[Mike Nolan]

It's fairly easy, just time-consuming.

I cut the onions into slices (not rings) for soup, then put them in my 12 quart stock pot with a stick of butter. (You need some fat to coat the onions, this is basically a sauteeing process.) 7 pounds of sliced onions fills the pot to about 3/4 full at first, though it cooks down to just a few inches. I know from past experience I can get 10 pounds in this pot, though, and probably more if I compacted them, but that makes stirring them harder.

The oven was at 350 and there was a lid on. I stirred them every now and then, generally every 30-45 minutes. It took about 6 hours for them to caramelize. You can do it faster on the stove, but you're more likely to burn them.

Once the onions were caramelized, I added the chicken stock, which I started heating about 45 minutes earlier. A little sherry, some salt and pepper, and they're ready to go in the soup bowl, generally with some stale bread and cheese, so they go under the broiler long enough to melt the cheese and get a few brown spots.

Most restaurant make French onion soup with beef stock, but it is probably more accurate historically to make it with chicken stock, because only the gentry had much access to beef. IMHO the chicken stock does a better job of pairing with the onions without trying to dominate them. (Most restaurants put in way too much salt, too. My rule for most foods is if it tastes salty, you put in too much.)

[Mike Nolan]

Cocoa solids are just that--solid. They determine the intensity of the chocolate flavor, but it is the cocoa butter that determines the mouth feel, because cocoa butter is a fat that is solid at room temperature but liquid at mouth temperature. And while the marketers will sometimes tell you how much cocoa solid there is in your chocolate bar, you generally have to buy chocolate packaged for confectionery usage to get much information about cocoa butter content.

You wouldn't eat a teaspoon of pure cocoa solids, but you wouldn't want to eat a teaspoon of pure cocoa butter, either. (We did taste some of both at chocolate school.)

[Mike Nolan]

One of the things I did during my steam test was to take a picture through the oven door window every 20 seconds during most of the bakes.

I have a tool that should be able to stitch them together into a movie, but I don't think I'll post them because they'd probably be huge. Also, the picture quality isn't all that great because I'm shooting through the window and the oven light isn't very bright.

But I've been stepping through them manually in my photo editor and they're kind of fun to watch. First you see the oven spring then you can (more or less) see the Maillard reaction and some caramelization taking place.

[Mike Nolan]

Chocolate can be mixed with oil, the better the grade of chocolate (ie, how much cocoa butter it has) the less oil you'll need to add.

[Mike Nolan]

The problem was they had so many toppings at the time that they wouldn't all fit on the bun, so I though--why not have one with JUST the toppings? It had chili so it wasn't totally meatless. It was pretty darned good, too, but a bit sloppy to eat.

[Mike Nolan]

When we moved here in the 70's, Lincoln was a city with three major pizza chains (Valentino's and Godfather's, both companies started in Nebraska, and Pizza Hut and a small handful of local shops. Now it seems like there are more pizza places than gas stations.

The local paper recently did a 'top 25 pizza places', without mentioning any of the chains and missing at least a half dozen places. Casey's (a convenience store chain) may have more outlets in Lincoln making pizza than anybody else these days, as Godfather's is down to I think just one or two locations. (But Casey's pizza is incredibly greasy, and I don't think their small countertop ovens are hot enough.) Domino's, Papa John's and Little Caesar's have numerous outlets around the city, too. Marco's has 3 places in Omaha but none in Lincoln yet. Fox's Pizza Den opened one store near us, but it didn't survive. (That same storefront also failed as a bakery and is now, I think, a pet grooming place.)

Unfortunately, nearly all of them put garlic in the sauce if not in the crust. We have found a few that we can order pizza with no sauce but double tomato chunks. And my wife can tolerate a LITTLE garlic, so we do order Vals from time to time. Making pizza for two is just too much work.

[Mike Nolan]

I checked the Poochies website, they've cut back on the number of toppings they offer, but still offer 9 of them, including grilled onions.

And speaking of onions, the house smells heavily of them today, as I have 7 pounds of onions in the oven caramelizing for tonight's French onion soup.

[Mike Nolan]

My younger son has developed an allergy to shellfish, and will sometimes react to things made with fish sauce, so he pretty much avoids fish dishes these days.

[Mike Nolan]

We have several 'non-stick' mini-muffin pans; they weren't all that non-stick to begin with and I'm sure some of that coating has worn off over the years. (I've pretty much stopped buying non-stick pans, because when the coating comes off, it probably means we're eating it.)

I need to start experimenting with ways to get mini-muffins to release better, melted butter just isn't working these days. I won't use the sprays, because they leave a residue that builds up on your pans. I tried the pan grease once, it didn't work very well for some reason, maybe I should try it again. A flour/butter paste might be worth trying, too.

With mini-muffins, after they've cooled I just pop them in a zip lock bag and freeze them, my wife likes taking 5 of them in a small sandwich bag, that helps her get through the day without blood sugar spikes or crashes. I've been known to eat them straight out of the freezer, but they defrost in 3-4 minutes or a few seconds in the microwave.

[Mike Nolan]

I haven't tried any of the cauliflower pizza crusts yet, though I hear it is hard to tell the cauliflower is in it.

I think it is possible to get whole grain durum wheat flour, but I don't think I've ever seen it in stores and if it came up in a web search I just did it wasn't obvious.

[Mike Nolan]

I don't eat much shrimp because I had a bad reaction to some creole shrimp years ago. I can usually get away with a little shrimp if is is mixed in with other sea foods, but things like shrimp cocktail or fried shrimp (both of which I used to love) are out.

[Mike Nolan]

About the only muffins I make are banana nut mini-muffins, and they're not low carb.

I don't generally buy muffins from bakeries because they're too sweet and they tend to be HUGE, they'd be a boatload of carbs even if they weren't so sweet.

I may have to experiment with triticale in muffins. Steve, the wheat breeder, told my wife he could get more triticale for us any time. I'm also going to try putting triticale in the KAF whole-grain hot cross buns recipe I like.

[Mike Nolan]

It should be back, it got tagged as spam again. I don't know why this only seems to happen to you, it must be something your computer is doing.

I like Akismet (the anti-spam tool nearly all WordPress sites use), but it isn't very informative about what it calls spam.

[Mike Nolan]

I have more sympathy for those who have medical reasons why they cannot eat wheat bread or other foods than I do those who do so as a lifestyle choice, but don't want to give up their previously favorite foods. If you are eschewing meat, you shouldn't be chewing on plant burgers that have far more 'processed' ingredients in them.

Carbs are necessary as are fats and proteins, the trick is to eat them in reasonable proportions and quantities.

[Mike Nolan]

I've been making Hamelman's semolina bread recipe a lot lately, but semolina is NOT a whole grain product. Triticale might help here, it has the nuttiness you get from durum wheat (not surprising since it is a cross-breed between durum wheat and rye), and so far I didn't notice much bitterness in it, and I'm using whole meal triticale, though the first batch was only 10% triticale. I may try doubling that this week.

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