[Mike Nolan]

I saw one recipe that said something like: throw whatever vegetables you have in a pot, but not root starches like potatoes.

She doesn't remember who she sent it do, does she?

I've got a book on stocks, broths and soups, I think has several classes of vegetable stocks, one major factor being whether or not there is tomato present. (That produces a dark stock, most other vegetables produce more of a white or clear stock.)

I've got celery, onion and carrot pulp in the freezer from my vinegar trials (the onion one was a failure), I plan to use them to make a stock when cooler weather is reliably here.

[Mike Nolan]

I've never had much luck with whole wheat pastry flour, which is, unfortunately, about the only kind of pastry flour available locally.

I have had better luck with fresh ground whole meal from soft red spring wheat for things like croissants, I haven't tried it for a pie crust. White pastry flour is one of the few things I still buy from King Arthur. (I think the next time I need medium rye flour I'm going to see if I can get it from Sysco, or order a 50 pound bag from Baker's Authority.)

[Mike Nolan]

I don't think I was one of the recipients. Pity, I could use a good vegetable stock recipe.

[Mike Nolan]

I use a dry-roast for eye of round (low and slow) but not for bottom round, I prefer a braise for it. Bottom round is a good cut for Italian Beef, but you really need a slicer to cut it really thin. I generally used bottom round for boeuf bourguignon, though I've used top round for it, too. I like top round for shiskabob.

[Mike Nolan]

Recently I've been making a full recipe of Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake, putting 60% of it in a 10x10 pan and 40% in an 8x8 pan. I make a double batch of frosting and split it the same way. (I actually tried it with a triple batch once, and my wife said I finally managed to make one with too much frosting on it, though I though it was great!)

I usually freeze one of them, it handles freezing very well.

[Mike Nolan]

I picked up some sliced corned beef, I'll make bagels later this week.

[Mike Nolan]

The ham was excellent, and I made home-made potatoes au gratin, though I forgot the sour cream. Adding it after the fact meant the sauce wasn't quite as smooth.

Oh, and I was wrong, the Avergne wheat-rye went fairly well with the ham, it brings out the latent sweetness of that rye bread more than it did with another deli-style rye bread that I also had available.

[Mike Nolan]

It doesn't appear to be in the archives here. I make my own beef and chicken stocks frequently, I haven't made a vegetable stock yet.

[Mike Nolan]

More leftover spaghetti and meatballs for us.

[Mike Nolan]

Report on Avergne Rye-Wheat Boule (Ginsberg pps 111-113):

Recipes without pictures put you under less pressure to produce a loaf that looks like the carefully styled picture, which may be the best of a dozen or more loaves produced before the photo shoot.

Ginsberg calls this a boule, which usually means a circular shaped loaf, but he specifies making a football shape and I, of course, made it more rectangular.

The recipe makes around a kilogram of dough for one loaf. (I got about 30 grams less dough than the recipe called for, I guess I didn't scrape the starter bowls enough.) The post-bake weight after cooling was 820 grams.

I did have to add a little more water to the rye starter, it was at 100% hydration and it just sat there for a few hours, before I stirred in a little more water. By morning it was very active.

The dough comes together easily, shapes easily and rises well. It takes an interesting approach to the question of whether you add dry to wet or wet to dry, you stir the two starters into the water and then add that to the dry flour. That has the advantage that it doesn't cause a cloud of flour from the mixer, which is often the case if you put the starter in the bottom of the bowl and the dry ingredients on top. I may have to try that with other starter-based breads.

I lowered the temperature a little more than the recipe specified after the steam pan came out, it came out with a nice dark crust.

The interior is also nice and dark, the crust is quite firm but it slices easily.

My wife says it doesn't have much of a rye smell after cooling, she thought it smelled more like a beer bread. I thought the aroma had pleasant smokey notes to it, most likely due to the charring of the crust.

It has a strong but not overpowering sourdough tang to it, and it toasts very well. It probably wouldn't make a good sandwich bread, but I could see eating a slice of it with a hearty bowl of soup or stew.

Update: This rye bread actually went well with the baked ham I made today, it has a very different flavor profile than a deli-style rye, the ham brings out sweet undernotes in the Avergne wheat-rye.

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[Mike Nolan]

Left over spaghetti and meatballs for us tonight. A bit warmer today, high around 60, supposed to get up to 72 tomorrow, and stay warm for a week or longer. We may be done with the really hot weather for the summer, though.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm starting the Ginsberg Avergne Rye-Wheat Boule recipe today, the bake will be tomorrow afternoon.

[Mike Nolan]

Restaurants recycle cooking oils, but as far as I can tell the recycling companies here won't accept home cooking oils.

The Wall Street Journal had a series of articles some months back about recycling laws in China, you can go to jail there for not recycling correctly.

[Mike Nolan]

The recycling pickup services here won't take glass any more.

You can still take glass to the city recycling centers, but I've heard they're having trouble finding buyers for it.

[Mike Nolan]

Looks like they came through the cold OK, but 7 cages had blown over, the wind was coming out of the northeast (usually comes from the west/northwest) and gusting up into the high 20's. Too wet to try to pick tomatoes today, and it is supposed to rain most of the day again on Thursday, too.

My first batch of lacto tomato water didn't work, I'll have to try it again. I wonder if I can make green tomato lacto water?

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