[Mike Nolan]

I'm probably going to make another sweet potato pie this week, my wife says I can't make another pecan pie for a while. I used Susan Purdy's recipe; it was too good and about double the carbs of the sweet potato pie per slice.

I probably won't blind bake the crust this time, though, because we don't usually blind bake the crust for a pumpkin pie.

[Mike Nolan]

I've run across a few food network recipes that seemed out of balance, but I think they were restaurant recipes that were scaled down without a lot of testing.

[Mike Nolan]

My wife had a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, I had leftover veggies and a little turkey, and I've got about 6 quarts of turkey stock for tomorrow, most of which will be used to make potato leek soup. (Usually I use chicken stock for that, it'll be interesting to how much impact turkey stock has on it.)

[Mike Nolan]

It looks like all 24 pods of the Aerogarden have something sprouted now, some of the lettuces may be ready for limited harvesting in two weeks, maybe less.

[Mike Nolan]

I had leftover turkey and mashed potatoes for supper, Diane had tomato soup and cheese.

I now have the turkey pulled apart, with 2 big bags of meat (one white meat, one dark meat) and the bones are in a pot of water in the fridge, I'll make stock tomorrow. I didn't want to start it tonight because I don't know that I want to be up that late.

Not sure what I'm doing with all that meat, Diane doesn't like turkey soup. She suggested turkey tetrazzini, (turkey and noodle casserole), I suggested turkey pot pie.

[Mike Nolan]

Making turkey stock is on my to-do list for the weekend.

[Mike Nolan]

IMHO, the key to good bagels is to keep the hydration low. Some of the posters on the BBGA forum make much higher hydration bagels, I'm not sure how/why they work. (But baking is like that, there are more than a few baking recipes that SHOULD NOT WORK, but do!)

[Mike Nolan]

I put the sweet potatoes and brussels sprouts back in the oven for another 20 minutes, I'm planning to have some as a prelude to supper shortly. I haven't dissected the turkey yet, but we've made major headway on getting all the pots and pans clean.

I also figured out if we put the rest of the pecan pie on a warm heating pad for a few minutes, it is much easier to get a piece out of the pie pan. I think what happened is that my par-baked crust didn't go far enough up and had some holes in it, and the sticky but delicious filling got under the pie crust, where it became sugar glue.

[Mike Nolan]

By the time I got it thawed enough to prep, the bird wound up going in the oven around 12:30, but I had built some slack time into the schedule and the only dish that wasn't on the table at the time I had planned for dinner to start (6PM) was the sweet potatoes and brussels sprouts dish that was similar to the dish I made a few weeks ago, but without the chicken thighs. I didn't get the oven turned up high enough at first, I think.

Both of my pies from yesterday stuck to the pie pan badly, probably for two different reasons, though both could have had something to do with my blind baking technique.

The variant on the southern sweet potato pie I made (using brown sugar) was really good (Susan Purdy's recipe), everybody had a piece, some had more than one, and after a few take-home pieces for our guests that pie is gone. About half of the pecan pie is left, it was very good too but really hard to get out of the pan.

We've got enough other leftovers that I don't think I'll need to do much cooking for several days other than stripping the rest of the meat off the turkey and getting the carcass in a pot to make stock. We'll be on KP a lot the next two days, though, cleaning up after two days of serious 'committing kitchen'.

[Mike Nolan]

Tuesday's Cathy was quite good, too:

https://www.gocomics.com/cathy-commiserations/2021/11/23

[Mike Nolan]

When I checked my bird at 8AM this morning, it was still mostly frozen, at 10 AM the outside was somewhat pliable but there were still ice crystals in the cavity. I'm hoping I can still get it in the oven on schedule at noon.

[Mike Nolan]

As I understand it, starting at a higher temperature or using a convection setting is done to help the crust set, which is why you lower the temperature mid-bake.

I do fruit pies starting at 385 convection for the first 20 minutes, then I drop the temperature to 350 non-convection for the rest of the bake.

My sweet potato pie used a par-baked pie shell, so it did not start at a high temperature. I did use the convection cycle for the first 10 minutes of blind baking, then lowered the temperature to 350 for another 10 minutes after taking the pie beans out, with a pie shield. I still got more shrinkage than I wanted, though.

[Mike Nolan]

We had leftover soup plus some of the hard rolls.

[Mike Nolan]

Measure the interior of the pan and that sets an upper limit on the size of bread you can bake in it. I can get about 20 ounces of dough in my Dutch oven. It has an interior diameter of about 10 inches and an interior height of about 5 1/2 inches. (I seem to recall it was 4.5 quarts.)

I think I could get a boule with about 24 ounces of bread dough in it. You don't want it so big it touches the sides.

[Mike Nolan]

I wound up baking the sweet potato, the sweet potato pie is in the oven now. So far today I've:

Helped my wife make a Germans Sweet Chocolate Cake for a friend's birthday.

Made 16 hard rolls (12 for tomorrow) I scaled the recipe I used last week up to 16 and added about 3/4 of a cup of triticale flour to it. Not sure I can tell its there.

Made 50 chocolate meringue cookies (using up the egg whites from the frosting for the cake)

Blind baked two pie crusts

I have the sweet potato pie in the oven now, I'll do the pecan pie later this evening in the 2nd blind baked pie shell.

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