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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.)
I held off doing much, but I did buy a few tomato plants at the Farmer's market on Sunday, some Amish Paste, some Celebrity and some Better Boy. I'm hoping to have them in the ground tomorrow.
Chicken breasts on the grill with potato salad on the side.
I'm making potato salad to go with burgers on the grill.
I made honey wheat bread today.
Nutmeg used to be used as a meat preservative, if you look at recipes from colonial days they would grund up 2 or 3 nutmegs to preserve a few pounds of beef. (And nutmeg wasn't a cheap spice then, either.)
The USDA's database says that a teaspoon of ground nutmeg is 2.2 grams and a tablespoon is 7 grams. (Yeah, that doesn't add up.)
I weighed several whole nutmegs on my microscale (1/10 gram increments) and they ranged from 2.2 grams to 4.7 grams.
We did go to LaMars this morning for our free donuts, but we also bought a dozen of them, most of which went in the freezer. (They freeze very well.)
This may bring up a picture of the one I have, one half is black the other half is clear:
I'm guessing it broke too easily, I know mine has a few cracks where the two halves go together.
Too bad, it is much easier to use than the other nutmeg grinders I've used.
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This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by
Mike Nolan.
I couldn't find it either, I guess it's been discontinued. I found it at a store in Ottawa CA several years ago. I also saw it at an outlet mall in Iowa a few years ago, but I haven't looked for it lately.
The Microplane folks make a nutmeg grinder, it's kind of egg-shaped, half of it is for storing whole nutmegs the other half is for the grated nutmeg. Just don't drop it on the floor, it's a little fragile compared to most Microplane products.
Bay leaf is a very strong and persistent spice.
There are two or three different types of bay leaves, Penze's are the good ones. That's one spice I always buy from them.
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This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by
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