lovebenton0

I would be more than miffed, but try to handle it tactfully. "No thanks, I don't even serve real whipped cream on my brownies." Ooops! Maybe not so long on tact, but I could manage the smile.

Nice rolls, glossyp! How did you think the variation 3 compared to the 1 and 2 as far as texture and taste? I think it makes tasty, satisfying dinner rolls when one has to be a bit quicker on the delivery. Vengroff, good job on the epis. The crumb is very nice. You're thinking right, a deeper cut would give you a more breakaway shape. Next time. Disappointed to say that baking bread was not in my weekend plans after all. Unexpected weekend guests put a stop to that. My starter is ready to play when I am so . . . Tomorrow, the basic sourdough formula, but I'm going to play around with it a bit. edit to say: Vengroff, you were posting your loaves while I was reading BBA while posting the above and I missed them -- looking good, crust and crumb. They are "rustic" if the dough is fairly wet so I'd say just be happy. As far as some variation in fermentation goes -- it will always be so. Dealing with living organisms and not in a strictly controlled environment -- our kitchens vary day to day enough to affect the yeast's fermentation properties certainly. Keeps one from getting bored with the same bread. .

Lovely bread, Elie! Thanks for the notes on flour also. I want to try this one soon. Will be baking some bread this weekend, not decided yet which formula to try, but maybe the miche. Marcia, I love your box idea, very creative! I too am surprised your crust is soft. Do you have an oven thermometer in place? Perhaps the oven is not getting as hot as you thought? This is a pic of of a french boule I posted a while back. I brushed this one with butter after baking -- I don't remember why I chose to do that, but the crust was still good and crunchy. These are bread and rolls from the white and wheat bread formulas. I really love these light and soft dinner rolls made with the white bread formula, variation 3. The wheat are good too, heavier and chewier, makes a nice dinner roll basket variety. edit to add images.

I guess they turn all crunchy and nice after you fry them???! especially the legs. ← I learned very quickly from my Japanese wife that everything is edible in fish or seafood (except shells of course). Ever had fish eyes? Good stuff!! Shrimp heads? Crunchy? Not just that, shrimp heads contain loads of flavorful stuff... ← This sounds intriguing to me, I always save them for shrimp stock, but will have to try this. And, jinmyo, that entire menu sounds wonderful, but those twice-bakers have me nearly drooling. Did you stir-fry the baby bok choy, toss with seasonings? I have some on hand and that sounds good with massaman chicken curry I have planned for tonight. hmmmmm . . . I'm thinking stir-fried with a bit of lime zest/juice (no leaf right now), fish sauce, galangal and thai chili, touch of sweet.

Hoo boy . . . This is going to be a big guess since the cooker doesn't work on time but by sensors that detect the temperature rise that occurs when the water has been absorbed. Normal procedure is just wait for the chirping sound. I am thinking that I usually allow at least 45 minutes for purposes of meal assembly. Perhaps the manufacturer of your cooker has some instructions on-line that will be helpful. I have been meaning to try the coconut mango rice recipe with the short grain brown rice that I love so much. Has anyone tried that? ← Thanks, fifi. I hadn't thought about going online to look at their web site. I'll do that. No Thai food last night either. Dizzy and slept through dinner! So planning on massaman coconut curry with chicken/potato/onion tonight. Stir-fried baby bok choy. And a friend just dropped by unexpectedly with some fantastic whole shrimp, ground pork, lime and thai chili rolled and fried in eggroll wrappers. Wow! What a nice surprise. Serving them on the side too.

Awww thanks. No broiler for the cauliflower, just 425F oven with lots of turning. And hate to admit I don't use the broiler that much -- advantage to mild TX winters, we still smoke/grill a lot. We love our gardens! Lucky to have a nice place for a good-sized and productive veg garden, and I grow the herbs in beds close to the house where I can get to them easily. I air dry summer herbs at the end of the season to have some for the short winter here. And I'm just spoiled to homemade bread. So dinner last night was a bowl of leftover veg/beef/barley soup rescued at about 10PM from the freezer and hunks of ciabatta because I was too dizzy and slept through dinner.

Ordering seeds yet anyone? We're planning to do the garden from seed this year. Planning to anyway! I'm lookig at new Asian varieties of squash and eggplant, thinking about tomatoes and peppers, okra, greens, and maybe even some beans and peas this year -- neither of which I've had much luck with here. Sleeping with your catalogs? Dreaming of dirt under your nails and a plant in hand? What are your veg garden plans? Herbs? Always lots of herbs for me. How soon do you get seeds started for your area?

