[RiversideLen]

I baked chocolate cupcakes, topped with a white chocolate ganache to take to my neighbor's tomorrow.

[RiversideLen]

I pulled a 10 ounce steak from the freezer and ground it up and made stuffed peppers with it. Had one for tonight's dinner and one will be for tomorrow.

For Christmas, I was invited to a neighbor's, so that was no cooking for me but I did bring a pan of cookies (oatmeal coconut, oatmeal raisin, chocolate chip and Noel nut balls). We had Italian sausage, penne pasta, fried chicken, roast potatoes, and a real delicious eggplant parm. There were plant based meatballs there too but I missed them (one of their son's and daughter in law are plant based eaters but I saw her munch on a piece of fried chicken as they were getting ready to leave).

[RiversideLen]

Yesterday I made a batch of oatmeal cookie dough and divided in half, I put coconut in one half and rum soaked raisins in the other half. I baked those and also baked the Noel Nut Balls and chocolate chip cookies.

[RiversideLen]

Those croissants look great!

Last night I made a batch of dough for Martha Stewart's Noel Nut Balls. I have them portioned and frozen, to be baked probably on Friday. Today I made a batch of Alton Brown's chocolate chip cookies, The Puffy, again, portioned and in the freezer now, I will bake some of them on Friday and leave a few in the freezer for another occasion.

Also am making a batch of my sandwich/burger buns, they are waiting to go into the oven. I had both of my KitchenAid mixers going at the same time. I used the flex edge beater on the mini KA in which I made the cookie dough, that did a real good job, I didn't have to scrape down the sides of the bowl at all.

For yesterday's baking I needed 2 sticks of room temp butter but my butter was straight from the fridge. So I went on YouTube to look for tricks to soften it without melting it. I found several variations of this. You take a glass and pour very hot water in it and let it sit for a few minutes (to warm up the glass). Then you dump the water and stand the stick of butter up and then the empty but hot glass over it (don't let the butter touch the glass). Wait about 5 minutes and then you have softened but not melted butter. I tried it and it worked.

[RiversideLen]

I made a spatchcock chicken this afternoon. I roasted it on a bed on celery, carrots and onion with a little water so I have enough juices to make gravy. I cut the wing tips off and put those in the bottom of the pan as well as the back to help flavor the pan juices.

Dinner will be chicken, rice and brussels sprouts.

The chicken is seasoned with a little salt and thyme.

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[RiversideLen]

I got a new meat grinder for my KitchenAid mixers (the metal one, not the plastic). Yesterday I had a couple of strip steaks in the freezer that I decided to grind. The grinder worked beautifully. I made a smaller burger for yesterday's lunch (about 3 ounces) and it was very good. It does taste different from regular ground beef. I took the remaining meat (20 ounces) and used it to stuff 4 green pepper halves, which I had one for dinner yesterday with some pasta and broccoli. I made a small batch of pizza dough this afternoon and one of those stuffed peppers is going to find its way sliced onto a small cast iron skillet pizza.

If I had prepared those steaks as steaks, I would have had 2 meals from them. By grinding them I got one lunch and will have 4 dinners.

[RiversideLen]

Some of them may have unrolled a little but I bet they are delicious.

[RiversideLen]

I had chicken meatballs, broccoli, mashed potato and gravy.

[RiversideLen]

I'm making a batch of burger/sandwich buns. They're all made up and waiting for them to raise up and then into the oven.

[RiversideLen]

I recently used a couple of cans of green beans that were more than a year past their expiration date. The cans were not bulged nor showed any signs of stress, the beans looked and smelled fine. While I try to use things within their expiration date, many things are fine past it.

[RiversideLen]

I'll have to give that vermouth idea a try sometime.

I made the base for my gravy a few days ahead of time, a pretty thick paste in which I used the turkey broth that I froze. When I was roasting the turkey breast, I had it sitting on a stalk of celery, carrot and a half of an onion. Then I added enough no sodium boxed chicken broth to just cover the pan, added a little to it a couple of times to keep the pan from drying out (so there really wasn't anything to deglaze). When the breast was done I had nice browned pan drippings that I used to thin out the very thick gravy I had previously made. This two step process really made the gravy making easy and kept me on schedule (on Thanksgiving I ended up being an hour and half behind schedule).

I agree with you about Alton Brown and the myriad of TV chefs. I always thought Emerald was the worse offender in oversalting, throwing in a handful of salt with just about every ingredient he would add to a dish.

[RiversideLen]

I had my brother over and made a turkey breast, gravy, couscous and broccoli.

I used turkey stock that I made last week in the gravy along with pan drippings from the breast. It was delicious.

[RiversideLen]

I had a NY strip steak with pasta and broccoli.

Earlier today I made stock from some of my Thanksgiving turkey bones. I needed up with about 5 cups of stock. I still have more bones in the freezer.

[RiversideLen]

I'm going to have chicken meatballs with pasta, roasted mushrooms and brocoli.

[RiversideLen]

My open container of SAF Gold is just about done so I went rummaging through my chest freezer and came up with a pound that has an expiration date of June 2022. I figure it should be good so I opened it and used a 1/4 teaspoon to make a pizza yesterday (just one pizza, 160 grams of flour). As I expected, the yeast is fine (SAF Gold is a trooper!).

I changed up my dough recipe a little, I normally use equal amounts of AP, Whole Wheat, Semolina and sometimes Rye. Yesterday I used 50% Semolina, 25% each of Rye and Whole Wheat. It came out great although I noticed a little more of the whole wheat flavor than normal. I formed the crust by hand, very easy, and toppings were sliced chicken meatballs and mushrooms. I sliced fresh mushrooms and roasted them until the liquid they gave up was all gone. The result was golden brown with a very nice flavor.

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