[skeptic7]

Looks great! I'm glad that you are using the cloche top and working with a cold oven. Hot ovens are just so scary as your vulnerable hands try to move the bread and bread bowl and cloche top around, I'm impressed that you can slash the dough successfully. My bread normally tears when I try to cut it with my sharpest knife and I haven't got a special knife for that.

[skeptic7]

It was so cold Sunday that I was looking for an excuse to run the oven all day. I laid plans for beef and barley soup made in the oven. I put beef, onions, carrots, celery, barley and a can of tomatoes in a magnalite cooker which had been my mother's, at 1:30 and cooked it at 290 for the next 4 hours or 5 hours. After a couple of hours the soup was at a gentle boil, and stayed that way. The snow didn't start till Saturday afternoon so I had time for a trip to the grocery store and got the barley. It was Quaker quick pearled barley which was not as good as regular pearled barley but much better than nothing.
The store had a run on sugar and Nabisco crackers of all things. I would have bought some crackers. The trip to the store Friday showed a distinct shortage of milk and bread and toilet paper as expected.

[skeptic7]

When I canned this year's maple syrup last month, I tried my best to get all the maple syrup out of the plastic jugs. Then I put some water in the jugs to get the last bit of goodness and used it in a hot lemon and maple syrup drink instead of honey. This turned out amazingly good even if it didn't have the soothing affect on my throat that hot lemon and honey would have.

[skeptic7]

I haven't looked at food pyramids for a decade or so, but went to the internet to see the new one. I plan to ignore this one completely. Its seems to imply that you should eat as much or more meat than whole grains. I don't think it even tries to graph how much of each food group should make up a balanced diet. I like the "My Plate" illustration better. Has a new version of this been released?

[skeptic7]

I heated the maple syrup for hours on low heat and eventually the large sugar crystals broke apart and dissolved. Thanks for the advice. I poured most of the syrup into a glass jug which is more convenient for pouring. There are still some sugar crystals in the pint jar of maple syrup but they are no longer stuck to the bottom and I can scoop them out with a spoon. Very tasty.

[skeptic7]

Thanks for the advice. I was afraid that just heating the maple syrup would concentrate it and make the sugar crystals more abundant rather than less. I don't know if I have a rack small enough here but might improvise something with aluminum foil. I will add a tiny bit of water to the syrup.

[skeptic7]

BakerAunt;
I googled the recipe and it looks like the Lobster Rolls ran into a pan and were sprinkled with pumpkin seeds. I can't see how these are pull apart unless you brushed them with oil or butter to keep from merging together. The pictures on the internet do look tasty.

[skeptic7]

I did chicken soup with carrots and celery.

[skeptic7]

I did Mapo Tofu based more or less on the recipe in Splendid Table. I'm deliberately making a fairly mild recipe. I've tried the recipe with real Szechwan peppers and chili oil and it was much too spicy for me. I did boil the Tofu before adding it to the meat sauce and that made it much firmer and get it from breaking apart as I stifrred it.

[skeptic7]

I hope the Ankarsrum works out well, I've admired the way it works.

[skeptic7]

I did potato rolls with raisins and orange peel on Monday. This is the same recipe I did on Xmas day but I needed another batch to give to friends who were out of town and to eat myself. I celebrated Xmas day with pancakes and plenty of maple syrup.
This was made with help of my Kitchen Aid mixer. I find its much less messy than kneading by hand.

[skeptic7]

I remember getting HoneyCrisps in Virginia ages ago and being very impressed by the sweetness and flavor. They were almost too sweet for my taste. There were other varieties I preferred. I have been seeing more and more HoneyCrisps in the supermarket and other HoneyCrisp knockoffs. I'll avoid HoneyCrisps except in the late fall after reading this article.

[skeptic7]

I have actually been cooking this week. Last month aside from Thanksgiving, I've been living off of chicken soup. Chicken soup in crock pots, chicken soup in pressure cooker, chicken soup with Turnips and Ginger and chicken soup with carrots and celery. Chicken soup with crackers, chicken soup with bagel chips, chicken soup with rice. I was trying to drown a cold in chicken soup but the cold just kept hanging on.
So this week I branched out to curried pumpkin soup with chickpeas, chicken thighs deboned and fried in a skillet, and the star of the show, roasted chicken thighs with glutinous rice. See the recipe in Woks for Life. I'd forgotten how much time it takes to cook. I still have 1/2 pumpkin in the refrigerator as I got tired of cutting up pumpkin and decided I didn't really need a double batch of pumpkin soup. The chicken with glutinous rice stuffing wasn't as glamorous as the picture and I didn't have time to cook some green vegetable to go with it.
Also I have another pot of chicken soup in the slow cooker.

A cooking success is that I canned 6 pints of Chocomouse's maple syrup in pint containers. I had to use a hot water bath for 5 pints as the "easy" method didn't work for them. But this was the project I most wanted to accomplish this week so I am congratulating myself. I think the last time I had one pint that wouldn't seal so I marked it for immediate consumption and lots of pancakes.

[skeptic7]

Mike;
Do you do single or double crust pot pies? My chicken pot pies only have a top crust because it is easier. I think I was trying to reduce either fat or flour when I started doing that and just continued out of laziness. They do sound good.

[skeptic7]

I did an Apple Slab pie and two loaves of pumpkin cornmeal for Thanksgiving. The Apple Slab was made with a fellow Thanksgiving guest in mind as she likes pie crust much more than the filling. This uses 4 cups of flour as opposed to a round pie that uses three cups.
The pumpkin cornmeal bread is me going back to my old favorite cornmeal whole wheat recipe. I was visiting friends for the first time in 4 years for Thanksgiving.
I followed King Arthur Flour recipe for. Apple Slab but didn't frost it. I found it rather boring with only cinnamon as a spice. Next time I'm going to use more and different spices in the pie, or make apple-raisin, or apple-cranberry filling.

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