Mike Nolan
Sat. Jan 17th, 2026
I'm making another batch of Vienna bread with first clear flour today. I'll make 2 loaves and put 1 1/2 of them in the freezer, so it'll take several weeks to see if there's any pattern on how fast it molds.
My son was telling me about some triple-fried potatoes at Morimoto's restaurant in Orlando. Basically they're pomme frites (twice-fried potatoes) fried a third time in duck fat and then served with a Peking duck sauce.
We had 5 cheese tortollini from Costco on Saturday, with sauce made from the tomatoes I got at the farmer's market a few weeks back.
I suspect the wood chips may be fine, just dampen them a bit.
I've looked at a smoker a few times, I figure I'd probably use it once or twice a year, at best.
I made honey wheat bread Saturday.
I used my modifications to Darina Allen's Irish Apple Cake with some big peaches from Costco, made a great late breakfast. I'll post a picture later today.
Gee, are the vegetables still edible after having been sprayed by skunk?
Looks like it's an issue with the plugin that generates the like button. I changed some settings, but that didn't seem to fix the problem, so I've disabled the like button for now. :sigh:
Mike Nolan.
According to a number of sources, a lot of what is being sold as Wagyu or Kobe beef isn't. I've had both at places that I'm pretty sure were serving the real thing, I don't honestly think it's worth the price.
But I'm not convinced that Prime is that much better tasting than Choice, either.
My mother liked her beef on the tough side, she said if you didn't have to put some effort into cutting it, how did you know you were eating it?
I fixed the link up-thread.
I tend to agree with you on the taste issue, and I'm not sure it's really cheaper, it takes a lot more land and other costs go up while carcass weights go down. Grass-fed beef tends to be tougher, too, because the cattle move around a lot more.
Anyway, this article may be the real future of beef.
Editing to put more text to see if that helps the link to work better.
burgers on the grill
We had Steak Diane for supper, with the rest of the sweet corn we got at the farmer's market yesterday.
The farmer's market had lots of produce today that we used for supper: Locally grown artichokes (grown in Nebraska!!), saturn peaches, sweet corn, tomatoes and melons (2 types).
We had tuna melts tonight, using havarti and gouda cheese.
In Dan Jurafsky's book, The Language of Food, he talks about words that appear in menus and how that relates to both the quality and price of the food. If the menu describes something as luscious or tasty, that's a key descriptor of a lower quality restaurant, because a really good restaurant doesn't need to tell you their food is tasty.
I think the same logic may apply to menus that go into detail about their technique.
