[Mike Nolan]

How much cider do you use in a batch of challah?

I grew up in NW Illinois and the locals said some of the apple trees in the county were planted by Johnny Appleseed himself (John Chapman), though there's no evidence of that in the historical records. (He planted mostly cider apples.)

The u-pick orchard I go to that has the winesap apples I like lost its entire crop this year to one of the windstorms, so no fresh apples this year. They've had bad luck with weather, they lost most of their trees to a tornado a few years ago. I don't know if the orchards in Nebraska City have any winesaps this year, and they're 50 miles away. Maybe I'll check with them in a few weeks, winesaps don't get ripe until late September or early October.

I may have to do pizza on the grill again this weekend, yours looks really good, Len.

[Mike Nolan]

I like to mix spinach with ricotta cheese in things like Chicago stuffed pizza and lasagna.

We prefer our sweet peppers after they've turned red, too. I've tried growing yellow and orange peppers, not much luck with them, either. I've seen purple ones at the farmer's market, haven't really looked for them as plants or seeds. The guides say bell peppers are perennial plants in warmer climates, I don't have a covered porch I could over-winter them on. If I could redo one thing of our house design, I'd probably have added a solarium, possible in front of the garage or in front of the first floor guest bedroom. With a south-facing house, the back yard is not sunny enough for a standalone greenhouse, except perhaps where the vegetable garden is.

My son was growing poblano peppers in one of his Aerogardens, it looked like he was getting a nice crop of them. They're a little strong for us.

[Mike Nolan]

When I put my plants in the ground, I make sure they have some fertilizer, I've been using Osmocote, it seems to be working OK for me, with the occasional calcium additions. I left the landscape cloth in place this spring, the previous year I pulled it up, tilled in several bags of peat moss, one bag of gypsum and one of bone meal and put the landscape cloth back down again. Next year I'll probably do that again, though the landscape cloth might need to be replaced by next spring.

We had a problem with tomatoes a few years ago that we thought might have been nematodes and/or cutworms, so I seeded the usual garden area in alfalfa and buckwheat for two years, then tilled that all in. I grew a few tomatoes in another area of the yard, most did reasonably well, but I didn't have space for all 24 cages. I went back to putting tomatoes in the primary garden spot 3 or 4 years ago.

I'm tempted to find another area of the yard to seed in buckwheat, it is really pretty when it blooms and the bees just LOVE it.

Our front yard is a mess, the heat a few years ago killed off a lot of the grass, probably because we didn't water it enough. (We did not put in a sprinkler system when we built the house, though there's a water line to the front corner of the house for that purpose.)

I'm thinking of putting in buffalo grass, a low-water native grass that one of the professors in my wife's department has been promoting; we've tried reseeding with fescue twice, neither took, don't know if it was bad seed or something else. What mostly came up was what my iPhone says is St. Augustine grass, which many northern gardeners consider a weed, though it is grown in the South, and it doesn't look too bad if you keep it short.

I wonder what a front yard of buckwheat would be like and what the neighbors and city would think of it? The listings say it isn't very drought tolerant, though. I may start using it to fill in some areas in the back where the grass won't grow, it is supposed to be a good cover crop for bare soil.

I should probably move this post to the gardens thread. :sigh:

[Mike Nolan]

I thought I remembered reading in the Master Gardener literature that my wife has that they recommend against Epsom salt for tomatoes unless your soil tests show you need magnesium and sulfur, which is not common.

As this page indicates, adding Epsom salt can increase blossom end rot, because too much magnesium can limit calcium absorption.

https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/lifestyle/ask-a-master-gardener-dont-use-epsom-salt-on-tomato-plants

We had a lot of blossom end rot two years ago, but I added a lot of calcium and I've only seen one instance of it so far this year.

[Mike Nolan]

I have terrible luck growing bell peppers, snap beans or cucumbers. Maybe next year I'll try starting some bell peppers inside, that worked very well for the eggplant.

