[skeptic7]

I made another batch of Hot Cross buns, the texture is good but this recipe has much less fruit and currents than I normally use. The texture is much more like a regular dinner roll it has so little fruit to weigh it down. The recipe was a gift from a friend but she won't leave the house to pick some up. She wants me to freeze a couple for her.

[skeptic7]

I did Northern style cornbread yesterday and clam chowder. Both were very tasty. I made up a quart of milk from dried milk powder as I was out of fresh milk. I don't like the taste very much but its ok for cooking. I'll use this is the clam chowder, probably adding more dried milk to make it thicker and richer.

[skeptic7]

I was at the local Coop, which had yeast but only in freezed dried bricks. I bought a 2 lb package of active dry yeast, the other option was 1 lb packages of instant yeast. I used to get a cup or so of dry yeast in a plastic bags which would last me for years. I wonder if I should divide this with friends.

[skeptic7]

BakerAunt;
That bread sounds wonderful. York apples are very good keepers, I keep my in plastic bags with air holes in the refrigerator for months. Do you have to do anything special to store your apples? I've seen cardboard forms with hollows for the apples so they don't bruise each other and the air can circulate around them. I find apples need a bit of care - not enough air, like in the vegetable bin of the refrigerator encourages rot, too much air lets the apple dry out.

[skeptic7]

An egg shell isn't poisonous but I can't consider it edible. I know chickens are often fed egg shells as a calcium source, but does this do people any good?

[skeptic7]

I did cottage pie for last night's supper and today's lunch. The filling was the ground beef and onions and carrots and potato mixture I used for the Cornish Meat Pie last week. Yesterday's topping was mashed celeric, and today's was mash potatoes. The celeric mashed up okay and had a mild slightly turnipy taste, but mashed potatoes made a much better topping. It was softer and richer and smoother. Both toppings benefited from butter and pepper.
Individual cottage pies are easier than individual pot pies and possibly have less fat -- I wouldn't know as I didn't actually measure the butter that went into the mash potatoes.

[skeptic7]

BakerAunt;
Is there any place warm that you can start seedlings and move them to your porch after they start to grow. I never thought that energy efficient windows would actually block heat from entering the house -- I know that they were designed to do it, but I didn't think that it could work that well.

[skeptic7]

Missed this completely.

[skeptic7]

I wasn't thinking of summer at all. I am trying to eat more beans too, but I mainly cycle through soups, and baked beans. I don't like cold bean salads at all but some bean salad ideas are fine when hot. I do like falafels so if I think of this as a baked falafel I might be more intrigued.

[skeptic7]

Interesting, but I don't feel any overwhelming urge to make it. You could make a nice carrot and ginger and bean soup with those ingredients and serve with toasted hamburger bun. 🙂

[skeptic7]

I did cheese pizza.

[skeptic7]

Correct guess. The trouble with true and false questions is that even the people who know nothing about it like me, can be occasionally correct.

[skeptic7]

BakerAunt, your pizza sounds wonderful, as does your blood orange cake, as does the Sourdough cheese crackers. I wish you lived close enough to visit.

I hope to do another batch of Hot Cross buns this weekend but I need to clean up at least part of the house so that might not happen. I will be doing a pizza but mine are normally very simple cheese pizza without fennel or Tuscan seasoning or cherry tomatoes or other nice things.

[skeptic7]

I got it.

[skeptic7]

I did my three bean, gabanzo, Great Northern white, navy bean, soup yesterday. It was a take on a vegetable and fennel bean soup, with celeric instead of the fennel. There was a disproportionate amount of celeric in there. I had bought a really big celeric root, and while I only use half of it, it still was more celeric than onions and carrots and celery combined. The soup was also far too boring in color with the white beans, and white celeric predominating over tomatoes and carrots and parsley. It was solved from total blandness by a little harissa ( Mediterranean hot pepper sauce ) and a sharp Vermont cheddar cheese sandwich. The good news is that celeric is a perfectly acceptable soup vegetable keeping its shape nicely.
I'm going to be eating this soup for ages. Luckily the jar of Harissa sauce is nearly full.

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