[Mike Nolan]

We had the French herbed chicken tonight, with a salad and some cookies for dessert.

[Mike Nolan]

I did find some cardinal preserves in the freezer, the cookies are quite good with strawberry jam on them. Honey on them was good too, and so was the cream cheese frosting.

[Mike Nolan]

I baked the first tray of punitions today, they came out a range of shades from very light to fairly brown, which is what the recipe said would likely happen if you don't rotate the pan during the bake. I'm OK with that. The darker ones have a more complex flavor to them due to the Maillard reaction and probably some caramelization.

They're fairly classic butter cookies, tasty but a bit dull, though you could eat a big plate of them quickly if you weren't paying attention. (They're about 2 inches in diameter and weigh around 7 grams each.)

They'd be better with a dollop of jam (as the recipe suggests, I'll have to see if I have any Cardinal Preserves in the freezer) or dipped in hot chocolate, maybe even tea. Or maybe a little frosting, I've still got a little of the cream cheese frosting from the Hot Cross Buns left, we've been using it up on graham crackers.

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[Mike Nolan]

Temperature and indoor humidity have a big impact on proofing times, and even a minor variance in the flour or water can affect it, too.

I've overproofed loaves, too, there's a fairly narrow window of 'just right'.

[Mike Nolan]

Blowouts are almost always from underproofing.

There's an interesting 6-blade lame on Amazon, but it's not cheap, around $55. I assume it is primarily used for pastry.

[Mike Nolan]

I decided to postpone the chicken dish until tomorrow, I bought the chicken at the store today and when I went to get it out of the bag it was half frozen. So I stuck it back in the fridge for tomorrow.

[Mike Nolan]

I've got butter softening to make the punitions dough.

[Mike Nolan]

I changed the topic heading. WordPress is good at certain things, but it has its limitations unless you want to get into some really heavy lifting development. Drupal has a similar reputation, but I think it is oriented more towards my way of writing code.

It looks like I could create a fairly simple recipe structure in Drupal, and I might even wind up doing that as an interim step, but I want one where each ingredient has multiple components: quantity, unit of measure, ingredient name and comments/instructions, so I can manipulate and analyze them, and possibly even support multiple entry formats, including one that uses something along the lines of the BBGA publication template, entering quantities in baker's math percentages.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm doing a chicken dish this evening, onions, celery, carrots, mushrooms, some wine and some herbs.

[Mike Nolan]

Yeah, so far I'm fairly impressed with how it works. The grow mode cycle takes a lot longer than the 'lomi approved' cycle I had been using, and I can hear the motor start and stop repeatedly. The grow mode cycle also doesn't get as hot, that's to preserve more microorganisms, according to the manual.

It was raining today so I haven't dumped the residue out yet, but it looks pretty dry so I'm not worried about it getting weird or smelly.

[Mike Nolan]

Here's a set of before and after photos:

This wasn't quite a full load, you can see the line it can go up to.

Here's what's left after a full 'grow mode' cycle:

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[Mike Nolan]

In general, Joel's recipe is like this: For 1 pound of potatoes you add some milk (some variations of the recipe say to add a cup of whole milk, but most limit it to a few tablespoons) and slowly work in 1/2 pound of butter. What you get is a suspension, like a mayonnaise or hollandaise.

[Mike Nolan]

Here's an article on using baking powder in mashed potatoes, I'm not sure if it is the same one I saw on my phone, that was a few days ago.

https://www.nobiggie.net/the-most-fluffy-mashed-potatoes/

I haven't quite gone the full bore Joel Robuchon route yet, but I put more butter in my mashed potatoes than I used to. It makes them better when reheated, too.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/dining/mashed-potatoes-robuchon.html

[Mike Nolan]

It's Friday, so we had takeout Chinese.

[Mike Nolan]

Our soil here is heavy clay, I've been known to add gypsum to lighten it, I suspect the powder from the Lomi will lighten it as well, although there's so little of it from each batch that it might not be easy to see what impact it has.

I suspect once the gardens get cranking up we'll have more stuff to put in it, although if I continue to process tomatoes like I have the last several years there's not a lot of detritus, because the peels and the seeds that the pulp extractor separates out I've been throwing in bags and freezing for when I make beef stock. The next time I make stock I'll throw the remains of the aromatics (except the bones) in the Lomi. The latest load has a bunch of weeds (henbit) that my wife was pulling on a stroll around the yard.

Their FAQ doesn't cover everything, when their chat desk opens later today I'm going to ask about artichoke leaves and the hulls from my wife's bird feeders.

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