[Mike Nolan]

I used to keep a log of recipes I was tinkering with, along with our thoughts about each iteration, but I haven't done a lot of tinkering lately.

However, my wife tends to enter any new recipe I make into My Fitness Pal's recipe analyzer, and I can usually remember any tinkering I do with a new recipe long enough to dictate it to her.

I should probably start keeping a log again, if only for weight control purposes.

[Mike Nolan]

I can see advantages to both methods. I often have to think back to remember what I baked nearly a week ago. A weekly recap means starting a new thread each week, whereas a 'what are you baking now' thread might go on for weeks.

I also find if I bake or cook something truly new and interesting, I may not want to wait until next week to write about it. But sometimes my opinion of a dish changes after a few days. (For example, if nobody wants to eat the leftovers, that says something about it.)

[Mike Nolan]

I appreciate your efforts to keep Zen's site going, I check it periodically but haven't posted there in a few months.

The My Nebraska Kitchen site is slowly gaining real subscribers, though most of them aren't posting yet. We're getting more spammers as well, most of them coming from Poland it appears. I deleted another spam post this morning and another half-dozen suspicious-looking new subscribers, all from Poland, as I recall.

We've got a few people from the old KAF BC who joined here when it first launched but haven't been active, including people like Paddy L. I'm thinking of doing a bulk mailing to all subscribers to see if I can nudge some of them from lurkers to posters.

[Mike Nolan]

If you left the sugar out completely, i wonder if they'd be more like biscuits than muffins or rolls.

I've stopped experimenting with biscuit recipes, because my wife prefers Bisquick biscuits and they're so easy to make. About the only time we make biscuits these days is to serve with creamed tuna.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 11 months ago by Mike Nolan.

[Mike Nolan]

Does greasing pans with butter make the outside of the product more tender than Crisco?

Butter has a somewhat lower melting point than Crisco, but there's so little of it used to grease a pan that I don't know if that would affect tenderness. I do it because I tend to prefer the flavor of butter over the flavor of Crisco in most baked goods. (My mother's Oatmeal Crisps cookie recipe is an exception to that rule.)

Why would self-rising flour make a recipe come together quicker versus one with baking powder or baking soda added?

[Mike Nolan]

I used Baker's Joy on something last fall and my wife said it left a taste she wasn't fond of.

[Mike Nolan]

When I make Texas chocolate sheet cake, I butter the pan then dust it with cocoa powder, it gives that extra burst of chocolate flavor. But I've never tried to take the cake out of the pan.

[Mike Nolan]

The pan grease might have worked better for you.

BTW, I found out recently that it CAN go bad if ignored long enough. I cleaned off my countertops recently and found some pan grease that must have been over a year old, it was moldy.

[Mike Nolan]

Wednesday we got back from two weeks on the road over the holidays, both of us with the dregs of a bad cold, so it's been mostly chicken soup and other easy to make comfort foods. Tonight I made a pot roast, it was excellent and the house will smell like pot roast for another 24 hours. 🙂

[Mike Nolan]

That practice has been around for decades. Minimizing kitchen waste can be the difference between a profitable restaurant and one that closes due to sustained losses.

[Mike Nolan]

My experiences with dried mushrooms is that they aren't as flavorful as fresh mushrooms, unless they've been smoked.

[Mike Nolan]

Now that I have retired, I plan to spend more time working both on the administration and development of this site and on creating content for it.

I hope to have 2-3 posts a week on recipes, reviews, etc.

[Mike Nolan]

I've never tried making vegetable broth, but I'm told you need to avoid things like cabbage and broccoli. Mushrooms are supposed to be good in vegetable stock. (Personally, I'd avoid garlic, but would include onions, carrots and celery.)

The 'secret ingredient' in my chicken stock is parsnips, so I'd be sure to include them.

[Mike Nolan]

I made a cheese souffle in a kitchen where I couldn't find an egg separator, so I separated them by hand. Unfortunately, I broke 2 yolks and twice made the mistake of dumping the egg whites in the souffle pot rather than in the mixer bowl, so I wound up with a souffle with 10 egg yolks in it but only 6 egg whites. It was tasty but a bit too eggy, more like scrambled eggs in places than than a souffle.

[Mike Nolan]

Specialty markets or online stores might be your best choice for varietal honey, so much 'commercial' honey is aggregated so it can't be described as coming from a particular flower. About the only varietal I can find here other than clover honey is buckwheat honey, which is really dark and has a flavor I don't really care for.

Butter and brown sugar (or butter, white sugar and molasses) make true butterscotch, though many people call it caramel. (Caramel is made from white sugar.)

Glad to see you posting again, Cass.

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