We had the Swiss steak with mashed potatoes.
I'm planning to make Swiss steak again for tonight. I will work on posting the recipe I'm using (with my changes) here.
We had mac and cheese tonight, Diane's got a sore throat and didn't want anything with rough edges.
Harvey's Bristol Cream Sherry is a deeply rich sherry, Taylor is OK for a domestic product, but doesn't have that intense flavor profile and I don't think it is quite as sweet, though I can't find a sugar content for it online. I prefer a dry sherry for cooking rather than a cream sherry.
I had some potato soup and the leftover pork chop from the other day, Diane had chicken noodle soup.
It actually got above freezing here today for the first time in what seems like two weeks.
We had tacos for supper.
As kids, we used to use the meat grinder to grind up meat, onions and potatoes for corned beef hash. I think we've got a meat grinder like that from some auction but I don't know where it is and I doubt we've ever used it.
My wife noted that the chicken salad recipe is best with white meat, so I did a 9 1/2" chicken pot pie, but I've still got a good sized bowl of chicken to do something else with.
We had baked pork chops in orange juice and brown sugar again. This time with boneless chops.
We had broccoli to go with it, and a little fresh bread.
I'm making semolina bread again today.
I'm roasting a bunch of chicken leg quarters then will make stock with the bones, not sure what I'll do with the meat, maybe chicken salad.
Once I've got stock made, I plan to use it for potato leek soup for supper tonight.
We had hot dogs tonight, done under the broiler, with assorted toppings. Not quite Chicago dogs, but as good as we're gonna get here.
I made peanut butter cookies today.
McGee explains the science behind this.
Shortening refers to using a large amount of fat (relative to the flour) to saturate and thus shorten the gluten chains, as opposed to kneaded breads which develop long gluten chains into a network. The absence of long gluten chains makes the baked product more crumbly.
Traditionally, the fats used for shortening are any animal or vegetable fat that is solid at room temperature, though liquid oil-based products also exhibit the shortening of gluten chains by fat saturation, but a liquid fat is more likely to be absorbed by the starch, so it is trickier to work with.
Solid vegetable shortening was developed early in the 20th century as a shelf-stable replacement for animal fats.
My mother's oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe also uses shortening instead of butter. (I don't remember her ever doing anything with lard.) So the 40's and 50's post-war era seems likely.
