Mike Nolan
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September 3, 2018 at 12:09 pm in reply to: What are you baking the week of September 2, 2018? #13334
I grew up in a small town (population 1200 then, more like 800 today) that had as many as 3 grocery stores. Today there are none, just a convenience store/gas station that seems to me to have a somewhat larger than usual section of groceries. I think the nearest real grocery store is 15 miles away.
Two of our neighbors raised vegetables and sold them at roadside stands in the summer and fall, another baked bread and cookies that she sold to a regular clientele. Our neighbor across the street at times ran a roadside hamburger stand, when she wasn't running one of the two restaurants in town.
The farmers markets here are too big and have too many procedures, rules and limitations, but if I lived in a small town I'd think about baking for a local farmer's market at least occasionally.
Tomato soup and open-face fried cheese sandwiches here.
At one point this morning there were 5 or 6 hummingbirds trying to feed from one of the feeders at the same time. I got some video of 3 hummingbirds trying to feed at that feeder a few minutes later, I'm not sure how to get it off my iphone so I can post it. It's 28 seconds long but about 52 MB, most email engines won't handle files that large.
Yes, we're in the western band of the rubythroat flyway. There are some other varieties that are seen in Colorado, but we have to be content with the rubythroat.
Depending on when the seasons turns, we could have some here until mid-October. Usually the peak is in mid-September, if this isn't the peak we're going to be really inundated when it get here.
The tomato flood hasn't started here yet, maybe next week. My wife's appetite seems to be coming back, so we had Steak Diane for supper. (Her favorite meal, and one of mine as well.)
I baked custard yesterday and today, and will probably have to make white bread soon, as I think I just took the last half-loaf out of the freezer.
When I switched from using margarine and/or shortening to using mainly butter, my serum cholesterol went down and my good/bad cholesterol ratio improved too. My doctor asked what I did to change it, I told him I started eating more butter.
I've seen one pizzeria that puts huge basil leaves on and throws the pie under the broiler for 10 seconds, but otherwise it is usually added as the pie comes out of the oven.
I haven't baked or cooked much in the last two weeks, today we had eggs for breakfast, toast with cheese or peanut butter for lunch and custard for supper. (My wife is essentially on the BRAT diet at the moment.)
I believe that semolina is not considered a whole grain product, because it's essentially just the endosperm from the durum wheat berry that isn't pulverized into a fine powder after stripping off the bran and germ. (The same thing is true with couscous.)
Durum flour may or may not be a whole grain flour, most of the durum flours I've seen are not whole grain flours.
Recent studies suggest that dietary cholesterol has little or no impact on blood cholesterol and heart health.
For example, see cholesterol study
Eggs were nearly outlawed by the 'food police' over the last few decades, but it turns out they're actually good for you. It also appears that butter is better for you than most margarines.
I picked our first tomato the other day and had it for lunch. In two weeks we're going to be swimming in them.
Some years ago we visited a friend in El Paso and he recommended a German restaurant that had the best apple strudel I've ever had. The waitress said they made about 50 pounds of it every day and most of it got sent out to their mail order customers.
I like the all-butter piecrust recipe I learned at pastry school, but I also like Darina Allen's Irish Apple Cake recipe, which uses butter, egg and milk, and it goes very well with the apple pie filling recipe I learned at pastry school. It has the advantage of being somewhat faster to make, too.
The last two times I made it I made a 1.5 X batch using 2 eggs, which filled 9 ramekins, with the extra egg the batter comes out so moist you can't roll it out, but I really like how it bakes up.
I've been using pastry flour for it as well.
I've never tried making strudel dough. My wife says she made it once with her mother and a huge table.
This video almost makes it look easy, but there's years of experience at work there!
strudel video -
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