[Mike Nolan]

We had left over pot roast for supper, it still is a bit on the dry side, maybe I'll add a little beef stock to what's left.

[Mike Nolan]

I baked the last batch of peanut butter cookies on my new red mat with the grid, and they came out a bit darker on the bottom than normal, so I probably need to adjust the baking time a bit.

[Mike Nolan]

McDonalds has a new baked apple pie, not quite as good as the old fried pie they dropped some years ago, but much better than their first attempt at a baked apple pie. Both the crust and the filling have flavor and a good texture.

Taco Bell got rid of the Caramel Apple Empanada, and I haven't been to a Taco Bell since then.

[Mike Nolan]

I've now made the sourdough cheese cracker recipe 4 times, and 3 of them I forgot to add the butter until after I had shaped it and got it ready for the fridge. Fortunately, remixing it to add the butter doesn't seem to hurt the dough.

I'll bake these in a few days.

[Mike Nolan]

I was told by one of the workers behind the grocery store meat counter (I wouldn't call them butchers) that their meat comes in mostly pre-cut and pre-packaged, though they do get some things that are primal cuts or sections, but usually boneless. And, oddly enough, they grind some of their own ground beef.

About the only bone-in meat I see in the stores are ribs and some steaks (T-bone, Porterhouse and KC Strip.) Shanks and soup bones are usually available in the fall and winter but disappear come spring.

Fareway Beef gets primals and will cut to order, including bone-in steaks. (A 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 inch T-bone cooks and tastes so much different than the usual 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick cut.)

There's another high-end butcher shop (featuring Piedmontese beef) that opened on the other end of town and now has a location near us, though I haven't been there yet. And there's Del Gould, which caters mostly to the restaurants.

[Mike Nolan]

I see hand dough recipes that use pate brisee, so it might depend on the recipe you used. With a hand pie, you wind up with a higher ratio of dough-to-filling than you do with a double-crust pie. Is it a dough you'd enjoy eating? Rolling a little sugar into the crust or using a glaze might help.

[Mike Nolan]

We had mac and cheese today instead of yesterday.

[Mike Nolan]

I think there has to be a lot of rye in the dough (at least 50% of the flour) before there's much benefit to letting it age beyond the point where it is cool. 100% rye breads are more likely to call for a 24 hour wait.

[Mike Nolan]

I've been building my sourdough starter up to get ready for another batch of cracker dough, probably tomorrow. This time I plan to roll them out to 1mm.

[Mike Nolan]

We had waffles tonight, with the apple scrap jelly that didn't gel as syrup. Pretty good.

[Mike Nolan]

I can't find much on Sweet Emma, other than it being a Fuji-like apple.

[Mike Nolan]

My mother used to save the end slices of store bread for making croutons.

[Mike Nolan]

Fresh baked bread really should be allowed to cool so that it fully sets, but it just smells and tastes SO good when it's still warm!

It's funny, my wife and I will fight over who gets the heel of a freshly baked loaf of bread to eat warm, but once the bread is cool the other heel is the last part that gets eaten.

I think that's why we love epis de bles so much, each segment is like another warm heel.

[Mike Nolan]

Around here homeowner can only legally take trapped animals 200 yards away before releasing them, as if that's going to stop them from coming back. Licensed trappers have other options.

[Mike Nolan]

Tonight's pot roast was good, but not as good as the one two weeks ago, this was a leaner piece of meat, and having less fat made a big difference. (It is nearly impossible to find bone-in 7 bone roasts anymore.)

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