[Mike Nolan]

I find if you make a compound butter with the sugar (brown or white) and cinnamon, it is easier to spread on evenly and won't fall out as you roll the dough up and bake it.

I saw a post on my iPhone the other day that started out extolling the dental floss method for cutting cinnamon rolls but then suggested cutting the dough up into strips after spreading on the filling, then rolling each one up separately. I've done that a few times, it works well.

[Mike Nolan]

We had a water/ice dispenser in the freezer for about 20 years (I actually won a side-by-size refrigerator/freezer in a drawing in around 1975), but these days we have a standalone icemaker that holds 20 pounds of ice. (We used to have two of them, one in the kitchen and one in the basement, but after replacing the icemaker downstairs twice, we decided it wasn't worth replacing a third time. They make a less expensive icemaker that is more like the one in most freezers, making half-moon 'cubes', but I don't know if we'd get enough usage out of even that.)

[Mike Nolan]

My wife wants to know when I'm going to make croissant dough again, she really liked the chocolatines I made.

[Mike Nolan]

We had takeout chicken tonight, which complicates my dinner plans for the weekend, as I'm planning to make baked chicken, rice and mushroom casserole. But chicken several days in a row gets repetitive.

[Mike Nolan]

Having frozen apple pie filling is a big plus, you just get it out a day or two ahead of time to thaw, but I have to get pre-made pie crusts out then, too.

I'm currently out of frozen pie crusts, not sure when I'll do another batch of them, possibly before Thanksgiving, though that's going to be relatively quiet this year, at least compared to Christmas when our son and family will be here.

We're running low on cinnamon rolls and I may do another batch of turnovers, too. The apple galette I made with the portion of the apple pie filling that I didn't use up on the turnovers was a big hit, I might do that instead of a double-crust pie again.

[Mike Nolan]

The vegetable garden has been cleaned out sufficiently for the winter. In the spring I'll move the cages, pull up the ground cloth, till in some peat for fertilizer and probably more gypsum and then put things back together again before planting.

I also started a new set of Aerogardens today, 9 leaf lettuce, 12 head lettuce (pelletized) and 3 pea pods.

Thinking ahead to 2023, I may do about the same mix of tomatoes as this year, will likely do white eggplant again, but maybe not the purple ones, not very good yield from them. If I do melon they'll likely be Athena or Kandy, we like those better. I might do a spaghetti squash, that's not something I've grown before.

[Mike Nolan]

Baker's math formulas can be intimidating. Here's a post on that issue with some examples of how to convert a recipe in baker's math format into a list of ingredients in units you can measure:

https://mynebraskakitchen.com/wordpress/using-bakers-math/

[Mike Nolan]

Here's the post with the link to the Portuguese bread recipe

https://mynebraskakitchen.com/wordpress/forums/topic/what-are-you-baking-the-week-of-november-14-2021/#post-32028

Here's the post with Cass's recommendations:
https://mynebraskakitchen.com/wordpress/forums/topic/what-are-you-baking-the-week-of-november-14-2021/page/2/#post-32092

Note that this recipe is for a single loaf, not individual rolls.

[Mike Nolan]

Is this the sort of roll you're looking for:

https://leitesculinaria.com/282693/recipes-papo-secos-portuguese-rolls.html

This recipe reminds me of the Pao Frances link I posted earlier today, the dough recipe seems fairly standard (and this recipe and the one I posted earlier are quite similar to each other), the way it is shaped and risen appears to be key.

As someone who firmly believes that shape is the aspect of bread that gets the least attention with regards to its impact on taste, I'm always interested in a new form or shape.

[Mike Nolan]

We had left over meat loaf, and the small slice left will be my wife's lunch tomorrow.

[Mike Nolan]

Never heard of soft pretzels as a topping on a casserole before, sounds intriguing. Do you boil them in an alkali solution?

[Mike Nolan]

If the icing used black dye, I'm not surprised it got everywhere.

[Mike Nolan]

Cool today, so the meat loaf is going into the oven soon.

[Mike Nolan]

As I suspected, the 3 grass fires didn't get very far into Lancaster County and I think today's cooler weather and rain will take care of the fire threats for a while. Kind of weird to go from a day when it was in the high 80's (possibly 90) to a day where we might not get to 55.

Well, my father-in-law, who was trained as a meteorologist by the Army during WW2 (as part of the Manhattan Project) always said if you didn't like the weather in Nebraska, wait a day.

[Mike Nolan]

We did a lavash pizza, some of which had piperade on it, some had pepper jack cheese and all of it had mushrooms, ham, tomato slices, mozzarella cheese and havarti cheese. It was very good.

Portions of Lancaster county are under an evacuation advisory, but it is in the SW portion of the county, where high winds are blowing a grass fire that started in the next county to the south rapidly to the north. I don't think it'll get this far into the city of Lincoln, hopefully not even into city limits, which are about two miles south of us. I don't remember ever seeing such an order, and they've requested farmers with irrigation systems to turn them on if they can do so safely.

There are storms due later today and tomorrow, hopefully they'll take care of the grass fire.

I ran an errand to the hardware store earlier today, the smoke was thick enough that the whole area was hazy.

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