Mike Nolan
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I had the marinara done by about 3PM, plenty of time to make the lasagna and have dinner ready by 6, but my wife decided soup sounded better. (And I make a pretty good potato-leek soup.) I still need her to decide what to put in the lasagna. I've got spinach and ricotta cheese for one layer, I'll brown some ground beef for another layer and mozzarella will go on the top, she still needs to decide if she wants mushrooms in it or not.
I've never seen anything about needing to test metal pans made in the 20th century for lead. Anything glazed, like ceramic, yes. I've seen one site that said to test glass pans, but their source didn't seem reliable.
Older non-stick pans can have stuff flake off, but that's a separate issue. I've been avoiding non-stick pans for years anyway, because they don't stay non-stick for very long. The non-scratchable ones (eg, with the green ceramic coating) are said to be safe, but we don't have any of those.
Unless it's a glazed ceramic pan, I'm not sure what there is to test.
Change of plans here. I made the marinara and put it in the fridge until tomorrow or Friday, then I made potato-leek soup with croutons from some Vienna bread.
I am making lasagna today, starting by making a batch of marinara.
We had steak, sauteed mushrooms and baked potato.
Sandwich thins always remind me of a cross between pita bread and the end slice off a loaf of bread. They were initially marketed as a 'lower carb' bread/bun but I'm not sure they're that much lower. Some of them have pretty good flavor, others are terribly bland. I've not tried making them myself.
Dinner tonight was creamed tuna on biscuits.
My Meyer lemon tree sets fruit even though it is indoors. I've seen some care guides that suggested using a q-tip to cross-pollinate blossoms and increase yield, sounds like too much work.
We had tomato soup and cheese sandwiches tonight.
February 28, 2019 at 6:32 pm in reply to: What are you Cooking the week of February 24, 2019? #14888My mother had quite a few herbs and spices in her pantry, but I think her spice repertoire was fairly limited. I like to experiment with a lot of spices, though I've found a few we don't care for, like winter savory. I don't use a lot of nutmeg in savory dishes, I do use a lot of thyme, basil and parsley. I tend to limit oregano to tomato dishes, though I've found myself using its cousin, marjoram, with meat dishes more lately, especially in any recipe that called for garlic. I also use either mustard powder or Dijon mustard more than I used to, and the same with sage. Rosemary is something I use in small quantities, as it can be overpowering. I don't use a lot of paprika, though I have several types I use sparingly. (I like either smoked paprika or hot paprika on deviled eggs, my wife doesn't like any paprika on hers.)
February 28, 2019 at 5:26 pm in reply to: What are you Cooking the week of February 24, 2019? #14886Something like beef, macaroni and tomato might work for you.
This is kind of a long-standing family joke. My best friend in college (and best man at our wedding) used to work as a short order cook at a Hot Shoppe on the New York Thruway during the summer. We were roommates for a while, too.
He once offered to make his beef, macaroni and tomato recipe for us. It starts by browning 25 pounds of ground beef. 🙂
Long time Lincoln residents tend to reminisce about the baked macaroni and cheese that they used to have at the cafeteria at Miller & Paine, a department store later acquired by Dillards, but now gone. The local Runza restaurants have what they say is the original Miller & Paine recipe, but I don't think it's quite as good. They also have the Miller & Paine cinnamon roll recipe, which does appear to be pretty close to the original. Of course, Runza pairs it with chili, as EVERYBODY in Lincoln eats cinnamon rolls with chili.
But I was raised on the Kraft version and still like it, though I like to add things like ground beef. We used to add a package of frozen chopped broccoli, it was nutritious and relatively cheap back when that was a major issue. (We tried adding tuna fish to macaroni and cheese once, it was not a big hit.)
February 27, 2019 at 6:56 pm in reply to: What are you Cooking the week of February 24, 2019? #14877Dinner tonight was Kraft macaroni and cheese. My wife likes it plain, I add ground beef and mushroom soup after dishing hers out.
February 27, 2019 at 12:06 pm in reply to: What are you Baking the week of February 24, 2019? #14870No, I always use baking soda in the water bath, but sometimes I also put in some honey or barley syrup too.
One of these days I'm going to bake a tray full of baking soda to make sodium carbonate as suggested by a NY Times article some years back. This produces a stronger alkaline solution than sodium bicarbonate, but not nearly as strong as lye, which is not easy to find in stores and requires careful handling.
Sodium bicarbonate is interesting, because according to Quora the pH is going to be around 8.35 regardless of how much you add to the water. (That's usually not the case.) The practical use of that information is that you don't have to add a lot of sodium bicarbonate to your poaching liquid for bagels to get full effect.
By comparison, the pH of a sodium carbonate solution will probably be somewhere between 11 and 12, since for sodium carbonate the pH does vary depending on how much you add to the water. And the pH of a solution of lye in water can be as high as 13, which is why it needs to be handled carefully. (I would probably handle a sodium carbonate solution more carefully than one made with sodium bicarbonate, too.)
The major difference between the bagel recipes in BBA and ABED is that the one in BBA produces about 1.5 times as much dough. I usually make the ABED one these days, since there are just 2 of us.
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