[Mike Nolan]

I bought a two compartment tumbling compost bin from gardeners.com last year but I think I loaded it with too much 'brown' and not enough 'green' last fall because it hasn't produced any compost yet this season. I've been throwing more green stuff in it lately in the hopes of getting some compost by next spring. I probably need to put water in it more frequently, too.

Around here an open compost heap is an invitation to the raccoons, possums, foxes, mice, voles and other critters. It's probably even worse for you in Indiana.

[Mike Nolan]

I picked tomatoes this morning, probably about 40 pounds worth, should make at least 6 quarts of sauce.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[Mike Nolan]

If you've never tried the oatmeal crisps (chocolate chip oatmeal cookies) recipe I have posted, I still think it is the one of the best cookie recipes I've ever tasted, especially if you have milk to dunk them in. This is the second most requested thing I bake after the Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake. You do need to use Crisco as opposed to butter, though.

[Mike Nolan]

Ingenious, now I'll lay awake nights trying to figure out how to sneak one into my kitchen.

[Mike Nolan]

Something they had us do in pastry school was to pound the disc of pie dough with the rolling pin a number of times before starting to roll it out. Apparently that 'shocks' the butter or other fat, which is a semi-solid (if fully thawed), so that it rolls out better.

[Mike Nolan]

We had salad with tuna fish tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

I looks like the Bobs Red Mill coupons link is gone, although the FAQ page hasn't been rewritten so this may just be a seasonal thing.

When I was redeeming a BRM coupon recently, the checker was a bit skeptical of the coupon, I got the impression they've been getting counterfeit ones.

[Mike Nolan]

That's one reason why I shudder every time I see a recommendation that a steak be allowed to sit out until it reaches room temperature before it is cooked. Kenji Lopez-Alt has written that this can take 3-4 hours for a thick steak.

[Mike Nolan]

We had some black bean soup (adding the carrot rounded out the flavor profile nicely, though I think a touch of lemon juice would brighten it up a lot) and some leftover chicken.

[Mike Nolan]

Yesterday was the first time this fall we've seen more than one hummingbird at a time.

Today it looks like there are at least 4 of them chasing each other around, none of them landing anywhere or feeding.

Looking at the migration maps on the Journey North site, this appears to be part of a somewhat unusual migration pattern, birds are staying further north but then skipping their usual intermediate stops, like us.

[Mike Nolan]

I learn something with nearly every quiz question I write.

[Mike Nolan]

We had takeout fried chicken for supper, but my wife also started making some black bean soup, starting from a recipe she found on the Bush's Beans site. She was hoping to come up with something similar to the old Campbell's Black Bean soup, before they added garlic to it.

At first she made it without onion, then I sauteed some onion and added it. It's still missing something, though, so tomorrow I'm going to make some carrot puree and add a little. (Carrot puree is one of those things I'd like to have on hand in the freezer to add to dishes, this gives me a reason to make some.)

[Mike Nolan]

My wife is making grape jelly today/tomorrow. She's cooked and juiced the grapes, she'll make the jelly tomorrow. (The Farm Journal cookbook recommends letting the juice sit overnight, the jelly is less likely to grow sugar crystals, not sure why.)

[Mike Nolan]

Glad to hear your kitchen redesign is proving functional, after all the time and expense.

Tonight Diane had a steak salad and I had a tomato and salami sandwich.

[Mike Nolan]

I would suggest getting an infrared thermometer, they're useful for more than just checking the temperature in various parts of your oven. You do have to open the door to use them but you can take readings at multiple places inside the oven. A decent one will cost anywhere from $25 to $60. Some can measure temperatures as high as 1000 degrees (F) and as low as 50 below.

You can probably use any meat thermometer that has an external readout. The wireless ones are meant to go in meat, which keeps the electronics from getting fried.

Maverick makes an oven thermometer that is meant to hang below the rack. But it doesn't measure the current temperature, which goes up and down a lot (that's called hysteresis), it measures the average temperature, which also goes up and down, but not as fast or as much.

I've mentioned this before, but a chef once told me that whenever he moves to a new kitchen, one of the first things he does is check for hot spots in the oven by using some sliced bread at various temperatures and on each rack setting.

[Author]

Posts