We started the day with coffee and muffins, went to sign the papers on the house we bought, and then went to the courthouse. Strictly us and the clerk on Valentine's Day. We planned it that way because we knew the house was closing, we'd be moving, starting a garden and just wanted a chance to do all that without the wedding stress. New hubby did surprise me with a weekend trip to the southernmost tip of South Padre Island immediately after the "ceremony." We ate crab legs and shrimp that night, huddled in a blanket on the beach watching the full moon turn the Gulf Cost waters to mercury. Fast forward to the weekend after July 4th . . . our wedding celebration/reception. On the banks of a lovely little river in Central TX we set up the smoker early in the morning and fired it up it. We had nearly-smoked a brisket the night before at home and put it back in the smoker to finish off. Then the Elgin Hot Sausages and brats were grilled. Four dozen bollilos for sandwiches (made by me), flour and corn tortillas. A whole picnic table set with all the olives, pickles, hot pickled okra, sliced onions, garden tomatoes and jalapenoes, three kinds of bbq sauce, ketchup, mustards etc., you could ever want. Sides/snacks table had red potato salad with jalapeno yogurt/ricotta dressing, vinaigrette pasta bean salad, roasted corn on the cob, smoked salmon dip with crackers, chips and salsa, fresh fruit including a couple melons. Wedding cake was a fantastic chocolate/raspberry cake, 14" across, three layers with raspberry filling and chocolate silk icing made by my friend who does a bit of catering on the side. BBQ heaven! Lots of beer, limeade, bottled water. It was a great day, and nearly all the guests stripped down to bathing suits and tubed the river with us afterward. (Then we left for the Bahamas. ) Yes, for the most part, I'd do it again. And, oh yes, we ate!

Tuesday night I rescued some garden tomatoes from the freezer for a diablo red sauce with mushrooms, garlic, onion, lots of dried lemon basil from the herb garden, a splash of basalmic. Served with roasted cauliflower and ciabatta a la BBA (pain a l'ancienne -- Reinhart's suggestion, double-proofed it bakes up as ciabatta). Last night, grilled lemon pepper/Cajun spiced chicken legs, and buttered bakers with sharp cheddar and a parsley/dill sour cream and yogurt dressing, fresh ground pepper. Mixed greens and veg salad in a vinaigrette with chopped egg and crumbled bleu.

And yes, you are going to skim the fat off your chicken stock but the fat still imparts flavor. Think of it this way -- you don't skin your chicken before making stock. I throw all that in a bag in the freezer, rescued carcass parts, bones, skin. When I've collected as much as I want I make stock. A little -- just enough for a meal if I need it -- or a full load.

Great thread, Susan. Everyone's photos have me craving some Thai for tonight. Think I'll have to succumb to some curry and jasmine rice. Thanks to some much needed guidance from snowangel, and the eGCI course, I have been cooking a lot more Thai food (which I have enjoyed eating for years) over the past several months. Making the paste by hand is not a good option for me, but I do like the tubs of Mae Ploy, Maesri, and Maesai I have used. Maesri makes an excellent prikh king paste and it's one of my favorite dishes. Coconut green curry with Asian eggplant (which we grow) and chicken or beef has become a staple around here when the eggplant is fresh from the garden. Tom Yum soup from Pim's website was very good. I think it saved me during the last ravages of the flu. Fifi, I have a question about the "sticky rice setting" on your rice cooker: Do you recall how long the rice has to cook? I have rice steamer, but no such thing as the sticky rice setting. Mine sets by minutes.

Now those I've seen online and they look very practical and acceptable -- not the same thing as those "semi-dispoable" things I dislike. They would be very practical to have around. Where did you find them in small lots like that?

So you don't use garbage bags or toilet tissue? Actually, I don't have a real problem with paper disposables. If anything I have a bigger problem with garbage bags. The plastic does not degrade well, and nearly every bit of garbage we produce is encased in plastic now. If disposable diapers were so much of a problem, we should have one hell of a time with garbage bags, yet you never hear about it. Not that I have a better option, mind you. But the idea of paying good money for something that can only be thrown away bothers me somehow. At least you get some use out of the paper disposables, and you can find other uses for them (like fireplace starters as mentioned earlier). ← Ok, a bit OT here for a moment, but still related to the disposables issue. . . Ever used those bio-degradable trash bags? Yeah, you can only throw them away (duh? they are trash bags! ) but at least they break down pretty quickly. We used them all the time when we lived further out in the country and were responsible for all our own trash -- still do so here for a lot of things. Some things just couldn't be composted or re-cycled to burn in fireplace or woodstove, outside in trash pile burning or "campfires" (and believe me you don't want everything going into the fireplace or woodstove . . . ew! ), or sold to re-cycling (remember when they used to pay us for our trash? ). Those things went into the bio bags to carry to our own landfill, or wait for a big haul to the public landfill 40+ miles away. It's a small thing in the overall scope, but when you consider the tons of trash bags every year it seems worth it to me. Of course they're worthless for storing your portable grills, sleeping bags, or other camping equipment in.

