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I just spent 15-20 minutes browsing the new Chefs Catalog site. I didn't see much that I haven't seen on other sites.
Two items that I was interested in more details didn't have them.
One was a 'high capacity' kitchen scale, but it didn't say what the capacity was.
The other was an 'extra large sheet pan with cooling rack', but no dimensions of the pan. It appears someone else asked a question a week ago about the dimensions but it has not been answered yet.
So my initial impressions are not all that favorable. If anyone orders from them, let us know how their fulfillment is.
Unfortunately not many catalog companies can make it on 'funky stuff', even Williams Sonoma moved away from the interesting hard-to-find stuff to having pages and pages of spices and sauces and expensive pans.
I remember when Brookstone had all sorts of tools you couldn't find anywhere else, instead of junk.
Much better than my first attempts at piping, which, fortunately, were not documented.
At a guess you were going too slow. You probably need to squeeze harder and go faster.
I'd go with 3 tablespoons of honey and probably subtract 1 tablespoon of liquid. Honey is slightly sweeter than table sugar and in liquid form it takes up less space, too.
I've been using the USDA database more lately, it tends to do a better job with quantities and nutrients. None of this 'a serving of flour is 1/4 cup' nonsense that's required on nutrition labels.
See USDA foods database
USDA uses 125 grams/cup for unbleached AP flour (4.41 ounces.)I still tend to use KAF's flour weights (4.25 ounces/cup) as a starting point, though many recipes seem to be based on a higher weight/cup basis. But it's easier to add flour than take it back out again. (And an enlightened author/site should give important quantities in both dry measure amounts and weights anyway.)
I think Aldi's is a store that kind of grows on you. It's no-frills taken to an extreme, starting with the 25 cent deposit on shopping carts. I get the impression there are seldom more than a half dozen employees in the building, if that. Mostly private label products, but decent quality. Ours has a good though limited to the basics produce section, usually with the lowest prices on produce, milk and eggs. The limited selection of meats is more of a problem for me, so I don't buy much meat there.
For what it's worth, Fareway opened a full-service meat store on the east side of town this week, and once I took the time to talk to the senior staff, I was impressed. They had veal fore shanks in stock though not in the display case, and can order hind shanks on 2 weeks notice, some of the best beef shanks I've seen in years, a good price on rump roast and I stocked up on frozen duck breasts at $9.99/pound. Although Fareway, based out of Des Moines, has mostly full service grocery stores in smaller towns, this is their second meat-only store, just meat, wine and cheeses. I hope it survives in Lincoln, we've needed a good butcher shop for years.
I've never done the home-made vanilla extract, but I assume there's a limit to how much vanilla you can extract from a vanilla bean pod.
I would like to make the dough into rolls instead of loaves.. I guess that should be a no-brainer
Yes and no. While nearly any bread dough can be baked as rolls, producing truly superb rolls is a lot more than just dividing the dough into much smaller pieces. You have to play with the baking time and temperature, with shaping, etc. One technique that I haven't experimented with enough is chilling or even freezing the shaped rolls before baking them to produce a firmer crust.
With just 2 of us, I don't make dinner rolls a lot anymore, but I can still visualize the dinner rolls I had in a NYC restaurant over 20 years ago, quite possibly the best bread I've ever eaten!
Far too many fruits and vegetables are bred and grown for appearance and long shelf life in the store rather than for flavor. I'm not personally convinced that being 'organic' makes them taste better.
Tomatoes used to be one of the worst offenders in the winter, but recently we've been getting some Nebraska-grown hydroponic tomatoes in the winter that actually have some decent flavor to them.
Red Delicious apples are red, they aren't delicious.
I buy celery by smell, and I stopped buying full-sized carrots years ago because they're either bitter or woody, if not both.
Was at Sams Club yesterday, they've switched from 16 ounce size bottles of vanilla to 8 ounce bottles, priced from around $16 to $20 per bottle, with the McCormick brand being the higher priced one.
Artificial vanilla is still quite cheap.
I've been cutting back on how much onion I use when cooking, because my wife is concerned that her garlic allergy might develop into an allergy to the entire allium genus, including onions and leeks.
I made Vienna bread today, 2 loaves, cut both in half and froze 3 halves, should keep me in Vienna bread for a week or more.
I made banana nut muffins Monday night, and updated my recipe a little, adding some details and updating the yield.
It depends somewhat on the recipe (some recipes don't rise very much), but the general rule is to fill a pan between 2/3 and 3/4 full. I've found with some pans you can't trust what the maker says the capacity is, so I measure it with water.
I fill cupcakes to the 3/4 point, because I like a rounded top above the top of the pan or cupcake liner.
I prefer to add a little heavy cream if I have it (otherwise milk) to scrambled eggs, at the end so it stops the eggs from cooking further.
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