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We had beans-and-weiners tonight.
I'd suggest making sure there isn't something clogging either the beater or the spindle it attaches to.
I have two bowls for my 4 1/2 quart mixer, one with a handle, one without, the one with the handle is much easier to get on and off. These days they also make a 4 1/2 quart glass bowl, but I've read reports that it tends to chip on the bottom where it locks in and it is a lot heavier.
A few years ago I actually had a dough hook break in the middle of a kneading cycle. Getting it off was a bit tricky, and I wound up throwing out that batch of dough.
KitchenAid has been through several quality phases since Hobart sold them.
The Hobart-built KA mixers are IMHO still the best, ours is nearly 48 years old and still performing like a champ, though it makes some grinding or clicking noises from time to time.
Hobart sold the KA line to Whirlpool in 1986, and some people think the brand went downhill within a few years.
There was a period where the KA mixers had really cheap nylon gears in them, I guess the engineering concept was that the gear would fail rather than burn out the motor, but almost nobody liked that.
According to several sources, they went back to metal gears some time around 2000, not sure exactly when, and I'm also not sure if that applies to all lines.
To me it appears there are 3 lines in most of the sizes of current KA mixers, with 3 price levels, 3 power ratings, and, most likely, 3 quality levels. The discount stores appear to have the lowest price ones, with power and quality to match. However, I've not figured out the distribution of the higher priced higher quality lines. It'd be nice if someone like Consumer Reports did a comprehensive report on all the KA mixers, including taking them apart, but I've not seen them do that.
Personally, I don't like the bowl-lift models, so if I ever had to replace mine I'd probably stick with the smaller size, since the larger ones are all bowl-lift style.
I don't think I do enough large-scale breadmaking these days to justify the Ankarsrum mixer, and I don't know that it has the ability to whip egg whites, which I probably do almost as often as I do bread dough. To be honest, I'd think about a $1200 table-top commercial mixer if I wanted a big one, but I'd want something that had pasta attachments, because I use those a lot, too.
Our kitchen is 17 x 18 feet, with a large center island that has a prep sink on the south side, along with a 2 drawer SubZero undercounter refrigerator, and an electric cooktop on the north side. There's a stack of drawers beside the prep sink, and drawer/cabinet space on both sides of the cooktop.
The west wall has a 48" DCS Dual Fuel range with a vented range hood, with granite countertop to the right and butcher block to the left. The granite extends to the north wall, which has the dishwasher, a double sink and the pantry cabinet, plus additional under-cabinet storage (we call it the 'overstock' area.) There's a lazy susan in the corner with 2 shelves.
The south wall has more butcher block countertop, lots of under-cabinet storage and a 48" butcher block table that has a marble slab on it. The butcher block countertops is at a lower height than the granite countertop. The lower cabinets are all 30" deep (standard is 24") and the upper cabinets are all 16" deep (standard is usually 13"). There's bookcases above the table.
The east wall has side-by-size SubZero refrigerator and freezer, some more storage areas, and a desk area that has a microwave on it and another bookcase above it.
The under-cabinet storage areas all have a drawer at the top, so we have a total of 9 top drawers around the outside and 3 more on the island. Every top drawer has a pull-out cutting board surface, which gives us extra temporary work space. (The desk drawer is the only one that doesn't have the pull-out). All of the under-cabinet storage areas have pull-out shelves, 2 per cabinet.
There's a warming drawer below the cooktop, though we generally just use it as a snack drawer, and pot storage below that.
There's also a butler's pantry just off the kitchen, mainly for fancy dishes and stuff we don't use every day.
I don't remember eating much cole slaw as a kid, my mother was more into making sauerkraut in a 10 gallon crock. After 2-3 weeks it starts tasting pretty darned good!
If we had it, it was probably made with Miracle Whip, as we were a MW household, though my mother's favorite salad was a wilted lettuce salad made with bacon grease. I couldn't stand it, and I didn't really develop a taste for any kind of salad until after college.
When Cass calls, ask him if you can post his recipe here.
I prefer a separate kitchen, which is what we have. My son's house has an open kitchen, the first floor is essentially one big room.
I also don't like eat-in counters in the kitchen. We have an informal dining area just off the kitchen that is part of the family room on first floor. We also have a formal dining room that is used mainly when there are more than 5 people eating. Currently my wife is using the dining table for a sewing project, her sewing room is off the formal dining room, and she also has a big jigsaw puzzle on the table, one that is too big for the table she usually uses for puzzles.
Apparently what they did was harvest yeast spores from the pottery, then used that to grow enough yeast to make bread, using ancient grains. They're also analyzing the yeast's DNA.
I have a number of small dishes that I bought to fit our small oven (they have to be no more than about 8 1/2 inches wide to fit on the lower or middle rack), some glass and some metal. I find them handy when making multiple dishes in the big oven that I either want to keep separate or that have different cooking times.
Do you have the KAF whole grains cookbook? It's got an excellent Hot Cross Buns recipe in it. It's a 50-50 whole wheat/AP flour recipe, though I've made it using 2/3 whole wheat and 1/3 AP. I find it gets a bit chewy that way, though. I divide the dough into 32 parts rather than 24 and bake them in 6" pans, 8 per pan, so they're more of a snack. According to MyFitnessPal, they're 20.7 carbs and 128 calories each, not counting frosting.
We had tuna melts made with marbled rye bread and tomatoes from the garden tonight.
We're starting to get a trickle of tomatoes, I picked about 8 small ones again today, nearly all about the size of a ping pong ball, mostly 4th of July but a few Romas and one Better Girl. The plants aren't producing big fruit yet. I'm hoping the cooler weather we had last week triggered another round of blooms setting fruit, which will mean a good crop of tomatoes in late August or early September.
I saw an article online today stating that Minnesota corn farmers, who got their crops in late, like nearly everyone else, are now worried about an early frost further cutting yield. There are signs of an early onset of cooler weather here too, and I'm told the ruby-throated hummingbirds are starting to show up, maybe a week or so earlier than normal, so I started to get the feeders ready today.
I can think of several chemical reactions that might occur with mayonnaise, mainly with the eggs. Do you remember what color?
Cabbage will weep after it is cut, so go sparingly on the liquids, including the salad dressing, because otherwise you'll wind up with soupy cole slaw a day later.
The only cole slaw recipe I can find is a vinegar-and-oil one from my wife's aunt, where you heat the vinegar and oil, pour it over the cabbage, and let it mellow for 24 hours. It looks similar to the '24 hour cole slaw' recipe in the Nebraska Centennial Cookbook that my mother-in-law edited, published in 1967.
We were out of town during black raspberry season this year, so I don't know how many there were, but I'm sure the birds enjoyed them all. But I was able to buy a jar of seedless black raspberry jelly at a small farmer's market on Saturday, so I'm happy. We've got some volunteer maple trees that seem to be crowding out the elderberries, I may have to get some more elderberry plants and put them along the east side of the house where the dogwoods are. Most of the dogwoods died off a few years ago when our gardeners cut them back, but they're trying to make a comeback this year.
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