[Mike Nolan]

I found a place on Etsy where they sell baking steels in a variety of sizes, including 16 x 22, which is about the same size as the 3/4 sheet pans I have that I use a lot. $100 including shipping, but before I order something like that I need to think through where I'd store it when it isn't in use and how to care for it, since it isn't rustproof

The pizzas I've been making on the bottom of my 3/4 sheet pans would fit on that steel, but there's no way to slide it on. I suppose I could try building it on a sheet of parchment but I'm not sure how to slide that onto a hot steel sheet. I haven't found anyone who makes rimless cookie sheets that large yet. Ordering it from a steel fabricator is really expensive.

[Mike Nolan]

The only other pita bread recipe I see on the site is a 'pocketless pita' recipe. I think there are two threads carried over from the KAFBC that give a bunch of recipes for dips that you can use pita with, but neither of them have MrsM's pita recipe.

Zen said she had captured the recipes from the final KAFBC, but I couldn't get in contact with her to ask her to send them to me, if I had them I could probably find some way to organize them. But if the information was buried in a thread, it may be lost.

My wife doesn't remember what recipe she used to make pitas, either, she did say that while they were good, she didn't think they were worth the effort, especially since we were doing it during the summer and it really heated up the kitchen.

[Mike Nolan]

We had Reubens using some of my new batch of sauerkraut, which is 2 1/2 weeks old and getting really good. We each had two sandwiches on the Jewish Bakery Pumpernickel and one on the Provençal rye bread. I didn't notice much difference between the two breads, my wife says the Provençal rye bread is a little too sweet for a Reuben.

[Mike Nolan]

I think there are one or two other pita recipes here, but neither are MrsM's. There's a MrsM on Pinterest, but I'm not sure if it is the same person and the pita recipe appears to be a link to someone else's recipe.

The KAF whole grains book has a recipe where you use 55% whole wheat flour, Beard on Bread recommends using 'hard wheat' flour, so he'd probably prefer bread flour over AP. This may be one of those cases where the oil you use (usually olive oil) makes a big difference in the taste.

I don't honestly remember what recipe we used the last time we made pita, it was at least 12 years ago.

The Persian restaurant that we like buys their pita from Omaha. A couple of years ago they couldn't get the pita they preferred one week, they were apologizing for its poor quality, though I thought it was still pretty good.

When we were in Germany in 2006, our son introduced us to doner kebab, which are served wrapped in a large flatbread that is like a pita but not split.

[Mike Nolan]

I used some of the liquid plant food that came with our Aerogarden, which is a 4-3-6 plant food. The label also lists calcium at 1% and potassium at 0.5%, I do not see iron listed on the label. At this point, the reservoir is nearly dry so I'll watch the plants for a day or two, I don't want them to die from drying out, either, though.

The bottle says it is 'Miracle Gro', but when I look up Miracle Gro products on the Scott's site, at least some of those have iron in them. Web reviews of their new Liquafeed line have not been very positive.

I was going to try to ask the professor in Agronomy and Horticulture at UNL who runs the hydroponics lab, but he's unavailable right now.

I generally only try to start plants inside once a year, so my hands-on experience is pretty limited, and I'm not sure having an Aerogarden adds much experience.

I can send higher resolution pictures via email if that'd help your husband analyze them. What I posted was a medium-resolution iPhone shot, my Canon goes up to 6000 x 4000 pixels and I've got a 90mm macro lens.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by Mike Nolan.

[Mike Nolan]

Since I'm mildly allergic to shrimp, I doubt I'll be making crab-stuffed shrimp.

[Mike Nolan]

I got most of the water out last night, I'm not sure if I can get the rest out without having the plants fall over or out.

My pH meter says the water we use for the plants (we let it sit for a couple of days before using it on plants so the chlorine dissipates) is between 7.2 and 7.3, so slightly alkaline.

I remember from our hot water heater/dishwasher problems several years back that our city water changed its standard pH a few years back, which changed the type of anodes that were needed in water heaters to avoid having the water develop a sludge (which was clogging up the water valve in our basement dishwasher, causing it to fail.)

[Mike Nolan]

I drained off some of the liquid under the plants after watering it down a bit in case there's too much plant food.

Here's what the plants looks like this evening:

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[Mike Nolan]

One of the reasons I like the older editions of the Joy of Cooking is that they don't get carried away as much as some of the more recent editions do. (If I want to get carried away with a recipe, I'll pick up Mastering the Art of French Cooking or nearly any James Beard book.)

There are some pioneer recipes in the Nebraska Centennial Cookbook (my wife's mother was the editor who assembled all the recipes, testing nearly all of them), but I think my favorite old recipe was a bread recipe in a book my wife found in the UNL library.

The instructions were something like this: Grind up a peck of wheat and add enough water to make a good dough. (I think it also called for salt and 'old dough' for leavening.) Bake in a hot oven.

Nothing about how long to knead, how long to bulk rise, how big to make the loaves, how long to let them rise or bake. A sure-fire recipe, right? And yet, I'll bet my great-grandmother could have followed that recipe and made a table full of bread from it.

I ran across an article citing some recipes from ancient Rome, the writer of the article actually got several of them to work, though figuring out what the ingredients actually were was challenging.

[Mike Nolan]

I've only made a few recipes out of the KAF Cookie Companion, but when you already have the world's best chocolate chip oatmeal cookie recipe (IMHO, at least), who needs a large repertoire of cookies?

[Mike Nolan]

We had a lavash pizza tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

The plants are in a tray of 35 fiber pellet pots (that expanded when they got wet), with the pots sitting on a sponge that has its ends in a tub of water (the brand is Planter's Pride), so the pots are supposed to be damp on the bottom, because the pellet pot is sitting on a damp sponge, but I'm going to hold off on watering it for a while.

The folks at Earl May thought this was a good system for tomatoes, and they sprouted nicely.

Over-fertilization is possible, I suppose, I did put liquid plant food in twice.

I'm curious to know how hydroponics keeps the roots from getting too damp. I may have to read up on how hydroponics really works.

[Mike Nolan]

For now I've moved the grow lights further away, the plants might have been getting too hot even though LED lights don't generate that much heat.

Interestingly enough, not all the tomato seedlings are affected, so far.

[Mike Nolan]

We had some left over Kraft mac and cheese and some left over marinara from last week, the two combined very well.

[Mike Nolan]

A number of the true leaves on my tomato plants are turning yellow.

I tried looking up what causes yellow leaves on new plants and these are the possible causes:

Too much light
Too little light
Too much water
Too little water
Too much fertilizer
Too little fertilizer

Gee, that was really a lot of help, wasn't it?

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