[Mike Nolan]

I had a tomato and salami sandwich, Diane had some of the left-over tuna melt from yesterday.

I picked enough (mostly small) tomatoes today to do another full batch of sauce (10 pounds of tomatoes), but this might be one of the last batches this season, as things are winding down. It was pretty cool today, a high around 70. Supposed to get warmer tomorrow, then cool off, then one (probably last) blast of 90's on Saturday, which is Homecoming for the Huskers.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm hoping he'll mend OK, and maybe this will teach him to be less interested in the neighborhood fauna. Our last male cat took to chasing squirrels, two or three trips to the vet after the squirrel nearly chewed his tail off finally convinced him that they weren't fair game. Jack has been getting too much attention from the foxes, for the last week or two every time he went outside except in the middle of the day, they'd bark at him until we let him back in.

[Mike Nolan]

I picked one big tomato and several slightly smaller ones, so we had tuna melts on tomatoes again, might be close to the last time for this tomato season. :sigh: I also picked enough tomatoes for a batch of sauce, and I'll probably pick enough for another batch tomorrow or Wednesday. I think I'm at about 150 pounds of tomatoes for the season, which isn't bad for garden that's about 15x20.

Our cat apparently got into a fight last night, he showed up at the back door with a bloody nose and a big cut beside his left eye. At first we wondered if he had gotten hit by a car, but there don't seem to be any injuries other than on his face.

He went to the vet this morning, he's got one eye that still looks bad but Diane thinks it is looking better than last night or this morning, the vet wasn't sure if it had been punctured or scratched. They did a stain test, it wasn't positive for eye fluid leaking out, but it certainly bled into the eye so I'm hoping he's got the cat equivalent of a shiner. He's got a followup appointment on Wednesday, but even that might be too soon to know if the eye is permanently damaged.

He slept all day, woke up around 5:45 HUNGRY, which is a good sign. He got most of a can of his favorite food, a little at a time, and then a bowl of water from the tuna fish. Now he's taking another nap, with occasional snuffles but his breathing seems pretty much normal now. He hasn't expressed any interest in going outside, which is not something he'll be doing for a while.

[Mike Nolan]

Nothing wrong with leaving the cover slightly askew, I do it a lot. I've been using my induction cooktop for making tomato sauce and there's a setting a little too high and one a little too low, so I either put the lid on askew or use a silicone spatter shield instead of a lid, since it has multiple holes and still seems to hold in most of the heat.

[Mike Nolan]

Thanks for the update, Joan. Glad to hear you didn't suffer a lot of damage, even if your neighbors did.

One of my clients uses a data center in SC that has been mostly offline since Friday evening, it sounds like it'll be a while before they get it back online.

[Mike Nolan]

We did have leftover pizza for supper tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

Fresh eggs should be good at room temperature for a week. Some types of mustard don't need overnight refrigeration, so they should stay good for several days as well, not sure if that's true of relish, may depend on the type.

[Mike Nolan]

I did a pizza, this time I used my 14" pizza steel but still did the pizza in my 12" pizza pan, after rolling it out on a baking mat then dusting the pan with corn meal for lubrication before transferring the dough to the pan.

Underside could have been a bit more done (it is fully baked but not crisp), but it came out of the pan nicely. I may try baking the next one directly on the pizza steel, or I may drop the oven temperature just before putting the pizza in, so that the bottom gets more done than the top due to the residual heat from the pizza steel. Another option is to put the steel on the lowest rack rather than the middle one. :sigh: So many options to try, I'll just have to keep making pizzas.

Toppings were my tomato sauce, artichoke hearts, red peppers, mushrooms, pepperoni, cream cheese, mozzarella cheese and romano cheese.

Now I get to see how long the pizza steel takes to cool down.

[Mike Nolan]

Our kitchen needs a serious 'spring cleaning'. That's probably going to happen in the next two weeks, as we've already scheduled having someone come in to steam clean the tile floors on the 7th of October, which means removing everything that's on the floor in the kitchen, butler's pantry, mud room and back hall closet; my guess is some stuff won't make it back to those rooms. These tiles have a textured surface that holds dirt (I think that was one of our few serious interior design mistakes in the house.)

Also, it's the time of year when mice try to get inside. I've already caught two down in the basement. I haven't seen any signs of mice in the kitchen yet, but our new cat is a serious mouser, and if there are mice in the kitchen, he'll chase them, jumping on counters and wreaking havoc. So we need to get the counter surfaces uncluttered, too. Also, I've bought many new ingredients for keto-friendly cooking and baking that I need to figure out how to organize better.

[Mike Nolan]

I had a tomato-and-salami sandwich and a small salad, Diane had some of the rotisserie chicken with some of the keto barbecue sauce.

[Mike Nolan]

I think breads and desserts will be harder for me, because they can require a LOT of changes to be more carb-friendly.

[Mike Nolan]

We both had left over spaghetti squash 'lasagna' with some extra sauce and cheese. I also had a salad.

Tonight I'm making another batch of custard and more cheddar cheese 'crackers'. (Those things are too easy to gobble down, though.) Tomorrow I will be making forgotten chocolate meringue cookies using the egg whites from tonight's custard.

[Mike Nolan]

There was a time I when I was trying to collect all the major revisions of The Joy of Cooking, but I gave up in the 90's because, quite honestly, I though the latter revisions weren't as good. I haven't looked at a recent edition in over a decade.

I use my 1943 and 1946 editions the most. I have one edition from the 1930's, it is not in good shape. I don't have a first edition (they're very rare and expensive) but it has been reissued. I've been told that the original author didn't actually cook most of the recipes in any of the editions she put out in her lifetime, though I've found them pretty reliable over the years.

IMHO, that's one big difference between The Joy of Cooking and Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Julia Child and her co-authors tested every recipe in the book many times. The 2nd volume goes into great lengths on her attempts to make authentic French baguettes from American flours. (Her autobiography goes even a bit further.)

[Mike Nolan]

A cookbook challenge could be fun, we could alternate between breads, savory (main courses or sides) and sweet items. Let's hash out the details and then plan to pick the first one by the end of October and see if a monthly schedule works, even through the holiday season.

[Mike Nolan]

Diane thinks she's got another sinus infection, so she had chicken soup for supper, I had a salad with some rotisserie chicken meat and topped with Ranch dressing mixed with Jersey Mike's hot chopped pepper relish.

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