[Mike Nolan]

I think the spice blend on the carrot cake is about right, it could stand to be a bit taller, adding raisins and/or nuts would add some volume, or I could use a 10x10 pan instead of a 9 x 13. I was afraid it might be on the dry side, since I'm using carrots that have had most of the juice extracted, but it seems fine. I did use the full cup and a half of oil in Wingboy's recipe, but only 1 1/2 cups of sugar, as he recommends.

I made the 'standard' recipe for cream cheese frosting, 1/2 cup butter to 8 ounces of cream cheese and a pound of powdered sugar, with a little vanilla. Next time I may go with half as much butter, so that the cream cheese flavor is stronger.

We're sending over half of it in to my wife's office tomorrow, because I'm sure it's full of carbs. I wonder how many carbs there are in the carrot pulp and how much was in the juice that went into the jar to make vinegar? Carrot juice is pretty sweet.

[Mike Nolan]

Happy Birthday, Joan.

[Mike Nolan]

Carrot cake is out and needs to cool before I can frost it, I used Wingboy's recipe posted here but not his choice of spices. (I used 2 tsp of cinnamon, 1/2 tsp of allspice, 1/4 tsp of nutmeg and 1/4 tsp of clove.)

About half way through baking it, my wife said it smells like it needs raisins. :sigh:

[Mike Nolan]

We got several really nice 7 bone roasts on Friday, and made one of them for supper tonight, it was excellent.

[Mike Nolan]

I was going to do some more triticale tests today, but I had a work project that had to be completed and I spent 4 hours Saturday getting the vinegars set up, so I will do it later this week. I'm still hoping to get a carrot cake made today, though.

I need to make semolina bread some time soon, too, I took the last one out of the freezer a couple of days ago. I need to get back onto the rye project, too.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by Mike Nolan.

[Mike Nolan]

We finally got around to dinner, tomato soup and cheese sandwiches.

[Mike Nolan]

I started making celery vinegar and carrot vinegar using the recipes in the Noma fermenting book. I have a lot of left over carrot pulp that I bagged up, I'll probably try making some carrot cake tomorrow with some of it, but most of it I froze, along with the celery pulp. This should give me a leg up on making vegetable stock.

[Mike Nolan]

My guess is that the next sour cream raisin pie will borrow a little from all 3 of the recipes I've tried in the last year or so. This filling would probably make a pretty good banana cream pie, though. (BTW, if you want that recipe, search for 'a pie worth waiting 40 years for'. I refuse to give the URL because it's one of those sites that makes you create a log-in just to print something, and I consider that at best obnoxious. And, personally, I don't think it was worth the wait.)

But I think pie is on hold for a little while, I've got some bread plans for the weekend and maybe carrot cake, since I'll be juicing a bunch of carrots to make carrot vinegar using the Noma book methods. I'll also be making celery vinegar.

[Mike Nolan]

We've tried pieces of the pie with a little cinnamon sprinkled on it, with some cocoa powder sprinkled on it, with some sliced strawberries, with a little nutmeg and with some pecans. So far the strawberries seem to be the winner. The nutmeg was a little too assertive, I think it has to be baked into the filling.

My wife says the raisins have a strange taste to them, they weren't plumped in water but thrown into the custard mix as it was cooking. Next time I think I'd plump them in hot water first, like I did with the previous sour cream raisin recipe I tried.

[Mike Nolan]

After having had soups made with onions or leeks most of the week, and onion rings on Tuesday, we went with a milder dinner tonight, mac and cheese.

[Mike Nolan]

Aside from licking the spoon, I haven't tasted it yet. My wife took the 4 inch tart one to work, she says it 'needs something'. I was afraid that might be the case with only vanilla for flavor, no cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, etc.

[Mike Nolan]

The bundling costs with multiple streaming services are getting to be as expensive if not more so than from the cable and satellite companies.

We get our primary internet access from the cable company.

We call it the 'anything but weather' channel around here. At least on cable you still get local weather updates a few times an hour on the weather channel, but to be honest I look at the weather apps on my iPhone most of the time. Yeah, they're probably logging my access and selling it, I don't lose sleep over that. Google and Facebook already know more about you than you do!

[Mike Nolan]

Not all suppliers will sell to walk-in customers like Stover does. Some (like Restaurant Depot) require you show a retail tax permit.

Stover's prices are why I have probably 40 pounds of chocolate in the coolest part of the house.

Callebaut's website has a list of wholesalers, but I find it not very helpful.

There's a new chocolate shop near us, they're buying Valhrona chocolate in large enough quantities that they can have it trucked in. I hope they do better than the last chocolatier in Lincoln.

[Mike Nolan]

'Original Hawaiian Chocolate' was the place my son visited, in Kona.

They're growing criollo cacao, which many (but not all) chocolate experts consider the highest grade, only about 3% of the worldwide cacao crop is criollo.

Criollo has some interesting flavor notes in it. I found it a bit gritty on the tongue, which is a processing choice. Personally, I like my chocolate smoother.

At chocolate school we tasted chocolates made from all 3 types of beans (the ruby chocolate products hadn't been announced yet.) Most chocolates are blended from more than one type of bean, but single-source chocolates are a growing trend.

[Mike Nolan]

Not really, it looks like a custard pie with raisins, which is essentially what it is.

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