[Mike Nolan]

I think their reasoning is that the number of good new cookbooks each year is increasing, 'Baking and Desserts' has become a very comprehensive and active topic, so maybe spinning off bread into a separate category will give more books in various baking-related subjects a better chance to be honored for their excellence. How much of that increase is the impact of the pandemic is unclear, maybe the number of bread books will taper off again.

I keep looking at a recent Beard winner, Kristina Cho's book "Moon Cakes and Milk Bread" on Amazon, but I'm already out of bookshelf space, having cookbooks in three separate parts of the house! And the question is, would I really make more than one or two recipes out of it?

[Mike Nolan]

We did not get a frost in our garden last night, though some friends who live only a few miles away did lose several types of plants, including basil.

Looks like it could be two weeks before there's another cold wave deep enough to present a freeze warning.

[Mike Nolan]

I find when reading stories that pop up on my iPhone, if the headline is something like "6 best ways to blah blah" or "7 things you absolutely must not do when blah blah" there's a nearly 100% chance that few or none of the suggestions, good or bad, will be useful.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm canning tomato juice today, so far I've got 6 quarts done, probably 2 or 3 more once these are done processing.

[Mike Nolan]

I picked 3 big bowls of tomatoes, most of them are ripe but maybe as much as a quarter of them that would be better if they had a few more days, total weight is well over 20 pounds. If we don't get a frost tonight, there are still enough green tomatoes for another good picking in a week to 10 days and possibly another a week or two later if the weather holds up. (There have been years when we were still picking tomatoes off the vines in early November.)

This should give me enough tomatoes for another 6-7 quarts of tomato juice, which would put me well over last year's yield.

I also picked at least 6 pounds of eggplant, taking everything larger than my little finger. A lot of the white ones had turned yellow, but even a lot of the smaller ones are yellow so I don't think it's just a question of being too ripe, not sure what causes them to go yellow.

That'll give me another research project for the winter, I guess. My major research project will be to delve into categorizing layers of bread crust as part of my 'bread shapes = bread flavor' project, possibly with the aid of a microscope. And hopefully I'll even get back into the rye project.

[Mike Nolan]

I was at Costco today and a 12 pound bag of KA AP flour was $9.49 or 79 cents/pound. That's the equivalent of a 5 pound bag at $3.95.

Prices were up on nearly every thing I looked at. I doubt we'll see them go down any time soon, either, if ever.

[Mike Nolan]

Calling the cultured stuff 'buttermilk' comes close to being food fraud, but I guess if we can have almond milk and soy milk and vegan meat patties, anything's fair game these days.

Cultured sour cream also is a far cry from the original, which was made from cream that had soured. If you've ever had it, the cultured stuff is probably an improvement, certainly better on a baked potato. But low-fat cultured sour cream still strikes me as an oxymoron.

It would be interesting to do some comparison baking for products made with cultured buttermilk, buttermilk powder and real buttermilk, which I'd probably have to make myself.

I have Diane St. Clair's book: The Animal Farm Buttermilk Cookbook: Recipes and Reflections from a Small Vermont Dairy , it even has recipes for making your own creme fraiche. (The most important part of the book, IMHO, the first chapter on how to make buttermilk, creme fraiche and cultured butters, is available in the free preview on Amazon.)

Now, if could just find 55% butterfat cream, I could try to make Devon clotted cream. Its hard to find anything above about 38% butterfat in the USA. Some 'whipping cream' packages don't even list the butterfat content, though if it is under 30% it won't whip properly even if you nearly freeze it first.

[Mike Nolan]

All week long the expected low for tonight in Lincoln has been fluctuating in the low 30's. It dropped to 30 yesterday and just went down to 29. It's a one-day cold snap, the two-week forecast only shows one other day where it even gets into the mid 30's.

But it might be enough to zap local gardens.

I haven't seen a frost warning on Accuweather yet, but they might issue one later today. I'm not going to pick the green tomatoes but I'll pick most of them that have started to turn and most of the eggplants that are left.

Soon I'll have to start the 2023 Gardens topic.

[Mike Nolan]

Nice schnecken, Aaron.

I tend to think of schnecken, the word is German for snails, as more like Danish, but any baked good that is coiled could probably be called that.

If I understand correctly, Saco buttermilk powder is made from real buttermilk, which is the stuff left over after butter is churned.

What's generally sold in the stores as buttermilk is a cultured product. I suspect the closest it has been to a butter churn is being in the same building.

When I was young, you could get buttermilk brought to the house by the dairyman, I remember it being kind of weird looking, sort of like watery milk, and it was not something I'd drink. (My mother liked it, though.)

[Mike Nolan]

When we designed and built our house, we went with a local custom cabinet maker that does primarily commercial kitchens. These things are pretty solid and they weren't cheap, either.

The biggest problems we've had in 25+ years are a couple of edge strips that
have come loose and the under-sink one that delaminated when it got wet due to a plumbing leak. I've reglued some of the edge strips.

[Mike Nolan]

Thanks, Allen, and welcome to My Nebraska Kitchen.

It's almost surprising to get a new signup that is a real person these days, I just deleted another dozen of them today, most with email addresses that were from Russia or otherwise suspicious.

I suspect more visible sites have many times more bogus signups.

[Mike Nolan]

I found a bag of KAF bread flour from 2016 in the basement a few months ago, I tossed it.

I can get down to look at stuff, it's getting back up that's the challenge. 🙂

[Mike Nolan]

BA, is is possible there was moisture behind the wall that got into the lamination? We have one sink cabinet where a leak delaminated the floor of the under-sink storage area.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm not sure what different the baker's special milk powder makes, it seems more of a fine powder than the stuff at the grocery store, which seems more granular, and it has very little odor.

My mother would mix up powdered milk and combine it with regular milk to stretch it, with 6 kids she had to be creative. But I never liked the taste and still can't stand the smell of powdered milk, even walking past it in the grocery store is worse than walking through the coffee section.

I haven't tried ordering high heat treated powdered milk from anyone else yet, but I've still got enough left to get me through the winter, as I don't use it frequently.

[Mike Nolan]

We had tacos.

[Author]

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