[Mike Nolan]

It looks like the u-pick orchard we go to will have winesap apples starting around the 1st of October, hopefully this year I'll be able to pick some. The last few years have had assorted complications that kept me from going out to pick apples.

[Mike Nolan]

I ordered more Black Seeded Simpson and Rouge D'Hiver lettuce pods from Aerogarden, my plan is to start them around the first of October, so that they're producing lots of lettuce by late November. (I'm kind of hoping we do family Christmas in Lincoln this year, as I don't think my wife's shoulder is going to be up for either flying anywhere or for 2 days in the car to drive to Pittsburgh.)

[Mike Nolan]

We had takeout chicken.

This afternoon I processed the tomatoes that I picked several days ago, after throwing out quite a few of them, then picked enough that I was able to make 5 full quarts of tomato juice, which are in their water bath now. At the rate my wife is going through tomato juice right now, these will be gone before Thanksgiving.

If the weather holds up, I may be able to process another batch of tomato juice by the weekend or early next week, but that might be the last big picking. (Weekends are kind of busy right now with football season and the usual fall house tasks, I may just wait until next Monday to do anything.) The tomatoes are definitely winding down, and I keep hearing calls for an early frost.

[Mike Nolan]

My wife remembers her grandmother's Christmas coffee cake fondly, she even has the recipe for it (it was published in the Nebraska Centennial Cookbook, which her mother edited.)

However, we've made it several times and she says we never came close to the original. How much of that is just nostalgia from 60 years ago is unknown.

Personally, I think one of the factors was that her grandmother had dairy cows and when she used sour cream, it was probably fresh cream that had been allowed to go sour, not the cultured stuff you buy at the store these days. (BTW, how can they make a low fat sour cream??)

One of these days I'm going to try making that recipe either with some cream that I have let go sour or with creme fraiche. (I suspect the way milk and cream are heat-treated before they're packaged might be a factor as well, and while it is possible to buy raw milk in Nebraska direct from the farm, I'm not sure what I'd do with a 5 gallon can of it, which is how it is usually sold.)

[Mike Nolan]

Sous vide cooking has changed a lot of perceptions, because you can cook something to a 130 degree temperature safely even though it might take 6 hours or longer, but for beef, pork and chicken I think it is still the case that as long as the temperature is higher than 140 you're not in the danger zone regardless of the cooking method. Most crock pots will get the liquid to a boil, which means it is well over 212.

I have a little crock pot that doesn't have a temperature control, I use a Lutron light dimmer cord (like you'd use with a table lamp) to adjust it to a temperature that works for hot fudge (no more than 110.)

[Mike Nolan]

I generally try to avoid plumbing repairs and anything that involves being on a ladder. We've got a bulb out on a cable light about 18 feet off the ground in our great room, no way I'm climbing up there to replace it, even if we had a ladder that went that high. But it isn't worth $100 to get an electrician out just to replace one light bulb.

[Mike Nolan]

Kind of a long drive for most of us, 1456 miles in my case.

[Mike Nolan]

My former neighbor who runs the local Sysco office would say that the only things high gluten flour are good for are pizza and bagels.

[Mike Nolan]

The garbage disposal on the cleanup sink also needs replacing; the model we want (Insinkerator 1 HP) wasn't in stock yesterday, but should be available at Lowes next week. I'll ask the people repairing the dishwasher if they install garbage disposals, I'm not going to try to do it myself.

After my wife's fall while I was out of town, we're looking at putting a digital lock on one door so that someone can get in without a key in an emergency. I'll probably install that myself. (We had the lock on the door to the garage from inside the house fail last week, I was able to install the replacement parts once I got the stripped screw out, but spending an hour under a kitchen cabinet isn't something I want to do anymore, I installed a garbage disposal once, it took me half a day.)

[Mike Nolan]

We went ahead and ordered the new pump for the dishwasher and have a tech scheduled to look at the refrigerator and freezer on Tuesday. Hopefully both will be something easy to replace. (I fully expect the freezer to be the defrost timer, I'm hoping the refrigerator just needs a new thermostat.)

My goal is to get another few years out of these appliances and basically kick the can down the road on their replacement, by which time maybe the supply channels won't be so messed up.

A couple of weeks ago my relatively new iPhone 12 had a message about there being water in the firewire port, though it hadn't gotten wet or anything, not sure why it gave me that message.

[Mike Nolan]

I think they still sell it as Sir Lancelot in 50 pound bags through their commercial division, but not to retail customers, but I thought it was the same flour as their blue bag bread flour for retail.

[Mike Nolan]

Could have been a hydration issue, bagels are a low hydration dough, sometimes as low as 50%. Peter Reinhart describes the dough as looking satiny and not tacky at all.

I start the water boiling before I divide and shape them, I find by the time I'm done shaping them, the water is boiling and the bagels are ready to go in the pot, sometimes they pass the float test right after shaping.

[Mike Nolan]

I ordered takeout, too tired.

[Mike Nolan]

My guess is the higher end Bosch models are backordered at the factory due to parts issues, or stuck on a carrier ship. The WSJ says supply channel delays are likely to be a problem well into 2022 if not 2023.

[Mike Nolan]

Well, the Bosch dishwasher we're looking at is unavailable, probably until December at the earliest. (Nebraska Furniture Mart may have a more honest estimate, they say March of 2022.)

So we're reconsidering the $650 repair option, and we're re-thinking repairing the SubZeros as well.

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