[Mike Nolan]

Depending on what kind of cinnamon you buy, I find I need about 50% more than the recipe calls for to be able to taste it. Some of that may be that as you get older (I'm 72) you need stronger flavors to be able to taste them.

I tend to buy the 16/18 ounce containers from Tones or McCormick, which is pretty generic cinnamon. My wife likes the Watkins cinnamon for her oatmeal but it is hard finding a Watkins dealer these days, Amway dealers are even harder to find. A close friend has been selling Tupperware for many years, she's trying to wind that down and is slowly getting rid of her inventory.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm finally getting to the apple strudel today, it probably won't be as pretty as the last one, so I don't plan to post pictures. I had issues stretching the dough as it kept tearing. I used King Arthur AP flour, I don't know if I should be using a stronger flour or a weaker one! (Some research on the Internet suggests I should have used a higher gluten flour and kneaded it longer.)

If I make two for the freezer, as I have been thinking of doing, I may try two different types of flour for the dough, to see which works better for me. I think I'll also increase the amount of dough relative to the amount of filling, I would like to get more layers around the filling. The Li'l Vienna recipe I'm using has you spread the filling over about half of the dough, I think it should be more like a third.

I used a dish towel under the dough at the end to help get it rolling, that worked reasonably well. (Last time I think I tried parchment, which didn't work as well.)

I cut the quantity of apples down from about 2 pounds before peeling and slicing to 1 1/2 pounds, last time I wound up with filling I couldn't get inside the strudel. (It was tasty nonetheless, though.) I got all the filling in this time, but it was still trying to fall out the sides.

Another strudel recipe online seems to use 3-4 times as much dough relative to the filling as the Li'l Vienna recipe does, so I'm definitely making more dough next time, either doubling or tripling the dough recipe.

[Mike Nolan]

The squirrels have been feasting on our tomatoes recently, we are finding half-eaten ones all over the back patio and in the yard. It is supposed to get to 37 tonight, I may pick everything that's ripe or close to ripe later today. We had an inch of rain overnight so right now the ground is still a bit too soggy.

Squirrels can slip through some pretty small holes, even chicken wire might not keep them out.

[Mike Nolan]

They're now calling for lows in the upper 30's this week, I'm not going to strip the tomato plants quite yet. We gave several bags of tomatoes to one of my wife's colleagues, they made some tomato relish with it and have already eaten a bunch of it.

We did bring the big rosemary plant in for the winter, now can I keep it alive?

[Mike Nolan]

We wound up having a lavash pizza on Sunday using some of the left over meat sauce from Friday's spaghetti, I also added more mushrooms and some artichoke hearts. It was very good.

[Mike Nolan]

It would make more sense that way, but when you go through the doorway between the two sections, it says 'Welcome to Marshalls' when you enter the side that has the linens, furniture and kitchen items.

I've been in a Marshalls store (in PA), it had a little bit of everything, just like the TJ Maxx in Lincoln. So I'm not sure there's a clear dividing line between the three.

[Mike Nolan]

TJ Maxx, Marshalls and Home Goods are all the same company, we have all 3 in Lincoln.

Our TJ Maxx seems to cater more to clothes for young people, but it does have a small cooking section.

The Marshalls and Home Goods here are inter-connected, you can go from one to the other and the checkout area is for both. The Home Goods area seems to have mostly clothes, the Marshalls has furniture, linens and a pretty big cooking/food area, with a large wall of kitchen implements and tools. They won't have the latest innovations, but I've gotten measuring cups, custard cups, brushes and a few pans there, usually at very good prices. (I'm always looking for new shapes and sizes of brushes.)

The company buys a lot of surplus inventory (as does Tuesday Morning), so the selection changes all the time. The foodstuffs they have (candies, chocolates, pasta and oils/sauces) tend to be brands I'm not familiar with, I'm not sure if that's just because they aren't carried in this part of the country or if they're buying from companies that market under multiple brands or haven't established other distribution channels.

[Mike Nolan]

I've only been to our TJ Maxx a few times, we have a Marshalls and a Home Goods store a lot closer now, similar concept (and same ownership). I did get a nice santoku knife at TJ Maxx once, but the foodstuffs are kind of tucked into a quiet corner of that store. I've not been all that impressed with the food items at the Marshalls.

[Mike Nolan]

I find when cooking with wine that adding a little acid helps cut the sweetness. I've got home made carrot and celery vinegars that work well for this, plus I have several bottles of white and red wine vinegars from the wine teacher at UNL, his standard Christmas present to my wife.

We had hot dogs for supper.

[Mike Nolan]

I see a lot of vacant spaces in the malls near us, most of them were probably young women's clothing stores. We've lost a lot of restaurants here, not all of them directly to COVID. The Red Lobster in Lincoln closed last month, because they couldn't reach an agreement on a new lease.

Fast food restaurants come and go all the time, so it is hard to say which ones wouldn't have made it anyway. Zoup closed during the first few months of the pandemic, which is too bad because they had several soups we liked, though most of them use a soup base with garlic in it.

The Valentinos Grand Buffet, which had been closed for the last year due to COVID, will not reopen. Vals is down to just two dine-in locations in Lincoln, (from at least 5) but they must have a half dozen take-out-or-delivery locations.

[Mike Nolan]

If I understood the article, NJ is allowing cottage industry food preparation that is delivered to the customer, as well as farmer's markets and roadside stands.

[Mike Nolan]

We had spaghetti with meat sauce and cheese toast.

I picked over 40 pounds of Winesap apples yesterday, I need to start processing them in the morning. Most of them I will turn into apple pie filling, but I think I may make a strudel, too. You are supposed to be able to freeze unbaked apple strudel, so I might make more than one.

I don't know if you can cut apples up for strudel and freeze them, then put them in the pastry before baking it.

[Mike Nolan]

I have a small siding repair I need done, I can't even get anyone to come out and look at it.

[Mike Nolan]

I won't try to post a link, but the Wall Street Journal has an article today on delays in getting appliances with the headline: Just 180 more days until your new oven arrives: appliance delays cause havoc.

I fully sympathize with the situation homeowners are facing.

I'm glad we were able to get our dishwasher, refrigerator and freezer working again. We did get the disposal replaced, I wound up ordering the model we wanted from Lowes online, I think it actually came from a store in the Omaha area.

[Mike Nolan]

I don't buy pasta very often, except for Kraft macaroni and cheese boxes and the cheese tortellini that Costco has. I did buy some orchiette to make minestrone with a couple of years ago, used half the package and eventually threw out the rest. (I thought the minestrone was good, my wife didn't like that I had added summer squash to it.)

Most of the time I make pasta myself using the KA pasta kit, I like the semolina egg pasta recipe that came with the KA pasta kit, it makes good spaghetti, fettuccine and lasagna noodles.

My KA pasta kit came with two cutter, one is called spaghetti or linguini, though I think it is sort of in between those two shapes, not exactly flat but not really round, either. There's also a fettuccine cutter, and I use it for both fettuccine and soup noodles, the former I try to get to the '4' setting on the roller, soup noodles I usually do at '3'. If I want wide noodles, I hand cut them after rolling them out.

One of my projects this winter is to try making Chinese pulled noodles. I ran across a 'how-to' article that says the secret is adding yeast flakes (non-fermenting) to relax the gluten.

If I'm making something that is usually served on noodles, I generally prefer to make spaetzle, using the recipe that Grizzlybiscuits posted to the original KAF site.

[Author]

Posts