[Mike Nolan]

The surgery went well, I'm one-eyed until tomorrow, but the left eye was pretty hazy for the past several months anyway. I don't think I'll be online a lot, though, I can't wear my glasses today because of the patch over my left eye.

As I understand it, the gelatinized starch in a freshly baked bread needs a little while to set. For a wheat-based bread, this is measured in minutes. For other grains, like rye, it is measured in hours.

I think of it like resting a roast after it comes out of the oven.

[Mike Nolan]

Tonight was pizza night, a day early. I used 9 ounces of bread flour and 3 ounces of semolina in the dough this time, I think it came out really tasty, could have possibly stood another few minutes baking, that's always so hard to judge. I didn't get a picture, but it looked a lot like the last two.

I used more havarti and we put some cream cheese on part of it, probably better to use one or the other.

[Mike Nolan]

Having fresh dill in the Aerogarden is starting to have an impact on my cooking. We gave a bag of it to a friend and they used some in some tuna salad, so I added a little to the last of the tuna salad I made the other day. It adds a nice note.

We're going to move pizza night up to Thursday this week, since I have my first eye surgery on Friday. That way there will be left over pizza for dinner on Friday and Saturday, when I don't expect to be in the mood to cook much.

[Mike Nolan]

Keep in mind dill seed, dill weed and fresh dill are not quite the same things, though they have similar flavor profiles. Dill seed is just the seeds, dill weed is seeds plus leaves and stems, both are generally dried. Fresh dill is immature dill weed.

The seed is more pungent and works better in something that is cooked for a long time, like a bread. Dill weed can get bitter if cooked too long. Fresh dill is very volatile and should usually be added to a dish towards the end of cooking, if not afterwards.

[Mike Nolan]

The snow gauge in the back yard currently reads between 9 and 10 inches, only about an inch of that was left over from Saturday. The forecast is for heavy snow (an inch an hour) for possibly another 5 hours, then tapering off until after midnight. We could have 14-16 inches by the time it finishes.

[Mike Nolan]

When we were in Hawaii a year ago, some items were incredibly expensive, a gallon of milk costs $10. Produce was usually pretty decently priced, and fish was fairly cheap too.

[Mike Nolan]

Tonight's pizza

I left the triticale out of the dough, I also let it warm up longer, so it stretched better. I baked it on the underside of my sheet pan so the edges were easier to reach, and we cut it with scissors!

It had less sauce than the last one, more artichokes, more Havarti and a sprinkling of 4 cheese blend. Rather than tomatoes from the garage, I drained a can of diced tomatoes and put them on. I baked it on the bottom rack starting at 375, turning the temperature up a little as it baked so the bottom element remained on, the crust was nice and brown on the bottom and nice and crisp, too.

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[Mike Nolan]

They tweak the 'basket' every year or two, I believe, but it never seems to capture the inflation I see occurring at the grocery store. Maybe I just don't buy the same things as the people they sample? (Then again, it may be that the people who respond to the survey don't provide accurate data on their purchasing habits, which would be the same problem pollsters are having with predicting election results.)

[Mike Nolan]

Tonight is pizza night again here. I'm using the Roman dough again, but this time I left out the triticale and I'm going to bake it on the bottom rack at a lower temperature, to see if I can get it a bit crisper.

[Mike Nolan]

They make their own bread, they kind of remind me of a cross between a bun and a ciabatta. They come in both a white and a whole wheat version, hence their name, 'White or Wheat'.

[Mike Nolan]

Today I used 2 stalks of chopped celery, about 5 chopped eggs, a small jar of diced pimento peppers and mayo, to 3 cans of tuna. Sometimes we use Miracle Whip instead of mayo.

A local sandwich shop my wife likes puts sweet pickle relish in theirs. They have a pretty good egg salad, too, but it has too much onion in it. Last time we were there, as few days ago, I had a sandwich that was half tuna salad, half egg salad. I thought it was pretty good, my wife still thought there was too much onion.

[Mike Nolan]

I made a big bowl of tuna salad and we had it on lavash and naan, with some Costco chocolate mousse cake for dessert.

[Mike Nolan]

I almost always make pot roast in the oven, the only one I've done on the stovetop in years is the 'onion gravy' one, and you have to be careful not to scorch the onions on that one. (I've done it in the oven, but the onions don't dissolve as much, so you don't really wind up with onion gravy.)

The meat, onions and some beef stock go in first, cover and cook at 375 for about an hour, turning the meat once. Then I add the potatoes and aromatics (carrots, celery and usually some herbs, including a bay leaf) go in for about 90 minutes. Sometimes I also add a little more onion then, because the ones that have already been in will nearly dissolve. Then I add the mushrooms and let it cook for another 30 minutes.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by Mike Nolan.

[Mike Nolan]

I actually like the idea of a show about creative use of leftovers, posts here show that many of us have a lot of great ideas for using them.

However, I'm not sure how you make that a sustainable TV show. Even Alton Brown started to run out of things to say after a while.

[Mike Nolan]

I've heard about substituting avocado for butter before, they're high in monounsaturated fat, which is better than most other fats, at least in moderation. But you'd have to like the taste of avocado, my wife can't stand them. (I eat them when they're part of something I order but I don't buy them.) I don't think they'd make good cookies, for example.

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