[Mike Nolan]

I recently read a story where larger animals like deer and mountain lions are becoming more urbanized, they're willing to avoid or ignore the cars and the people to get to easier sources of food, water and shelter.

[Mike Nolan]

The Strawberry-Blueberry Zucchini bread is probably not a recipe I'll repeat.

I had another piece of it today and while the flavors have mellowed out, making it less assertively cinnamon, as my wife put it, it isn't worth the carbs.

[Mike Nolan]

As I understand it, the reason too high or too low moisture results in fruit falling off is that the vines don't get enough of the right nutrients. Not sure what nutrients lend themselves to stronger vines though.

[Mike Nolan]

I picked a billy club today, a 44 ounce zucchini. It was totally hidden except from one angle.

[Mike Nolan]

My son made black raspberry syrup last year, then used the residue from removing the seeds with a Foley to infuse some black raspberry vodka.

[Mike Nolan]

We're having tacos/nachos, trying to avoid a lot of cooking, since it hit 100 today and is still 98 outside.

[Mike Nolan]

We froze most of the zucchini cake, Diane says it is great right out of the freezer, the chocolate chips are a little crunchy but the cake is not. This recipe is a definite keeper.

[Mike Nolan]

We had tuna salad sandwiches tonight, a good summertime dish on a hot July evening. The temperature topped out at 87 on the lower patio here, though it felt warmer, probably low 90's officially.

[Mike Nolan]

The strawberry-blueberry zucchini bread is not quite what I was expecting.

I think I'd cut the cinnamon in half, and that's unusual for me because I often wind up doubling cinnamon from what recipes call for. The berries are pretty much drowned out by the cinnamon. However, this was the first one that I couldn't taste the zucchini at all. I think the cinnamon masks the cucurbitacin.

Adding the blueberries probably contributed to having too much moisture, the blueberries seems to burst in the oven and the area right around any of the fruit looks a bit like raw dough. (I don't think it is really raw, the internal temperature was 205 when I took it out, the total baking time was 20 minutes more than what the recipe called for.) The pictures on the site I got the recipe from has a bit of that, too.

It just calls for a loaf pan, it doesn't say what size. I used a 9x5, I don't think it would have fit in a smaller one. It sort of collapsed a bit as it cooled and more after being removed from the pan.

https://www.thefoodhussy.com/strawberry-zucchini-bread/

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[Mike Nolan]

Probably an issue with too much or too little water, both can affect the ability of the vines to hold on to the fruit.

Have you had much wind lately?

[Mike Nolan]

For any bread I've made several times, I go by eye and ear as much as by the windowpane test. I can look at the dough then listen to how it is slapping around in the mixer and have a pretty good idea when it is sufficiently developed.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making a strawberry-blueberry zucchini bread today.

Maybe I'll try some peanut butter zucchini cookies later on, though it is supposed to get pretty hot here. The high is supposed to be in the high 90's through Friday. But it has been cloudy all morning and the temperatures haven't skyrocketed yet, so I figured I could get away with doing a zucchini bread in the small oven.

[Mike Nolan]

I mix most breads longer in the mixer than I used to, I concluded most of them weren't getting sufficiently developed.

In an online class last year, the instructor used a piece of parchment wrapped around the top of the bowl to keep the flour from spilling out.

When I make semolina bread it is a two-stage bread, so I make the flying starter in the mixing bowl. After it has matured, I add the rest of the flour and other ingredients, including more water, then wrap the parchment around the bowl for the first minute or so of kneading to keep the counter clean.

Then I fold the parchment to fit my 3/4 sheet pan. The parchment is 16x24, the pan is 14x21. I don't have a good use for 2 or 3 inch wide parchment strips or I'd tear them off. Maybe I'll try to use several of them them to line the loaf pans for zucchini bread to keep it from sticking.

[Mike Nolan]

I made a batch of peanut butter cookies today.

We got to wondering if there were recipes for peanut butter zucchini cookies. I couldn't find any online so I'm going to experiment with a 2nd batch of the chewy peanut butter cookie recipe and add some shredded zucchini.

[Mike Nolan]

Our previous house had a workshop in the back part of the garage, with an exterior door that was the only entrance to the workshop.

Though we didn't use the workshop much, it did have some tools in it and we sometimes kept bird seed in it.

I think we must have left the door open at some point on a fall day and a family of possums got in, probably drawn by the seed. We think the door then blew shut, trapping them. We didn't discover this until some time later, I think the following spring. To say the workshop was jumbled around would be an understatement, and the remains of the possum family were decomposed. I probably spent more time in the workshop cleaning up the mess than I did in most years.

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