[Mike Nolan]

That was a very good deal on tenderloin.

Our son, David, bought about a 4 pound prime rib at Fareway Beef (the best butcher shop in town IMHO), and cooked it sous vide for about 24 hours then put it in the oven to brown the outside a bit.

It was quite good, he didn't use as much rosemary as last year, so it wasn't overwhelmingly ROSEMARY this year.

We also bought a 6 ounce filet for Diane, because she's not fond of prime rib.

We also had roasted Brussels sprouts with Dijon mustard and maple syrup, hash brown potato-cheese casserole, green bean casserole (DGBC) and trifle for dessert. Nobody went hungry!

We'll probably wait until tomorrow, but David has been asked to make his potato-leek-baked potato soup. We'll use the leeks that Diane grew in a pot on the back patio this year.

[Mike Nolan]

Hartshorn (ammonium bicarbonate) is heat activated, but I don't know if it would remain in dough for a long time, it tends to evaporate out of the bottle over a few months if not well sealed.

[Mike Nolan]

In the last several days Diane has made oatmeal-raisin-date cookies, Russian tea cakes and two trays of chocolate mushroom cookies.

And she assembled the trifle after Christmas Eve dinner.

[Mike Nolan]

We haven't had a lot of snow, but it has been cold enough that what we did get hasn't gone away, so technically it is a white Christmas. It's currently 14 and supposed to get to 30 today, that's a heat wave compared to the last several days. (When you have a day where the high is 5 below, that's COLD!)

[Mike Nolan]

The fluting got messed up on the left side, I can never seem to get fluting that looks like the ones in the cookbooks. But it tasted great.

[Mike Nolan]

Today I've made a cherry pie, a triple batch of pastry cream (for assembling a trifle for tomorrow), and have a big pot of chili on the stove for supper, which will also include oyster stew.

[Mike Nolan]

Today's cherry pie:

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[Mike Nolan]

We do have Michaels stores in Lincoln, there's even one near us, and we also have a Hobby Lobby, though it is further away and I don't get there very often. JoAnne's Fabrics also has a good kitchen section.

I seem to recall on one of the baking contest shows they were doing gingerbread construction and what they did was to make full sheet pans of gingerbread and bake them about half way, then use a paper template to cut them into shapes and finish baking them so that they were solid enough for construction.

Several years ago SFBI sent out a link at Christmas to a video showing their staff constructing an eight-foot tall Christmas tree out of bread, which they then had on display in the lobby. There may still be a link to the video on their website. It was impressive!

[Mike Nolan]

My mother's chocolate chip cookie recipe (https://mynebraskakitchen.com/wordpress/forums/topic/oatmeal-crisps-chocolate-chip-cookies/) uses both baking powder and baking soda. They tend to rise and have a lot of internal air spaces, which makes them great for dipping in milk, but they're crisp, not chewy.

I think the sugar/fat ratio has more to do with crispness/chewiness than the leavening.

[Mike Nolan]

We're going to do the traditional Christmas Eve oyster stew and chili, but Christmas dinner will be steaks, mushrooms, hash brown casserole, Brussels sprouts, DGBC and trifle for dessert.

[Mike Nolan]

Diane made dough for mushroom cookies today, and has a couple more planned over the next two days.

I plan to make a cherry pie for Christmas Eve, and she'll make a trifle for Christmas day.

[Mike Nolan]

We only got an inch and a half of snow when they were forecasting up to 6, but we did get the promised double-digit sub-zero temperatures, and the high today was around -5.

Supposed to be a little warmer heading into Christmas, but possibly an ice storm Sunday evening.

[Mike Nolan]

There are several gingerbread house cutter sets out there, a search on Amazon finds multiples of several of them. (That's all too common these days, sellers create multiple vendors for the same products, with identical pictures, often at various price points.)

The largest of them that I saw makes a house that is about 9 inches tall at the peak.

[Mike Nolan]

We wound up doing a combination of lavash pizza and takeout from Valentinos Pizza.

[Mike Nolan]

15 => 40 is an unusually large difference in baking time.

[Author]

Posts