Mike Nolan
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When I was testing the recipes for Peter's 'Artisan Breads Every Day' book, I made a wheat starter and I also tried some recipes that you would keep in the fridge for several days, baking a little each day. My experience was that they started to behave and taste a bit like a sourdough by day 4.
Some of the preferements I've made recently start to behave a bit like a sourdough after 18 hours, so my guess is that if you make the preferment at least 24 hours before you want to mix the dough, you'll get reasonable results. No, it still isn't a true Type I sourdough, but it'll have some sour to it.
I've been maintaining a rye starter on and off for a couple of years now, when I want to make some sourdough wheat bread I make up a levain about 24 hours in advance using equal weights of wheat flour and water and 5% (by flour weight) rye starter.
When I look at my tomato plants, the vines and leaves don't look as dense as I've seen them in other years, but usually the peak of the season starts around Labor Day so the vines could grow a lot between now and then. What we need some time in August is a cool spell long enough for the plants to blossom and set a lot of fruit, any day it hits the 90's is pretty much a no joy day as far as setting fruit is concerned.
We got our first two tomatoes that weren't Fourth of July earlier this week, an Italian Heirloom plant.
On the other hand, the cherry tomato plants in the Aerogarden are so thick I can't see whether there's any fruit ripe yet, though I see quite a few mostly pea-sized green tomatoes around the edges.
I've tried some of the bargain brand hot dogs, they're awful, I'll willingly pay 3 times as much for a brand I can actually stand to eat. I've bought Nathan's, but they seem greasier than most other brands. We buy Fairbury all-beef hot dogs, a local brand. Vienna dogs are better, but unavailable here.
Good corned beef is also challenging to find, and we've learned the hard way that a lot of deli corned beef has garlic in it. If I had a good smoker I could try making Montreal Smoked Meat again, it is sort of like pastrami, though that's like saying a Cadillac is sort of like a Chevy. (Most MSM recipes have garlic in them, but I made some without garlic and it was pretty good.) I've been looking at the Big Green Egg, but the smaller size ones don't get good marks.
My wife doesn't like saffron, I think it bothers her stomach, so we don't have any in the house and I don't think I've ever made anything that used it. Garlic, curry powder, saffron, paprika, turmeric, and cardamom are herbs and spices we don't use much, if at all. (And to be honest, I don't miss them all that much, a number of foods that use garlic are IMHO actually better without the garlic in it, though I do like garlic bread. And I've never understood garlic in mac and cheese!)
I know many people like the combination of chocolate and coffee, but not being a coffee drinker it has never been that high on my list. I haven't had Mexican chocolate that I know of (though I have had Rick Bayless's mole sauce, so maybe I have), but I can see how cinnamon and even chili peppers would go well with it.
We wound up having sandwiches made with the eye of round I roasted several days ago, which isn't quite gone yet.
We had tuna melts with tomatoes from the garden, and some sweet corn.
I got five feeders filled and hung last night, so now of course I don't expect to see any more hummers for 4 weeks. 🙂
Followup: We did see a hummer at one of the feeders this evening, so she knows there's food available and is likely to stay for a while. Not sure if this one was nesting in the neighborhood or just an early migrant.
The two hummingbird migration websites I follow don't even start tracking the fall migration south until August, so that bird was definitely early.
Their territorial nature is fascinating to watch, I've seen one bird spend hours sitting on a chair between several of our feeders, leaving only to chase off some other hummingbird from the feeders she is guarding for herself, and seldom feeding herself.
We had sloppy joes on Italian0-style brats, plus some sweet corn.
I have tiny cherry tomatoes on the plants in the Aerogarden, so they're coming along well.
We had a lavash pizza tonight, it was soggier than normal, not sure if I overloaded it with ingredients or just didn't drain them enough. But it was still yummy.
I haven't seen signs of critters nibbling at my tomato plants yet, I usually lose a few that way. Last year something (possibly the fox I see in the back yard every few days) got most of a melon.
The Wall Street Journal had an article on how suburban gardening is providing a better environment for deer, with richer foods, than what's left of the forests. In fact, in large parts of the east coast, the deer population now exceeds what it was in pre-Colonial days. Suggestions that they allow harvesting of wild deer for meat don't sit well with some folks, but I grew up in deer country and that's better than letting unskilled hunters into the woods and fields, where they sometimes shoot everything BUT the deer, including themselves.
We got nearly an inch and a quarter of rain overnight here, but I think that's all for the next week.
There's also some discussion of Italian Beef in this thread. Based on what my son sent me, I'm guessing he's using his sous vide rather than his instant pot these days.
I used the drippings and fat from an eye of round roast to make another batch of jus for Italian beef.
I used some beef bouillon in water, some onion, carrots and celery, a little garlic powder (since my wife won't be eating it anyway), oregano, basil, marjoram, thyme and parsley, plus some salt, a few peppercorns, a small amount of chipotle powder, several dashes of Worcestershire, and a bit of red wine. I let it boil as slowly as I could for over an hour until the volume had reduced by at least 50%.
Then I let it cool to about 140, put in 1/4 pound of sliced rare roast beef, and let it warm up for several minutes.
Not bad, I'd make it again. Still need to find a roll that can stand up to being dipped, though.
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