Mike Nolan
I don't see evidence of egg wash pooling in the cracks of your challah, so I think you did well.
I find adding a little salt to the egg when whisking it helps break up the viscosity of the egg a bit, which I think makes it easier to keep it where you want it. I've wondered about using an ultrasonic cleaner to see if that helps create a more homogenized liquid. I seem to recall the packaged egg we used in pastry school was easier to use.
As to your shortbread, I find it usually spreads a lot, compared to something like a sugar cookie or gingerbread, but freezing it might help.
Baking it in a mold with sides might help, but that sounds like another pan that would only get occasional use, and I've already got too many of those!
We had sirloin steak and baked potatoes for supper tonight.
It must be the season for weird system issues, one of the systems I still help administer for the company I used to work for has developed some strange behavior, too.
Sunspots?
I think I've got the problem fixed, for a while I couldn't log in, either!
When I was at Sams Club yesterday they had plenty of cornstarch, they also had Black Diamond Cheese spread, which they haven't had for over a year.
In many high-end restaurants the number of staff working in the kitchen exceeds the number of customers served. Noma is about $500-$900 per person, plus wines.
Their focus on locally sourced items and is probably less of a factor in the decision to shut down than the cost of running the kitchen for a restaurant that seats less than 50.
I've only eaten in two or three restaurants that had Michelin stars, they were all great meals but not something I could do very often.
I've looked at Brunswick stew recipes a few times, but I'm not sure Diane would eat it. She won't eat corn in vegetable soup or a stir fry (unless it is the baby corn that shows up in some Chinese take-out dishes), and corn is a common ingredient in most Brunswick stew recipes.
Considering I only have 3 pea pod plants, the amount of growth I've gotten is quite satisfactory. The amount of water the pea pods use is astonishing, though, I have to put in about a half-gallon of water every other day. It looks like it is still blooming and I think I'll probably get a second picking in a couple of weeks. But it was about 10 weeks from when I first planted them until I got enough to harvest.
Our 'daily bread' changes periodically, currently it's semolina bread, but in the past it has been honey wheat bread (an adaptation of my mother-in-law's recipe that is in the favorites tab here), the Clonmel Kitchens Double Crusty Bread or the Austrian Malt bread, both are also in the favorites tab.
I picked about 4 ounces of pea pods from the Aerogarden today.
They were part of a nice stir fry dish:
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.
