[Mike Nolan]

I knew a guy who made applejack from apples that grew on his farm. He'd let the jug sit out in the winter and after it froze he'd chop through the ice to pour off the fermented applejack, it had a REAL kick by then!

Local legend had it that his trees and some others in Jo Daviess County were the descendants of ones planted by John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed), but the Johnny Appleseed historians have no record of him ever having visited NW Illinois, where I grew up.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Mike Nolan.

[Mike Nolan]

The apple pie was excellent, if you see Apollo apples, I can report that they're good pie apples. We did up the amount of lemon juice in the recipe, they're not as tart as many pie apples are, so it needed a little boost.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making Veal Zurich (it's similar to a Stroganoff but with a cream/white wine sauce) for supper today to celebrate my birthday.

[Mike Nolan]

I just took an apple pie out of the oven, I'm having that instead of birthday cake today.

[Mike Nolan]

How high are the feet? I usually just put a dishtowel under a cutting board that slides around. (I've got a big 18x24 hard plastic one that I use for large projects.) Or you can use the stuff you line drawers with or put in between dishes to keep them from getting scratched, it's also slightly tacky.

[Mike Nolan]

I know there are some u-pick orchards in western Ohio (somewhere around Toledo), I see them every time we drive down I-80 to visit our son in Pittsburgh, but we're never making that trip during apple season, so we've never stopped there. Not sure how far away that is from where you are, there may be better options in Michigan or Indiana.

[Mike Nolan]

Butchers have been using wood surfaces for cutting meat for a long time, but they wash them down frequently (with chlorine bleach these days) and then scrape it dry. You can tell a really old butcher block because the surface isn't perfectly flat anymore from having been scraped so many times.

But I don't cut raw meat directly on my butcher block countertops, either. I use a plastic mat that can be washed in the dishwasher.

[Mike Nolan]

I've used Macintosh, it's OK but not my favorite pie apple. I bought a few pounds of Apollo apples at the farmer's market today, not a variety I'm familiar with. The wiki chart Apples says it is an eating apple, but it says that about Winesap, too, and I know it is a great pie apple. I tried eating one, I think it'll be a better pie apple than an eating apple. So I'll be making an apple pie tomorrow. (Pie dough is made and resting in the fridge overnight.)

[Mike Nolan]

I've made a cabbage beef soup, but the beef is probably the dominant flavor profile. Caraway should be good with it, cabbage goes well with garlic, mustard seed, dill, thyme, celery seed, tarragon, nutmeg and savory. (But stick to no more than 3 or 4 herbs/spices.)

[Mike Nolan]

I prefer egg white, the spray stuff imparts a taste. I've also used milk and milk with just a bit of honey in it. I've heard of doing it with a light spray of cooking oil, but haven't tried that.

Followup: I tried the cooking oil method, it doesn't work! See Seeds Post

To get seeds to stick with just water, you need to heavily spray the loaves with water, sprinkle on the seeds, spray it again, then let it sit for at least 5 minutes.

Another way to do it is to put the seeds on the parchment or couche and put the loaves on upside down during final proof, so the seeds get well-attached to the dough as it rises, then flip the loaves over for baking. A flip board makes this easier.

[Mike Nolan]

There are some companies that sell marble slabs for commercial candymakers, but they're usually pretty thick, 3 inches or more, and that makes them quite heavy. Not very cheap either, and shipping is both difficult and expensive.

But check places like Kohls, Michaels and Bed Bath & Beyond, their websites suggest they may have marble slabs for prices ranging from $30 to $60.

[Mike Nolan]

I haven't seen a Winesap apple at a grocery store in decades, either. I'm fortunate that a local grower has a few trees. I've heard some growers in Michigan still have them.

[Mike Nolan]

You need to be really patient with that bread, sometimes it takes 2 hours to rise in both the bulk rise and final rise. Soaking the grain should helps soften it.

[Mike Nolan]

I have some bamboo mixing spoons and spatulas that I like a lot, and I really like the look and feel of the bamboo pastry boards I've seen, but I haven't seen any really big ones, 16x16 appears to be about as big as they go.

[Mike Nolan]

Check with the local tile and marble vendors. If there's a place that cuts marble and tile to size, they often have scrap pieces (usually where a larger piece fractured or from a sink cutout) that can be cut down to size and polished. I bought a really big piece of marble at a garage sale years ago, it was originally part of the lobby walls of a downtown building that was being remodeled, we had the marble yard cut it to fit on our 30 x 48 butcher block table. (We bought the table back when we were living in Illinois and brought with us when we moved to Nebraska.)

I have butcher block counters, so I just use those for my breadmaking. We had a nice butcher block cutting board that I think we also bought when we were living in the Chicago area that was probably 18 x 24, but it developed a crack and wound up splitting in two along one of the joints. It might have been possible to sand it smooth and reglue it, but we didn't really need it once we moved to this house in 1997, so we gave both pieces to a friend.

I have been tempted to buy a large custom cut end-grain butcher block slab, at least 20 x 30 and 5-6 inches thick so that I've got it at the right height for me, since the butcher block counters are lower (my wife is much shorter than I am) but that'd cost about $500 plus shipping.

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