Mike Nolan
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We had macaroni and cheese, as my wife is on trick or treat door duty this evening, though it is cold here (upper 40's) and activity has been slower than normal.
We're doing safe distancing trick or treating again this year.
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You must be logged in to view attached files.We had creamed tuna on biscuits.
The first few times I make a recipe, it always takes me a lot longer to prep, and I suspect many recipe authors don't factor their familiarity with the recipe into their time estimates, if they even give them.
Cookies are a combination of flour, sugar and fat (including eggs), and the ratio of the three is the major determinant on whether it is flat, crisp, chewy, etc. Alton Brown did an episode on sugar cookies that explained this very well.
Without looking at the recipe (and possibly trying it), I can't say for sure, but flat cookies generally have more sugar. Sugar melts in the oven (that's why it is often grouped in with the liquids in a recipe) and that causes the cookie to flatten out. Fat gets crisp, so cookies with more fat in them get crunchy.
I'm not sure refrigerating the dough would cause them to get flatter, though. That seems counterintuitive.
The challenge with your appliance purchases may be delivery time, when our refrigerator, freezer and dishwasher all stopped working last month I went shopping for possible replacements. The refrigerator and freezer I never did get a clear estimate of availability, they were hoping for a shipment of them some time in December but were already backlogged on those models to other customers, including contractors. One store gave me an estimate of March 2022 for a new Bosch dishwasher, which I think was at least trying to be honest.
We wound up repairing all three, hopefully they'll last long enough for the repair cost to be worthwhile.
My wife generally adds at least a half hour to my estimate of when dinner will be ready. Something big like a turkey she adds an hour.
I started early enough today that I actually hit my target of 5:30 for dinner.
I've seen the judges on a cooking competition refuse to taste a recipe if the chef put the spoon in his mouth and then back in the dish. Something I've never seen them call a competitor on is tasting something like a liquor straight from the bottle before using it.
In a lot of commercial kitchens there are containers of tasting spoons in several places, and you throw them in a bain marie after using them once.
Tonight I made chicken thighs roasted on a bed of sweet potato, apple, onion and Brussels sprouts, with diced uncured bacon. The herbs were fresh rosemary, dried thyme and dried sage.
It was good but I think it can be improved upon. (I left out the garlic the recipe called for, of course.)
Next time I'll cut back on the onion, increase the amount of sweet potato and apple, cut the apples into larger pieces, and leave out the bacon or at least cut way back on it.
Finding the chicken thighs was almost the hardest part, and I wound up with bigger ones than the recipe called for (8 ounces vs 6 ounces). That increased the cooking time a bit.
It was about an hour and a half from start to ready to eat.
I made Hamelman's semolina bread yesterday. The semolina/Altamura bread was a bit of a disappointment, and it went moldy within 5 days.
I'm moving the Aerogarden down to the basement. Now that we've been through two cycles of it, we have a better idea how often it needs to be tended to or harvested from. It doesn't need to be in a south-facing window, or in a window at all.
And this way the rosemary plant that we brought in for the winter can get a south-facing window, so maybe we can actually keep it alive over the winter. I think most of the time we lose the rosemary plant because we forget to water it. But our plant guy passed away earlier this year, so I'm doing the weekly plant watering.
Once I get the Aerogarden set up again, I plan to start some lettuce plants. Based on the last time around, we should be able to start picking lettuce around the end of November.
They're now calling for a low of 28 Friday night and lows in the mid 20's most of next week, so the outside garden should get its killer frost soon. I did manage to get another quart of tomato juice canned from the tomatoes I picked last Thursday.
I need to make some chicken stock soon, I'm down to just a few small containers of it in the freezer, none large enough for a batch of soup.
We finished off the chili today.
My wife has this 'Autumn Chicken' recipe she wants me to make, chicken thighs roasted in the oven with sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, apples and onions. I've got all the ingredients assembled, not sure when I'll make it, probably not until Friday or Saturday because we've got things scheduled in the late afternoon or early evening the next two days.
That's a lot of water, how much flour did it call for? I know focaccia is supposed to be a high moisture dough.
I've only made it a few times, and though it was good, we didn't finish all of it.
I don't use ADY a lot, but I always take what I need for proofing out of the total liquid called for.
My wife bought me an old fashioned hand-cranked egg beater a while back with removable beaters so it is easy to clean. I use it for things where I don't want the intense mixing of a stick blender, like making batter for crepes or popovers. I also use it for custards.
I don't know when the last time it was that we used a hand-held mixer, I'm not even sure where ours is, probably beside the microwave. It may not have been used since the Obama administration, probably for something like seven-minute frosting.
I think well over half of reviews are 'placed', which means they aren't trustworthy. Then there are the insidious people who are posting negative reviews about product X in order to promote product Y.
And I see too many reviews that morph into promotions for something else entirely: This is a great mixer, but do you know you can improve your performance in bed by using blah blah blah.
And as my wife pointed out recently, these days the first several pages of a Google search are often useless.
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