[Mike Nolan]

Aside from the coconut (my wife won't eat coconut), I agree the breakfast cookies sound interesting. Can you post the recipe?

[Mike Nolan]

We had tuna salad sandwiches tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

Honey is running about $6 a pound at Sams Club. I haven't checked the local farmers markets lately, they've always seemed to be quite a bit higher.

[Mike Nolan]

After your comment about 1% milk on last week's weight question, I thought you'd get this one right for sure. :sigh:

[Mike Nolan]

On a cold evening we had oatmeal for supper, instead of syrup or brown sugar we put in some strawberry jam to sweeten it.

I hope we miss the snow, western Nebraska is getting a lot of it, and parts of Denver got 10 or more inches!

We brought the bedding plants into the garage, I'm sure they appreciate the relative warmth.

[Mike Nolan]

I had a BLT, my wife had scrambled eggs and bacon.

[Mike Nolan]

Personally, I like a vinegary taste to cole slaw.

[Mike Nolan]

The guidelines have been lowered over the years, they were once at 175, and chicken is pretty hammered at that temperature, turkey breast is nearly inedible at 175.

[Mike Nolan]

We had a beef stir fry with pea pods, mushrooms, bean sprouts and water chestnuts.

When I was cutting the meat up (sirloin), I was going "This is the biceps femoris and this is the gluteus medius, so this must be the 'mouse muscle'".

[Mike Nolan]

Most kids dunk the cinnamon roll in the chili. It's not generally heavily frosted, though, and often kind of light on cinnamon, too. I used to think this was just a "Nebraska" thing, but I've seen references to it from other parts of the country, too.

I'm hoping the 3 batches of Cardinal Preserves we made yesterday (my wife did most of the work, with me filling in as needed) will last us a year. It freezes well and is so sugary it lasts several months in the refrigerator.

[Mike Nolan]

The TJ's product is essentially a milk chocolate made with the Ruby cacao bean. I don't know if Barry Callebaut plans to release a higher cacao level semi-sweet product for commercial use (eg, through restaurant and bakery supply houses) or whether there will be high percentage ruby cacao retail products like we see with dark chocolate. I wonder how long it will take the FDA to allow calling it 'chocolate'?

The bag I bought was interesting, my wife wasn't impressed with it, but I thought it had some interesting notes to it. But I don't see it as something I'm likely to buy very often, as I generally don't use milk chocolate chips in baking, either.

[Mike Nolan]

We don't drink either, though I do use wines and spirits for cooking. I probably only go through about 6 bottles of wine a year, though. I cook with marsala and sherry, but not port and I use brandy and vermouth for cooking, too. I've tried the vodka pie crust recipe, wasn't impressed with it. I've tried bourbon in a pecan pie, didn't think it added much.

[Mike Nolan]

There's a local u-pick berry farm and they've had some tough years lately, but picking berries is a lot of work, so we haven't been there in a while. There are usually a few strawberries at the farmer's markets but usually the small ones and on the expensive side, it'd be tough to get enough to do a batch of jam, much less 3 of them like we did yesterday.

[Mike Nolan]

The test-taking experts say your first instinct is almost always your best choice.

[Mike Nolan]

Cardinal preserves are the best strawberry preserves I've ever had. The recipe comes from the Farm Journal Freezing and Canning book, but we have it here:
Cardinal Preserves

You start with crushed berries and sugar, then you add whole berries and more sugar in three stages, you wind up with berries in several different states, some nearly whole, others partially dissolved, others fully dissolved.

Here's some of the Austrian Malt Bread with some Cardinal Preserves on it:

[Author]

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