I stocked up on cat food a couple of weeks ago, because our cat won't eat people food and not all types of cat food. She will drink the water from canned tuna, though, never met a cat that wouldn't! Our older cat, whom we lost last November, developed a taste for people food late in her life, including bread.
When I was a kid, we had a cat who'd eat angel food cake from the store, right through the wrapper. We had to keep it well out of her reach.
The Noma book has a recipe for butternut squash vinegar, I may try that this fall, along with tomato vinegar.
The carrot and celery vinegars are percolating nicely, I think I may need a bigger air pump, though. They're down to a pH of about 4.15, the book says they're usually done when they get to about 3.5. They smell interesting, and I can definitely get a vinegar smell. The celery one has developed a nice mother in it. (It looks like a jellyfish just below the surface.) If there's one in the carrot juice, it is hard to see because it is more opaque. I thought about using some for my cole slaw today, but I used some red wine vinegar my wife got from the wines teacher at UNL instead.
I've got some bottles to put them in and I'm working on designing a label for them. I've already promised some to a former chef we know.
I started a batch of sauerkraut using about 4 pounds of cabbage, then used the rest of that head to make a big bowl of vinegar-and-oil cole slaw, so that's the first part of my dinner, I'll probably have some chili later on.
Lincoln Public Schools just announced they are closed indefinitely.
Hy Vee stores will start closing at 8PM so that they have more time to clean and restock.
How long will it be before you have to make an appointment to buy groceries? I've not used the grocery pickup options yet, soon I may not have much choice. The Wall Street Journal says major chains are looking at opening 'dark stores', which only allow delivery and curbside pickups.
One has to wonder how many of these changes will become permanent?
My dentist's office is shutting down for two weeks upon recommendation from the Nebraska Dental Association.
We had sirloin steak, mushrooms and baked potato, and the last of the banana cream pie for dessert.
I may have to forego my tradition of making Hot Cross Buns to give away on Good Friday this year. My wife will be working mostly from home the rest of the semester so I won't be sending things to her office. I'll probably make some for us, though.
I've got a 12 pound bag of AP and a 5 pound bag of bread flour, plus what's in the canisters so I'm in fairly good shape for flour. I've got some older flours, including a bag of KAF Bread flour that got stuck on a back shelf and forgotten about at least two years ago, and lots of rye flour.
We heard from our younger son today (an amazing thing in itself!), he's working from home but he does that a lot anyway. What we're not sure about is what he's eating, because he's use to being able to eat at YouTube from Monday morning to Friday noon. As long as the malls stay open, there are a half dozen fast food places a few blocks away.
Several schools in Lincoln are 100% free lunch, they've got some kind of plan in place to feed their students, but I don't know the details. For some of those kids, what they get at school is often most of what they eat all day.
A poll in Great Britain had 63% of those responding in favor of some kind of food rationing. I wonder how many of those actually remember what that was like the last time it was necessary?
The governor in Illinois has ordered all bars and restaurants to be closed to dine-in customers. That's going to ramp up pressure on grocery stores.
I went to Costco today, the only wheat flour they had was 50 pound bags of bleached flour.
They were out of a lot of things, but had done an interesting job of spreading what they had around so there weren't very many empty spots.
Retail sales will probably look OK for a while, because people are buying ANYTHING they think they might run short of or could eat if they had to, but the supply channels appear to be emptying out, and it'll take time for them to get resupplied.
Restaurant traffic is said to be down 20% nearly everywhere and some high-end places are reporting 70% declines.
My wife orders a Caesar salad without dressing, because its romaine not iceberg lettuce or spring mix.
Not the prettiest pie I've made, I can never get those picture-perfect meringue peaks, but it is delicious!
The filling may have needed to be cooked a bit longer, it is a little soupy. But I'm willing to make the sacrifice to try it again. 🙂
I did make my banana cream pie, with raisins, using my wife's aunt's filling recipe (a pretty basic pastry cream IMHO), and a French meringue that was browned in the oven. It's chilling, I'll post pictures later on, hopefully including a slice. The scrapings from the pot on the pastry cream tasted pretty good.
I would think the time saved would pay for it pretty quickly, and the consistency of the product would probably go up, too. There's a restaurant near us that does about 100 pies a day, and around holidays and other special occasions several times that. I've not been in their kitchen but I would think they'd have to have something like this.
I'm going to do some kind of banana cream pie today, probably using the sour cream filling I used for the last sour cream raisin pie. It will probably have some cinnamon and raisins in it, too. And topped with French meringue.
