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We have 3 or 4 different patches of black raspberry in the yard, one of them looked like it never set fruit this year, either. I think it went from too cold to too hot too quickly.
Black raspberries only produce fruit on 2nd year canes, so you may get some from those plant next year. About one year out of five we don't get many black raspberries at all, I think it's mostly weather related.
I'v been told that unlike red raspberries, black raspberries don't train well, either.
Black raspberries make an excellent pie, if you like berry pies with seeds in them. (I do.) If you strain out the seeds, it takes a lot more berries and I think then it gets a bit intense.
I've also made a clafoutis with black raspberries.
It's been such a strange spring, I'm not sure we're going to have any black raspberries at all this year. One patch looks like they didn't set fruit, the other patch was still green the last time I looked at it.
I wonder if this is a recipe adapted from a commercial kitchen, where they would likely have access to a blast chiller.
We had Steak Diane last night.
BTW, sorry for the downtime today, we had a power failure for around an hour and I'm still finding things that need to be restarted.
After a week of eating on campus several times at the annual Barstow Institute for the Alexander Technique, we had something simple tonight--tacos.
The crazy cake/cake-in-the-pan that I made on Thursday was made with gluten-free flour. It baked up fine, but unlike the Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake, I don't think it handles having hot frosting dumped on it before it cools, it didn't set up right and it was very soft, almost gooey. (But very tasty nonetheless.)
I made it because we were going to a party Friday and some of the guests are GF while another can't eat egg. (Fortunately, nobody was dairy-free because I used the buttermilk frosting from the Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake on both cakes.)
There were only two or three pieces of the regular Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake left, and they're gone already. We sent the GF/no-egg one home with a friend, she was enjoying it very much.
We put Kindred stainless steel sinks (from Canada) in our kitchen and laundry room, they were the deepest ones on the market at the time. A sink should be deep enough that you can get your biggest pot in it, both upright for filling, soaking or an ice bath, and on its side for cleaning.
I have a 24 quart stock pot that fits in the bigger of the two kitchen sinks. (It'd fit even better in the laundry room double sink, but that's too far to carry it.)
Happy birthday, Cass.
I made a 10x10 Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake and an 8x8 chocolate crazy cake, frosting both of them with the buttermilk/pecan frosting from the Texas Sheet Cake recipe.
I prefer to use a spider to take blanched vegetables or pasta out of a pot of boiling water. I've got a nice long-handled stainless steel one that even most small pasta (like spaetzle) won't fall through. (Don't buy the cheap ones, though, they're tinned, at best, and will rust.)
I used a plastic dough docker at pastry school (SFBI) and bought one from them. One advantage of a plastic docker is it is less likely to scratch a non-stick pan. (I seldom use a non-stick pan for either baking or cooking any more, though.)
I would think seriously about getting a large capacity standalone induction burner, even if that means you have to go buy a new pot that works on the induction principle. (I have a 24 quart stock pot that I've used for canning a couple of times.) They heat much faster and they won't heat up the room as much, which is a big deal for canning.
And for canning you probably only need one heating element.
By large capacity, I mean both wattage and pan size. There are some 3500 watt induction burners that run on 220 and will handle a 13" diameter pot, not one that maxes out at 1800 watts and only handles a 10 1/2" pan.
Some (electric) ovens have so many settings I don't know what to call them, and I'm not sure what all those settings do, either. And to make matters more confusing, it isn't often clear what an electric oven does during the preheat cycle. Some will use both the top and bottom elements, which usually means those recipes that have you start in a cold oven and anticipate a relatively slow buildup of heat don't perform as they were designed to work.
Some 'convection' ovens have little more than a small fan to move air around, a commercial convection oven often has multiple fans and possibly even channels to draw air so that it circulates rom multiple directions. That's important because an oven that just blows hot air from the top down can cause strange things to happen to the top of what you're baking (like blowing ingredients off a pizza.)
These days there are some home ovens with steam injection options. I've wondered how often they need to be cleaned, using tap water in them will result in mineral buildup.
I did get my 10 tomato plants in tonight. 2 Amish Paste, 4 Celebrity, 4 Better Boy.
That should provide more than enough eating tomatoes, possibly even enough to process, though my wife will probably be able to get some big tubs of tomatoes from the test gardens at UNL in late summer like she did last year.
I'm going to try a different way of processing them. Last year I put them through the food mill cold, and they separated when I cooked them. Next year I'm going to try putting them in boiling water for a couple of minutes before putting them through the food mill, that's supposed to keep them from separating so much. (There's some enzyme involved here, heating disables it.)
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