[Mike Nolan]

We bought a big rosemary pot at Costco a couple of years ago and have managed to keep it going through at least one winter, usually taking it outside in June once the danger of frost is past, then bringing it back inside in late September or early October ahead of the first forecasted frost.

We keep it in a south-facing bedroom window in the winter and try to make sure it is watered every week or two. I think the main reasons we've lost rosemary plants over the winter in the past is because they weren't getting enough sun and because they were either over-watered or under-watered, more likely the latter due to being forgotten about.

We did transplant it into a bigger pot soon after we bought it and it has flourished well both indoors and on the back patio.

I think my wife's sister still has a big rosemary plant that she's kept going for a long time, but she's a much more serious gardener than either of us, and has even published a book on gardening in hot weather.

[Mike Nolan]

The only vegetables we still have outside are some leeks we planted in a pot, I may pull them this weekend. Some of the flowers still look like they're blooming, but I don't think they're annuals. The rosemary pot is in the garage, I'll move it inside soon, I'm waiting to make sure there aren't a lot of bugs on it.

I read an article online recently on how to keep rosemary alive indoors, one of the things they suggested for powdery mildew (which it had a major case of last spring just before we took it outside for the summer) is to have a fan on it to keep the plant less humid. I may set up a small fan on a timer in that bedroom, if it runs an hour or two a day that's probably plenty.

[Mike Nolan]

I haven't ordered from King Arthur's store in several years. I did recent buy a container of King Arthur diastatic malt powder, but I bought it through Amazon. I may need high heat-treated milk powder soon, not sure if I have more of it in the freezer, but I'll probably order it from some other supplier.

[Mike Nolan]

Their website is a bit vague on some things.

I tend to assume if a flour isn't marked as 'stone ground', it isn't stone ground.

It would be nice if the milling industry would adopt some standard conventions, like saying something is 'whole meal' if it is never separated into component streams (endosperm, bran, germ) like it is in a modern steel roller mill. As far as I know, stone-ground products are not separated into component streams, so maybe 'stone ground' and 'whole meal' are very similar terms.

Stone grinding is not, however, the only way to create whole meal flours, impact or hammer mills don't separate out the bran or germ, either. And even a simple one-stage steel roller mill would product whole-meal output.

I've recently seen some research that says recombined whole grain flours are enough different from whole meal (never separated) products to have an impact on things like glycemic index.

I've never really looked into how barley is milled, I know it has a much more substantial hull than most wheat and wheat-related grains do, but that's true of some other cereal grains as well. I also don't know what the shape of an individual barley kernel is; a wheat berry has a crease in it that complicates the milling process.

[Mike Nolan]

We had ham steak with pineapple and a salad. An old-fashioned meal for an old-fashioned couple. 🙂

[Mike Nolan]

Back when we used to get semolina bread from McGinnis Sisters in the Pittsburgh area (a local chain now closed), I saved an ingredients label.

The ingredients were: enriched durum flour, enriched semolina flour, unbleached enriched flour with less than 2% of the following: rice flour, salt, sesame seeds, malt syrup and yeast.

I can't be sure, but it is possible that the rice flour was used primarily for dusting underneath the dough before baking. I've seen other recipes do that, rice flour apparently doesn't scorch as easily as wheat flour in a hot oven. I generally use corn meal for that.

No oil, so maybe this week's omission was worth repeating.

I don't currently have any durum flour on hand, which is why I've been using 62.5% semolina in Hamelman's recipe for the past year or so.

I may have to try using malt syrup instead of sugar in the flying sponge in Hamelman's recipe.

[Mike Nolan]

I use the one in Jeffrey Hamelman's book. I just looked at several semolina bread recipes on the King Arthur site, didn't see that one there but I might have missed it. It starts by making a 'flying sponge' with a bit under half of the flours, water, a little sugar and the yeast. You let that sit for about 90 minutes then add the rest of the flour, more water, oil and salt.

This appears to be close to the recipe in the book:http://fortheloveofbread.blogspot.com/2009/06/hamelmans-semolina-bread.html

The only changes I've made are that I use 20 ounces of semolina and 12 ounces of bread flour to make up the 2 pounds of flour. (That's 62.5% semolina, the original recipe is 50-50.) I also use regular oil rather than olive oil. (For the last year or two I've been using a blend of canola and soybean oil.)

I left the oil out of this week's batch. (Just got distracted and forgot it.) It came out a bit more dense than it usually does, how much of that was the missing oil and how much of it was the cooler weather is hard to say.

[Mike Nolan]

Tonight we had some chili from the freezer, a warm dinner on a cold evening,

[Mike Nolan]

Last night's semolina bread. I left the oil out of the dough by mistake, and that affected how much it rose, so it is a bit more dense than usual, but still tastes pretty good.

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[Mike Nolan]

I haven't grown brandywine tomatoes for several years. IMHO, they need HOT weather to be flavorful, so you need to get them started as soon as possible so they can set fruit before the hot weather arrives, because they won't set much fruit during the hot part of the summer. In August they're pretty good, but after early September, they're more bland and other varieties are better for after the cooler weather sets in.

Also, they crack a lot and you wind up cutting the shoulders off. I think they're harder to peel, too.

[Mike Nolan]

Our garden got zapped last night, everything is all limp now.

I've got the Aerogarden cleaned up and just about ready to plant.

I'm waiting to find out what the frizzy lettuce that my wife brought home from the hydroponics lab last week is, I think I might try growing some of that, along with some dwarf snow peas, in one side of the Aerogarden. (It apparently isn't frisee/endive, and it doesn't appear to be bitter like most of the chicory family is.)

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[Mike Nolan]

As my wife points out, if you make the cookies smaller you can eat more individual cookies without eating a greater total amount of cookies.

But that only works if you can stop eating at some point.

I've long thought the serving information on Girl Scout Thin Mints cookies is wrong. A serving is one stack of cookies, isn't it??

[Mike Nolan]

I usually make BLJ's molasses cookies smaller, with a #60 scoop. I'd use a #70 if I had one. (I think I have #40, #60 and #100, but not #70 or #80.)

[Mike Nolan]

Great news on the windows. We had tacos tonight. I put the cover on the new grill and turned the gas off at the shutoff valve, but I may take the cover off on a warm day to clean up the grill some more before winter.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making the semolina bread today.

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