[Mike Nolan]

I'd just set them gently on the poured chocolate and push them in with a toothpick. Another possibility would be to put them in the mold and pour the chocolate on top of them. (Might make sense to put them in face down, making the bottom of the mold the top of the bar, which is often the case with molded chocolates.)

[Mike Nolan]

Juniper berries and pine nuts may have a place in cooking (although my wife can't stand pine nuts), and possibly even pine needles, but I don't think the rest of the tree does.

[Mike Nolan]

Cooked frozen chopped broccoli actually goes fairly well with macaroni and cheese.

[Mike Nolan]

Her trifles are never quite the same each time, the fruit varies, usually bananas, strawberries, blueberries and mandarin oranges, sometimes kiwi or star fruit, maybe grapes if they're really sweet, but it also usually includes ladyfingers (available in the frozen food section), angel food cake, strawberry Jello, pastry cream and Kool Whip. But they're always delicious.

The sweet potato pie is not as pretty as I would have liked, but it tastes pretty good for a first time with a recipe that drew from at least 3 sources. Having pie crusts in the freezer ready to be rolled out cuts a lot of prep time, that's why I usually make enough pie crust for several pies. (And an all-butter pie crust always has great mouth feel.)

[Mike Nolan]

I made our potato leek soup for tonight using the vegetable stock I made and froze a few weeks ago, normally I use chicken stock. It made a subtle difference in the flavors, a bit lighter and I could taste the tomato that was in the stock, I don't use tomato in chicken stock.

I made some minestrone once using Trader Joe's vegetable stock, which I thought had an odd flavor that affected the soup. My home-made vegetable stock was good enough by itself that I could have seen serving it like a consomme. I need to make more.

[Mike Nolan]

The sweet potato pie was good, my wife says we may never make pumpkin pie again. It has the spice flavors of a pumpkin pie but without the pumpkin taste. Maybe a touch more cinnamon next time.

I made this one using 1/2 cup of cream, which I don't always have on hand, and 1 cup of 1% milk, plus a full stick of butter and about a third of a cup of light brown sugar. Next time I might increase the sugar to a half cup, the brown sugar and the butter combine to add a butterscotch-like flavor. I might also try dark brown sugar.

[Mike Nolan]

Isn't there one of the cheese companies that disses an unnamed competitor for using cellulose in their grated cheese by calling it 'adding sawdust'?

[Mike Nolan]

Brown sugar is sugar with molasses in it, toasted sugar is sugar that has been slowly baked to partially caramelize the sugar but without destroying the crystalline structure.

See Toasted Sugar

I've never made or used it, so I can't speak to its taste or other aspects, but it might be interesting to sprinkle some on an apple pie.

[Mike Nolan]

I need to see if I can still get Jonagolds, they made a pretty good strudel and a GREAT apple pie. They don't store well, though, so they're usually not in the stores for a long time, and I've only seen them at one of the stores we shop at. There are some other varieties I'm unfamiliar with in the stores this year.

[Mike Nolan]

Here's a shot of my wife holding her trifle.

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[Mike Nolan]

Here's my sweet potato pie, haven't tasted it yet. (I'm not a big fan of pumpkin pie, and don't eat a lot of sweet potato, either, but I'll probably try a piece tomorrow.)

The crust was getting too dark (I think I had the oven too hot), so I put a pie shield on it, and the pie rose up to the point where it touched the shield, so that's why there's a ring about a half inch from the edge.

The recipe was sort of an amalgam of the recipe on this site and two other recipes, we baked the sweet potato rather than boil it, I used some cream, some milk and lots of butter. I only used about a third of a cup of brown sugar. The spices were cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and a pinch of clove.

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[Mike Nolan]

I made the sweet potato pie today, we won't cut into it until tomorrow. My wife also made a trifle. So we're covered for desserts for the holiday. 🙂

[Mike Nolan]

Today I made a double batch of Pastry Cream which will go in a trifle for Christmas Eve.

I made it using my induction burner and it thickened MUCH faster than it does over a gas flame, not sure why, but that's what happened when we made pastry cream in pastry school, too, even though we were making about four times as much as I was making today, so it must have something to do with how the heat is distributed in an induction pan.

We also have several sweet potatoes baking for a Sweet Potato Pie, which I'll probably make tomorrow.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm going to give our grow lights another trial some time next year, I don't think we used the right type of potting soil. We also didn't fertilize it and probably didn't water it enough, either. We did get several tomato plants that were big enough that we took them outside to get natural sunlight for a week or two before we transplanted them into the garden, but I think the tomato plants that bore the most fruit for us this year were from plants we bought from nurseries.

I wish I could find the older First Lady tomato plants, the First Lady II seeds that are their replacement have never impressed me like the First Lady plants we used to get from a local nurseryman who, sadly, passed away a few years ago. Those bore fruit like no tomato I've ever grown, but it was also a great year for tomatoes and the last few have not been for this area of the state, even the pros were having yield issues.

[Mike Nolan]

Sometimes lost items never surface, I lost the silicone mat I was using to roll out pastries earlier this year, I finally gave up and bought a new one that has both concentric circles and rectangles so I can use it for pies and things like cinnamon rolls.

I made a batch of bagels today. I'm currently looking at recipes for a sweet potato pie that I hope to make on Christmas eve.

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