Mike Nolan
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I did a slab of baby back ribs on the grill tonight. For a first-time attempt at ribs on the new grill, they were good, but I'm sure I can do better. They were tender but not quite fall-apart, another half hour would probably have helped.
The rub I made was a little too peppery and probably needed more brown sugar and cinnamon. The sauce I basted it with was a little too thin, I need to cook some of it down a bit so it is thicker but still not a paste, maybe adding a teaspoon or two of honey and possibly a few more dashes of hot sauce to kick it up a little.
We also had BBQ beans done in a pot in the grill. This is a recipe a friend of ours makes in the oven, it needed more time to cook down and I think I forgot to add the onion.
I have ONE tomato (a First Lady) that is starting to show some color, but the vines are still a lot shorter than I would expect for mid-July and while I see that some fruit that has set, mostly on the 4th of July plants, I don't really expect to see many ripe tomatoes until mid-August, at best, and that assumes that the weather gets cool enough at some point for fruit to set.
The two-week weather forecast shows just one day in the next two weeks (this Saturday) with a high below 90, followed by 11 consecutive days with highs above 95.
We had sweet corn and BLT's.
I haven't asked him what he's paying for them, not sure I really want to know. But West Virginia is where most of the black raspberry jam is from, so I assume it is actively cultivated there.
My son in Pittsburgh has been buying flats of black raspberries, either at a farmer's market or from the company that does his farm share. I think he's bought 3 flats (of 8 cartons) so far. My guess is they're coming from nearby West Virginia.
He's made jam, jelly, syrup, and probably a few other things. He was infusing vinegar with left over pulp. The vinegar should be good for vinagrettes and sauces. I think he said he was doing some kind of black raspberry liqueur too. We're SOOOO jealous!
We got about 2 cups of black raspberries from the east side of the house this year, but that's more than we got the last several years, though some years we never got around to checking for them until the season was over.
We originally planted a few vines (2 or 3 at most) at the back of the lot along the fence, the ones there got crowded out, but the birds helped us out by spreading seed to both the east side and west side of the lot. The vines on the west side used to do very well but have also been crowded out these days.
We had tacos, sweet corn and some cantaloupe. The cantaloupe was sweet enough but not very soft or juicy, so it was sort of crunchy.
I generally do sweet potatoes in the oven (my wife likes them, I do not), but regular potatoes using the 'potato' setting on my microwave. I put a little butter and salt on them and put them in a ceramic bowl with a plate for a lid. I'm told you can do the same thing with a sweet potato, but probably using oil instead of butter and salt.
Be sure to poke lots of holes in your sweet potato.
I haven't made crackers in a while, and I've been experimenting with the convection oven setting on my big oven more lately, so I may have to try them again, but not when it's 95 outside!
Too often bakery carrot cake has coconut in it, which my wife cannot stand. (If I buy Almond Joy bars, I don't have to hide them.)
When I make Irish Apple Cake, I work the butter into the flour by hand. (Darina Allen calls it 'rubbing the butter into the flour', a pretty accurate description.)
I use my mixer to cut in the butter into pie dough, plus I borrow an idea from Kenji Lopez-Alt and reserve about 1/5 of the flour to be put in after the butter has been cut in, just a quick spin or two to mix it together. He goes much further, taking the butter/flour to a paste before putting the reserved flour in, I've tried that a few times, I like my way better.
It's not true that it takes 30 carrots to make 2/3 cup of grated carrots, but it FEELS true. Actually it takes 2 carrots and 2 bandaids if you use a box grater.
These days I put carrots in the juicer (for making carrot vinegar) and use the pulp for carrot cake, freezing most of it. It's quite fine so the cake is smoother, though you still get most of the carrot crunch, just not as many carrot pieces stuck between your teeth.
I like raisins in carrot cake but not nuts.
I saw eggplant at one of the fruit stands today but not zucchini or other summer squash. The sweet corn she had was really tiny, but that's often the case with the early varieties. I'll buy some at the farmer's market tomorrow, the half-dozen we got there last week was very good.
We bought one tomato to have on our burgers tonight, and also some plums, but the plums weren't local. They were out of cantaloupe, as was the other stand near us.
Our plan for tonight is burgers on the grill, and probably some kind of salad.
I think we're having tuna salad on a tomato tonight. We've got a big (12.85 ounce) tomato from the local veg stand that needs to get used soon.
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