[Mike Nolan]

I have ordered several things from walmart.com, including a 24 pound tub of wheat berries, sometimes they're better priced than Amazon, sometimes they're not. I see several sellers of barley flour on Amazon as well. I haven't tried ordering from them since the walmart plus plan (or whatever it is called) started, I don't know if that affects anything, like shipping costs.

Natural Grocers appears to have barley flour at a pretty good price, but there isn't one in Indiana.

[Mike Nolan]

Today I'm making a batch of chicken noodle soup.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making semolina bread today.

[Mike Nolan]

I am making a batch of bagels today.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm starting a batch of chicken stock today, and making spaghetti with meat sauce for supper.

[Mike Nolan]

Macarons are one of those things you either get or don't get.

I made some chocolate macarons for a dessert pot luck a few years ago (back when people were still doing pot lucks), and almost nobody even tried them. I think I took 24, I brought back 20 and I know I ate at least one at the pot luck.

This was before anybody local was selling them (at $2.00 or more each).

[Mike Nolan]

One of the older professors in my wife's department tripped over an electrical cable in his back yard a couple of months ago and broke his upper arm so bad they had to replace the upper arm bone with a titanium one.

He's going to be in recovery mode for several more months and will not be teaching any in-person classes in the winter/spring semester. He used to ride his bike to campus in good weather, not sure when he'll be able to resume that. He was running 4-5 miles a day, he's back up to about 2 miles a day, but at a slower pace.

[Mike Nolan]

It is hydroponics, the pumps circulate the water about 1 hour out of every 12. Our 'farm' garden has two 2-gallon tanks, each of which holds 12 pods.

There's also a seedling starter top that I believe has 85 openings, which is a lot of plants to start, I'm assuming they won't get very big before they're starting to crowd into each other, so I'm not sure if we'll buy one of those for starting some plants for the 2021 outdoor garden or not.

We did buy the 'start anything' kit to plant some butter crunch lettuce, 1 of 5 sprouted, I will probably pull the 4 that didn't sprout and try them again this week. (The butter crunch seeds were from last spring, but I was hoping for somewhat better germination rate.)

The lights come on at around 8AM and go off around 11PM, though you can adjust that up or down, as well as when the daily cycle starts.

Recently I've been topping off one or both tanks nearly every day, all that growing uses up a lot of water. It's also in a south-facing window so there's probably some evaporation due to sunlight.

Liquid plant food is added every 14 days, and they recommend draining the water in a tank and replacing it periodically, every 2-3 feedings. I haven't done that yet, I will probably need to do it to the right garden in a week or so. (I'm going to ask my wife to talk to the hydroponics expert in her department to see what his recommendation is on replacing the water.)

Here's what our gardens looked like before today's harvesting. Lots of dill and basil. I'll probably use the dill in a batch of chicken stock, not sure what I'll do with the basil, maybe a pizza.

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[Mike Nolan]

Pronouncing it mac-a-rawn (rhymes with fawn as opposed to rhyming with moon) seems to be a fairly recent French influence, last 20 years or so. Among older bakers, the word 'macaron' and 'macaroon' are used somewhat interchangeably for both types of baked treats and both rhyme with moon. (I love them both, but since my wife can't stand coconut I seldom buy the coconut ones and I've never made them.)

[Mike Nolan]

As I understand it, air bubbles just below the crust are generally a proofing issue, ones further inside the loaf are shaping issues.

[Mike Nolan]

Last week I made about 3 quarts of stock from the bones of the turkey breast we had on Christmas, so I've got plenty of turkey stock for the next year.

[Mike Nolan]

The second batch of empanadas is better than the first one, I added more caramel to the filling and used more sugar on the outside.

My goal was to come up with something close to the caramel apple empanadas that Taco Bell used to sell. They discontinued them a year or so ago, and I haven't been to a Taco Bell since, and have no desire to ever eat there again. (There are plenty of places I can get a better taco or burrito within a few blocks of us.)

Anyway, the filling is pretty close, the crust isn't quite right. I may try the butter pie crust I normally use but maybe with a bit more sugar in the dough. (The one I used for this test has egg in it and it isn't very flaky.)

[Mike Nolan]

Sorry to hear about your injury, but thanks for the update on the book.

[Mike Nolan]

I bought a set of the EVO oil sprayers (the smaller ones) a few years ago, I use one for vegetable oil and the other for water. They've both worked better than any other sprayers I've bought.

Over the last several years I've gone from using pure canola oil to using corn oil to using a blend of canola and safflower oil.

[Mike Nolan]

I made half of the empanadas today, I'll do the others tomorrow. I had to defrost a big container of apple pie filling and I won't use even half of it, so I'll be making something else with the rest of it, possibly an apple pie with a streusel top, since I've only got one crust in the freezer, although I think my wife would prefer an Irish Apple Cake.

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