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Eggs were $4.98/dozen at the store today.
There are some interesting interviews coming out about Rene Redzepi shutting down his world-famous restaurant Noma (in Copenhagen) next year. A pastry chef who worked for them said that Rene really didn't like sweet desserts but wanted ones that were 'craveable' and also used locally sourced products. Not sure I'd want to eat ants, though.
I followed the pizza emails last summer, but otherwise I don't pay a lot of attention to what King Arthur send out, it's mostly stuff they're trying to sell, and I haven't bought much from them in several years. I did buy some King Arthur diastatic malt powder last fall, but I got it through Amazon because the shipping charges were free there. I've found a local source for BRM white pastry flour, and that was the main thing I was buying from King Arthur.
There are still a few things I might get from them, such as baker's special dry milk, nondiastatic malt powder and sparkling sugar to put on pies, but I think there are probably other sources for them plus Amazon.
Finding an acceptable balance between 'healthful' and 'tasteful' is challenging, and not many recipe developers can do it.
Toast with a little margarine/butter and cinnamon sugar is good, I really loved it as a kid. My first published 'recipe' was for cinnamon toast, it was in the school newsletter when I was in 3rd grade.
But, no, it isn't a cinnamon roll.
She's feeling a lot better today, last night her appetite seems to be pretty strong and she slept well overnight. She's been working a little from home but not really pushing it. I think by Monday she'll be ready to go back to the office at least for part of the day.
Boy, isn't that the truth!
I know someone whose doctor prescribed a very strict diet. He followed it for a year then said, "It doesn't make you live longer, it only makes it feel like you've been living longer.", and he lived into his late 80's on a more relaxed diet.
I'm kind of a hands-on person, in-person works best for me but usually involves significant expenses and travel. Zoom classes can be great or lousy.
YouTube is kind of hit-and-miss for me, some videos are easy to follow and others are not, maybe they're just badly shot and poorly edited. Ones with a music track are distracting if not annoying.
Most of what Jimmy Griffin posts is good, but he has a tendency to show something up to the point of baking but not the finished product, which seems odd. But there are a few of his videos that I've watched several times, just to hear his Dublin lilt. 🙂
We had tomato soup and fried cheese sandwiches. Meals are usually fairly simple here, with a lot of comfort foods, especially while Diane is recovering from some kind of virus. (Not COVID, not flu, but something that appears to be making the rounds at the U of Nebraska.)
The paper bags they're using here have handles that rip too easily. I have an Ikea blue and white striped cotton bag that I take to the farmer's market that I need to get back in the habit of using for the grocery store, during the early part of the pandemic they weren't allowing bringing in bags.
They say paper bags are bad for the water supply, plastic ones are bad for the landfills and wind up alongside roads and in trees.
I would like to try one of those mesh French bags, but I don't think I trust the ones from China to be sturdy.
One of the real challenges for new bread bakers is becoming confident with the basics. I know someone who tried to make a complicated whole grain bread for her first bread, her results were less than what she was hoping for, though to me that was not unexpected and it took her a while to get up the courage to try again.
When she did try again, I suggested she try PaddyL's 'Clonmel Kitchen Double Crusty Bread', (recipe in the favorites tab here), and it was much more successful.
We had someone from Brazil staying with us for a while, I had him make the Austrian Malt bread while I watched, and he was pleased with the result. That recipe is also in the favorites tab here.
My son took up baking during the pandemic and was using the Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day book, which produces fairly good breads without huge investments in time. He's kind of backed off a bit since then, but he's also found a really good and fairly new bakery, their eclairs are some of the best I've had.
There are sources that claim that 25 million trees are cut down every year to make chopsticks.
I would not recommend trying to carry an eating knife on board an airplane, I had security almost take my finger nail clipper two years ago.
The fryer is a common source of cross-contamination. Few restaurants maintain separate fryers for different types of food to avoid cross-contamination. I've heard of some restaurants that maintain a gluten-free area of the kitchen, with separate appliances, but even that's no guarantee against cross-contamination.
With my wife's garlic allergy, even the grill isn't safe unless it's been scrubbed down. There's a PepperJax near us (cheese steaks), they use garlic in their seasoning salt, but will scrape down and wash the grill, re-glove and use clean utensils if I order something for my wife there. It probably isn't 100% secure against cross-contamination, but it is sufficient for her needs.
Welcome back!
I have a chess book with the title "Every great player was once a beginner".
That's true in baking as well, in fact there are so many aspects of baking I don't know well that I often feel like a beginner.
We try not to be judgemental here, there are many ways to bake a good loaf of bread, and what works for one person might not work for another.
And we can offer a lot of suggestions, but don't be surprised if some of the suggestions seem contradictory. We've all had our failures in the kitchen, too.
As the regulars here know well, I'm an engineer by training, and I tend to be rather experimental about my baking, trying various things to see which work better for me. Some I keep using, others I don't.
Supper tonight was cheese tortellini from Costco, in a sauce made from diced tomatoes, tomato paste and some sauteed mushrooms.
I like the 11 strand braid that the Challah Prince taught, but it takes forever to roll out 11 strands and by then I'm ready for a rest, which of course you can't do right then.
I've seen a 13 strand braid, but haven't tried it, I think I've also seen references to a 15 strand braid.
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