There are days when just getting dinner done is at my limit and I'm grateful if we have paper plates around to serve the meal. I don't usually use them, but they do have a place in my life on bad days. And if I'm serving something non-sloppy que-ish to a houseful of DH's buddies, watching football or races and drinking beer you can bet they can be happy with getting the meal on a paper plate! I won't buy the cheapest ones, to me they're a waste and just as expensive if you have to triple load 'em to make up for how flimsy they are. OK, it may not be logical, but I never use the paper/plastic bowls, I like my own. If I need extra support to carry a bowl (I can use only one hand to carry, the other is on my cane to steady me) I have some great soup mugs that work for me too, even on bad days. Hey, you'd be amazed at what you can get away with serving in a soup mug! Family gatherings with 12 to 14 ppl (our usual number) and lots of time in the kitchen for me may see a good Chinet plate appear for starters or dessert. Very occasionally for the real meal as after all that love and effort into the food I want it to present well also. I know my family will leap in to help with the clean-up but then why should a couple of them have to wash, dry and replace most of my stoneware instead of relaxing? I don't have enough Corelle to go around for that large of a group, and breakage can become an issue also. Believe me, one dropped plate on my concrete-based tile floor (which I have done too many times myself on bad days not able to grip ) is fatal to dishware that's not Corelle -- and the mess is awful. Never considered renting plates and glassware for that small of a group, though they can be overwhelming for me, I just wouldn't bother to do it. But I really don't like paper napkins! I've used cloth for so many years and I'm going to be doing the damn laundry anyway! They're not sitting around the kitchen dirty as the dishes might be if I'm unable to do them right away. And the plastic cutlery, even the heavy stuff, is way down on my list for items I like to use. It may cut down on the clean-up but it is harder to use, I'd just as soon use my own heavy cutlery. I even have a picnic basket loaded with old cutlery, and some old melamine plates/bowls when needed for sloshier stuff as a matter of fact, for campouts, etc. But I sure don't balk at using the paper plates for just about anything when the closest water may be a half-mile or more away! While I'm prepping I use those plastic veg bags from the grocery to contain garbage most of the time and have used paper plates for that as well if they're easier for me to get to at the moment. Occasionally paper plates for the prepped food but not that often. Mise en place usually just goes in little glass bowls, or the Corelle, larger metal mixing bowls, or a few plastic "serving bowls" that ended up here after some gathering (often despite the amount), non-breakable is essential if I'm dizzy or especially low on balance or otherwise really unreliable that day on the breakage scale. But I just don't get the idea of buying those plastic "semi-disposable" plates and bowls and then washing them as they suggest you can do! If I'm not using real stuff for a reason I'd just as soon be done with it, and those things just never seem right (read: clean) to me.

Yeah, Heidi! This is big news, Susan. All of these behaviors are tremendous progress for her. Brag on, mom! She has again touched the lives of the people around her, and they are touching back.

The reason you thought that is because if you are lining your oven that is what is recommended. However, for a baking stone, and for those of us that cannot do that, the alternative is the bottom rack, and it works great. Try it, I think you'll be pleased.

Thanks. In the sandwich -- thin slices of pan grilled ham from a shank we had pecan-smoked earlier, stuck in shredded mozz between layers of ham (which semi-melted from the heat), bread smeared with crushed red pepper aioli, topped with green leaf lettuce. Simple, but it was so good. Really pleased with the hard crust on this bread. I just finished reading (again) the Poilane-style miche you are baking today, Elie. Look forward to your report and pics on that one. It is going on my list to try soon. We love sourdough. I have a mother starter going I've kept running for about 5 years now, but want to try PR's barm. I like the King Arthur flours also. Think when I do that one I'll try the combination of the bread flour and whole wheat first as he suggests. See how that works for me. But your report could change my mind. edit to add: I like your sig line, Elie.

Thanks, Marcia. So glad you started this thread. I had thought about it myself after getting the BBA, but was just a slug -- glad you did it. Definitely need to have the steam pan below the bread, glossyp. And a good sub for a bread/pizza stone is to hit your local HomeDepot or flooring center and pick up four or six large, thick, plain clay tiles, place together in your oven on the bottom shelf. There should be a couple inches of space around the square of tiles. Leave it in your oven, it really will help with heat distibution all the time and great for baking bread and pizza. Heat the stone for about an hour before baking for best results. The foccacia is another good rustic bread from BBA also. Very versatile. You can you halve that if you don't want the full 12"x17" pan and bake it in a smaller pan. Or save half back and fridge the dough for two or three days and it makes great pizza also.

