[Mike Nolan]

The other day I made a zucchini bread with cinnamon, nutmeg and chocolate chips in it, it needed a little more time in the oven. Today I made one with buttermilk and blueberries, it smells a lot like blueberry muffins. I gave it about 10 minutes longer than the recipe called for and it came out of the pan cleanly but isn't cool enough to slice yet.

[Mike Nolan]

There are some tomato plants that don't have fruit on them yet, but I think at least one plant in each variety (8 of them) has several fruit on them, and some are getting close to tennis ball size, though no signs of color yet.

This cool damp weather has been a real boon for setting fruit. I think one of the spaghetti squash seeds I planted last Monday has sprouted, too.

I've got broccoli plants that are two feet tall but no signs of broccoli heads yet.

[Mike Nolan]

We have decided we prefer the Moomies buns for hamburgers, they're a little softer.

Neither recipe make what I would call the ideal bun for Chicago-style hot dogs, though. Still searching.

I think the BBGA recipe might make a good bun for Italian Beef sandwiches, they're dipped in au jus and need to not fall apart afterwards. Might also make good pizza bread. So, I'll probably make a batch of 5 using my Chicago Metallic sandwich roll pan, possibly next week.

I've got some Bueno Beef Italian Beef in the freezer, a 3 pound tub of it that I found at Aldi, of all places. (That weight includes the au jus, I suspect, I think it'd make 6-8 sandwiches.)

[Mike Nolan]

Here's a picture of the zucchini plants. This is actually two seeds in one hill, a bush variety like this might be better one seed per hill.

My wife like to tell the story of the year her stepmother's brother decided to grow zucchini. He thought you got one zucchini per plant, so he put in like 24 of them.

He was literally bringing big baskets of them from Omaha to Lincoln every weekend because he'd run out of people in Omaha he could give them to.

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[Mike Nolan]

When I was 5 or so, we sometimes spent Sunday afternoons on a farm just outside of town. The people running it were from England, and at 4PM things came to a halt for tea, with banana sandwiches (mashed bananas and butter spread on bread.)

They moved back to England after a year or two, just couldn't make farming work for them in the USA. I still drink hot tea but haven't made banana sandwiches in years. (Their disdain for iced tea also rubbed off on me, can't stand the stuff!)

Assuming the weather cooperates for another hour or so, I'm going to do burgers on the grill tonight, to test out the burger buns I made yesterday. My impression of them as hot dog buns is that they're good, but not as soft as Moomies. Haven't made up my mind on the flavor yet, but that's more easily adjustable.

[Mike Nolan]

The expected high for today here is 75, and we've already gotten at least 1.5 inches of rain, and more expected on and off all day.

My father-in-law (trained as a meteorologist by the Army during WWII) used to say that Nebraska had five seasons: Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer and Monsoon. I think we're in Monsoon season!

The variety of zucchini that they sent us as part of the Nebraska Urban Soil Improvement study, dunja, seems to be one that doesn't spread very far, I think it is mostly contained in about a 3x3 area. It's considered a 'bush' zucchini.

[Mike Nolan]

I think we're having hot dogs to test out the buns I made today.

[Mike Nolan]

I made the buns recipe I used for the latest Excel template, the recipe is from the BBGA forum (Solveig Tofte), making 8 hamburger buns (2.5 ounces of dough each, they're about 4" in diameter) and 5 hot dog buns (1.9 ounces of dough each, they're about 5 1/2 inches long.) I did shorten the baking time by about 3 minutes.

I 'm not sure the poppy seeds are going to stay on, might need an egg wash or something else to fix them to the dough. The sesame seeds are a bit loose, too.

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[Mike Nolan]

I picked another 14.5 ounce zucchini today.

One of the first ones to set seems to have stunted for some reason, not sure why. It is wrinkled, soft, and only weights 1.5 ounces.

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[Mike Nolan]

Here's my first crack at a multi-stage formula with costing, using a buns recipe posted on the BBGA forum recently.

You can do things like tinker with the overall hydration level, the percentage of the total flour in the preferment, the hydration level of the preferment, the desired dough quantity and the yield.

If you're interested in trying this recipe (I haven't tried it yet, but will tomorrow), the preferment should sit for 12 hours. Bulk proof for an hour, final proof for 90 minutes and bake for 20 minutes at 380, with steam if possible. I think the baking time might be a bit long, but as I noted, I haven't tried this recipe yet.

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[Mike Nolan]

We had steaks on the grill tonight, plus some of yesterday's potato salad.

[Mike Nolan]

I made a zucchini bread using the first zucchini from the garden. It's out of the oven cooling, it'll be ready to slice in another 30-40 minutes.

I've got two bags of shredded zucchini portioned for the recipe I used. If we like it, I could do more fairly quickly.

[Mike Nolan]

I did pick the first zucchini today, 10 inches long and 21 ounces, or enough for 3 recipes of zucchini bread. 🙂

[Mike Nolan]

And the rains came! We've had well over an inch in the past hour, but it looks like it'll be over in another half hour or so. Somehow the fireworks shooting continues.

[Mike Nolan]

I think I've got at least one zucchini that will be big enough to pick either tomorrow or Thursday.

One of the spaghetti squash plants I started inside did eventually germinate, so I let it grow for a while and transplanted it yesterday. I also planted a small hill of spaghetti squash seeds, it's kind of late in the season for planting squash seeds, but maybe we'll have a late frost and I can get some spaghetti squash in early October. We have a volunteer melon in one of the flower beds, possibly from last year's melons, it'll be interesting to see how those come out, we didn't enjoy the melons we got last year, but the squirrels did. The Athena melon plants I bought are starting to flower, too.

And I saw a hummingbird today!

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