I picked about 10 pounds of eggplants the other day, used a third of them in my lasagna and gave the rest away to two friends. There's still a lot of eggplant left on the plants and they are still blooming, though I'm not sure if they are still setting fruit.

Here's the Wiki entry on piperade, I also posted it in another thread:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piperade

[Mike Nolan]

I'm not sure in what cookbook or recipe I first saw tomatoes, onions and sweet peppers referred to as piperade, it's somewhat of a simplification of a Basque dish:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piperade

It was probably in a recipe for ratatouille, because that's about the only thing I make it for.

[Mike Nolan]

Aaron, aren't there some cider mills near you?

This is kind of a strange idea, but have you tried apple cider vinegar in your challah? I've seen vinegar used in other bread recipes, notably the Clonmel Kitchen's Double Crusty recipe that Paddy L posted on the OBC years ago. (I wonder if she's still online anywhere, I know she had registered for this site but I don't think she ever logged in or posted.)

[Mike Nolan]

The eggplant/zucchini lasagna was great, I had two servings of it, my wife had a small serving to go with her eggs, but also dished out some to take for lunch tomorrow. I portioned what was left into 5 containers and put them in the fridge. Eggplant isn't supposed to freezer very well, but I may wind up freezing one or two of them anyway, though I'm planning on having it for lunch the next few days. I've frozen ratatouille in the past and it seemed to be OK when it was defrosted.

[Mike Nolan]

So far we've opened two jars of hot fudge sauce, we have 4 more to try, plus a #10 can of J. Hungerford Smith old fashioned hot fudge sauce, which is what we used at the soda fountain for 10-15 years. Recently it has been hard to buy locally, but Diane found some online.

[Mike Nolan]

Sprouted grain products (ie, malted grains) are more common in Europe than in the USA, where the grain most commonly malted is barley.

The malting process is probably something brewers are more familiar with than bakers.

For malted wheat flakes you soak the wheat berries until they sprout, which releases enzymes that start to convert the starch in the endosperm into sugars, among other things.

Then you dry the malted wheat and roll it into flakes. (Or grind it up into sprouted wheat flour.)

Why do you do this? Well, it adds some sweetness and usually a flavor that some might call nutty. It also changes the nutritional value of the grain.

Some sources say sprouted wheat flours store longer, but I'm not sure if that's accurate. Sprouted wheat flour performs differently when baking, too, I don't think it forms as strong a gluten matrix.

Being a whole-grain product could contribute to several of the above effects.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making a big pan of eggplant/zucchini lasagna, not sure if that'll be all we have for supper but it'll be a major part of it.

[Mike Nolan]

I need to practice some of my braids, too. I'm still mystified about the 6 strand one in the documentary movie, Deli Man, which is done like a 3 strand braid working from the center. Jeffrey Hamelman told me he thinks it is the same braid as the classic 6 strand one in his book, but I'm just stumped on how it really works. The way the movie is edited you never see one loaf from start to finish.

Thomas Keller has this recipe for dead dough (used for practicing braiding and shaping) in his Bouchon Bakery book:

500 grams AP flour
1 gram yeast
25 grams salt
325 grams water

Mix until smooth, around 15 minutes. Let it rest for about 15 minutes.

It can be refrigerated and reused. Discard when it becomes discolored or less pliable.

[Mike Nolan]

Last night I got the steaks out of the fridge at 5:30, salted and peppered them on both sides, then let them sit (covered) until they went on the grill shortly after 6PM. They were excellent. About 4 minutes on each side and they were at about 158 internal temperature, and still quite juicy.

More than one of the 'restaurant kitchen secrets' posts has said that chefs will take the worst piece of meat they have and cook it to death if a customer orders a well-done steak, that's why Gordon Ramsay's challenge was so interesting to me.

[Mike Nolan]

Supper tonight will be much simpler, we've got two nice big Amish Paste tomatoes and will make some tuna salad to go in them.

[Mike Nolan]

I picked a big bowl of eggplants today, some I'll use for eggplant/zucchini lasagna, the rest will go to two friends.

Did you know that white eggplants can turn yellow?

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