters of herbs are lush, so I need to figure out how to dry them in my countertop oven, instead of using the big dehydrator.

[chocomouse]

Peach cobbler sounds so good, Joan. I just pulled the "crust" for an ice cream pie out of the oven. It's a box cake mix (chocolate), half a container of canned frosting mix (chocolate), 3/4 cup of water and 1/4 cup oil baked in 2 pie plates. After it cools, I'll fill one with caramel/chocolate swirl ice cream. I'd never heard of doing this, but my sister rather easily talked me into trying one. I'll freeze the other for later. Maybe chocolate mint chip ice cream?

[chocomouse]

I made a Blueberries and Cream Cake that I got from the local newspaper 37 years ago, and it remains one of our favorites when we have fresh blueberries. As long as I was heating up the kitchen on this 96* day, I decided I might as well bake bread too, so I made a double batch of my basic whole wheat dough and added Harvest Grains to it.

[chocomouse]

I made chicken kebobs with zucchini and onion, plus leftover broccoli salad and tortellini veggie salad.

[chocomouse]

Dinner Wednesday evening was a spinach tortellini salad with cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash, cherry tomatoes, orange sweet pepper, onion, black olives, feta cheese and Greek dressing, with steamed green and yellow beans from the deck planter, and some leftover boneless pork chops.

[chocomouse]

Back in the kitchen! So today I made English muffins. Big mistake. It is 92* and was not comfortable standing over a hot griddle! But breakfast will be delicious! I bought a jar of Peach Amaretto jam in Maine, at Stonewall Kitchen. I used to take a class there a couple of times a year, but they've shut down that part of their business, and I miss it.

[chocomouse]

Today I made the Tick Tock Orange Sticky Rolls posted by DachshundLady on the OBC. It's an interesting recipe because it is not a yeasted dough but a "biscuit" made with baking powder. I made only one major change by adding 3 Tablespoons of orange flavored Tang mix to the orange spice filling. I also added about 3 Tablespoons of flour during the kneading process, to make the batter manageable. The rolls are delicious, very orange, tangy tasting. And they were quick and easy to make.

[chocomouse]

I made a carrot cake about a month ago - love carrot cake, with or without pineapple, raisins, nuts. It's all about the carrots, and the cream cheese frosting takes it over the top!

[chocomouse]

I do not have convection in my big oven, which is where I baked the crackers on a cookie sheet. I do have it in my countertop Breville, which I didn't use since it is smaller, so the big cookie sheet doesn't fit. But I will try that next time. Thanks, BakerAunt.

[chocomouse]

Our dinner was grilled salmon, wild rice, and steamed broccoli.

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