[Mike Nolan]

I deboned a duck once, to make turducken. The breast isn't that big, but the wings are huge, because ducks need strong wings to fly. The leg bones are bigger too, because they use them for swimming. It took a lot longer to debone than a chicken does.

[Mike Nolan]

I know you can use kefir as a seed to make more kefir, like you do with buttermilk.

[Mike Nolan]

It strikes me as strange to find kefir but not buttermilk. That'd be like finding octopus but not shrimp.

[Mike Nolan]

I seldom read the reviews on Amazon, because I assume the really positive or negative ones are often fake.

[Mike Nolan]

There's a thrift store near our favorite Chinese restaurant that has this painted on their window: Shopping at a thrift store is cheaper than therapy.

[Mike Nolan]

A French meringue is fairly easy to make, but it weeps easily.

Some people think that an Italian meringue is the hardest to make, because you have to make the hot sugar syrup then pour it into the egg whites, but to me a Swiss meringue is the most work, because you have to cook it in a double boiler. (Maybe it's just that I've been making cooked sugar candies for so long that making a sugar syrup is easy for me.)

I've always admired those who can make lovely peaks of meringue, mine winds up looking like something made by two little kids playing in a bubble bath. I suppose I could pipe it on, but that's a lot of work, too.

For a while I was making a brown sugar French meringue, but we got tired of it, and it seemed to weep even more than one made with powdered sugar.

[Mike Nolan]

Several years ago I bought a 10" diameter round Tramontina enameled cast iron Dutch oven at Sams Club for about $40. We also have a huge Club aluminum roaster (11x16) that we've had for nearly 50 years, big enough to do a turkey or a goose with the lid on.

I've made bread in the Tramontina, but not the Club. The largest boule I've made in the Dutch oven was about 16 ounces of dough, I could probably make one with 2-3 pounds of dough and have it pretty much fill up the pan.

[Mike Nolan]

A hot Dutch oven is supposed to do good job of reproducing what happens in a deck oven with steam injection, but since I've never baked with a commercial oven, I'm not sure how close it really comes.

Spraying a little water in the Dutch oven should help increase the amount of steam it generates. You're supposed to take the lid off about half way through the baking.

When I was doing my steam tube testing , the Dutch oven results were pretty close to what I got with the steam tube.

See Adventures in Steam

[Mike Nolan]

I don't have a cloche, but I do have a Dutch oven, and when I bake in it, the oven is pre-heated with the Dutch oven in the oven. This does make lowering the dough into the pan a bit tricky, but I've got a big wide offset spatula (KAF used to sell it as a cookie shovel) that works pretty well. I've seen instructions online to make a sling from parchment and use that to lower the dough into the hot pan, but I've never tried that.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm starting to think about my 2022 garden a bit. I think I'll skip the Brandywine and Mortgage Lifter tomatoes next year, and do more Amish Paste and Italian Heirloom, those were the majority of what I processed last night. I'll keep the Rutgers, 4th of July and First Lady II, maybe add Celebrity, a variety I've had good result with.

Several years ago, one of the test gardens at UNL was planted with Defiant tomatoes, which is a determinate that produces an 8 ounce fruit. Those were pretty good, I may add that to the mix next year.

My 4th of July plants went crazy this year, at least twice I've picked a large bowl of them. The First Lady II plants did well, too, but I think they didn't get enough water during the hot months. Next year I should set up some soaker hoses to water the tomato garden when the hot dry spell hits (which it always does.) I meant to do it this year but was having some ankle problems and just never got it done.

[Mike Nolan]

Yeah, I was up past 2AM processing them all, since I can only process 7 quarts at a time in my 24 quart pot. All 10 jars sealed, so I'm happy. I've done 22 quarts of tomato juice so far this season, which seems like a lot but my mother often did 50. (We drank it all winter.) We've already finished off 5 quarts and are working on the 6th.

And we've got our big fridge and freezer back in operation, though the freezer is still working on getting cold. And the dishwasher is currently running a load of mostly pots and pans. Now I just need to get a new garbage disposal installed on the cleanup sink. (It is on order, should be here early next week, then I need to get a plumber to put it in.)

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by Mike Nolan.

[Mike Nolan]

I canned 10 quarts of tomato juice last night, most of the tomatoes that I picked yesterday were big ones like Amish Paste and Italian Heirloom and they produce a lot of pulp and juice.

[Mike Nolan]

We had extra sharp cheddar cheese, Honeycrisp apples and Genoa salami for supper tonight, they paired very well together.

Tonight I need to do a third batch of tomato juice, I picked 3 big bowls of tomatoes today. Might still be another good picking left depending on the weather.

The heat has broken here, it was 44 this morning and probably didn't get above 72 today. Most of the hummingbirds have headed south, only saw one or two all day.

[Mike Nolan]

Here's what Cook's Illustrated has to say about hot water pie crust, but I suspect this was not Kenji Lopez-Alt's work.

hot water pie crust

I think the recipe Susan Purdy has makes a very good savory pie, I use it for chicken pot pie.

[Mike Nolan]

Re-reading Kenji's article on pie crusts, it occurs to me that using whole wheat flour for a pie crust has one advantage, it might discourage gluten formation.

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