[Mike Nolan]

If you get a large wide offset spatula, you can use that to safely lower a boule into a hot Dutch oven. KAF used to sell a 'cookie spatula' that works well for this, but, like so many great products, they don't have it any more.

[Mike Nolan]

A starter that is left in the fridge will develop into one that is dominated by cold-liking bacteria, which changes the type of acidity you get to one that is a sharper 'bite'. If you like that kind of sourdough, it works. (I can never remember if it is acetic-acid bacteria or lactic-acid bacteria that like the cold.)

If you bake bread more than about 3 times a week, you can adjust your feeding schedule so that you feed first, then pull out what you need to bake with a few hours later. (That's what commercial bakers do, they don't throw away good flour!)

My rye starter went bad a few months ago and I haven't built a new one yet, but I'm holding off on much new recipe testing until after my cataract surgery, the first of which is later this month. I've been building preferments for some of the breads I bake, letting it sit anywhere from an hour or two to overnight. Overnight is long enough to start to develop some sourdough tang.

[Mike Nolan]

I saw something that said netflix was starting a cooking competition show that involved leftovers (just what we need, another non-reality cooking competition show!), I didn't see anything about the food network doing it. But the food network is almost never about cooking anymore!

[Mike Nolan]

I remember Jozy, though I didn't interact with her much. Sorry to hear of her passing.

[Mike Nolan]

I don't think Mrs Cindy ever had a logon here, otherwise I could reassign the authorship of that thread to her. I suppose I could create an account for her, but that's kind of creepy.

FWIW, here's the Southern Living recipe for Angel Biscuits, which they call a cross between biscuits and Parker House rolls

[Mike Nolan]

The cord is probably about six feet long, we have it plugged in to an extension cord, because the closest outlet is blocked by a desk. (It would have reached that one.)

I'm thinking I may eventually put a small UPS (uninterruptible power supply) in that room, my son tells me that the clock and possibly some other data can get reset if there's a power outage. (It may forget things like when the garden was set up and when it was last fed, and I don't know if there's an easy way to reset those.)

It does NOT need to be near a window, we just put it there because that was the most convenient place for it. We also set it on a coffee table so that we don't have to get down on our hands and knees to work on it. My wife can work on trimming it while sitting down.

My son has his (he now has at least 2 of them) on a counter in his basement laundry room, but he telecommutes and his desk is just around the corner, so he's down there for several hours most days.

If you get the farm system (24 pods) and have a wireless network, you can monitor your gardens from a cell phone, I think some of the smaller ones can do that as well.

I think we'll eventually be getting salads nearly every day from ours, we do have some tomato kits that my son ordered (I probably wouldn't have ordered them and I'm not sure when we'll use them), but I'm more interested in salad greens and herbs. My son has been growing tomatoes, bok choi and poblano peppers.

I think with 2 or 3 farm gardens you could pretty much grow your own leafy vegetables year round. You'd still need to buy root vegetables, though.

[Mike Nolan]

We had mac and cheese with some fresh salad from the Aerogarden. We're harvesting from it every 3-4 days, usually getting enough for 2-4 salads depending on how big we want them. As a few more plants get into their prime picking range, we'll probably have to start picking every other day.

[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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