Reading through the thread there seems to be a Pain a L'Ancienne kick right now and I baked the same today, started yesterday. I made three as stick baguettes, and three as the ciabatta. I like your idea of dividing into four instead of six, Elie, I'll do that next time for larger baguettes. After overnight in the fridge the dough came awake and alive easily this morning after three hours in a still chilly kitchen. Baguettes Had a hard time getting a pic of the crumb that showed anything but white flash. Ciabatta. The oven jumped in temp after turning these and they are darker than I wanted, but still taste good and the texture was not harmed. Yes, there's only two of us here also. Elie, our bread consumption must be close to yours. I bake most of our bread and we probably do consume more than most. Baguettes made a nice meal tonight.

Baked Pain a l'Ancienne baguettes from Reinhart's BBA so we had pan grilled ham sandwiches with crushed red pepper aioli, shredded mozz, and green leaf lettuce. Seared aparagus tips with the aioli for dipping. Almond and pimiento stuffed olives.

Delicious dinner pics and reports over the past few days, folks. Mouth is watering especially over your Shrimp Etouffe, Susan (one of my fav dishes), thanks for the link to that thread. And that Indonesian stew is marked for a go soon, spaghettti, very nice presentation too. Saturday night I par-baked tatuma squash halves, seeds scooped out to form edible cups for pork-stuffed squash. Seasoned shredded pork butt with ground cumin and garlic, cilantro and MX oregano from the garden, salsa verde. Baked again, then topped with crushed corn tortilla chips coated with ground garden MX chile and fresh lime juice for the last few minutes. Served with Spanish rice with corn and flour tortillas. Salad of green leaf lettuce, pummelo slices, avocado, and scallions, drizzled with pummelo juice/ground red MX chiles and cilantro (no photo for salad). Dos Equis cerveza for DH, NA and lime for me. Last night was a simple lamb stew made with a very meaty leg of lamb bone saved from Xmas roast. Stew was rich and delicious with lots of fresh-picked thyme, dried garden cinnamon basil, garlic and fresh ground black pepper, onions, baby carrots, red potatoes. But I took a lousy photo of that so I'm not posting it. Served with a green leaf and Romaine heart salad with Jonas Gold apple, dried red flame grapes, sliced scallions, and crumbled bleu d'auvergne Miramont. We drizzled that with Brianna bleu cheese dressing, which is fairly sweet but was very nice with the crumbled bleu to snap it up on the fruity/oniony salad. Sourdough Limpa muffins -- rye, orange peel, a touch of brown sugar, but really not sweet. An old recipe I ran across again looking for something else in my files -- these I will make again, very easy and versatile.

Very nice looking loaves. I love the BBA. I have been baking bread for about 30 years, but there is always more to learn and PR is wonderful. As far as potato in bread dough it really does not make the the bread heavy, but the bread retains moisture and a good crumb. The Potato Rosemary is a fine bread. Made the foccacia last Friday. I topped each third of the halfsheet pan loaf with a variation on the olive oil/herb topping -- Parm and herb oil of basil, thyme, rosemary, red pepper/the herb oil/black pepper and rosemary. Since it was just for the two of us (and I've had the flu, wasn't going to be making different bread every day!) I wanted some variety in the bread we were eating. Worked out well, I'd do it that way again (or similar variations) for a party. Very easy. For the white loaf -- what variation did you use? I like Variation 3, making the sponge first then proceeding. I really prefer it more for making nice light dinner/small sandwich rolls than as a loaf. I also enjoy the Pan de Campagne, and the rye sourdough is a marvelously flavored bread once you get the barm and starter down. I will be baking bread this weekend, haven't decided what yet but I'll post pics also. Enjoy your adventure!

I went with the apricot/orange peel glaze. My oh my, that was good. Definite keeper. We got our ham shank at our local HEB. Good stuff. No gold foil.

Add two more for me. The Gourmet Cookbook (60+ years and 1,000+ recipes chosen from the publication with notes) came in the mail today from goodcook.com. Great prices there. This was not the book I thought I ordered, but that was strictly my mistake. After flipping through it's staying anyway! Also the Edible Mexican Garden Cookbook from a eg member in the cookbook swap. Beautiful oversize book -- and the recipes look delicious too. Ideal accompaniment for my garden, and the other book I received, but it's a kitchen gardening advice/almanac compilation not cookbook. The price -- free -- was perfect on that one!

Took me a few pages to catch up on everyone's great looking meals. We have been flu central here for two weeks. When the DH first went down I made a big pot of chicken stock which was a good thing since I got hit with the flu about 3 days after he did. Made chicken soup about six ways over the past couple of weeks for us, changing it up a bit here and there to keep us interested in eating anything at all. With Jasmine rice, no-yolk noodles, bean thread noodles, curried with brown rice, all veg and stock, with roasted carrots/cauliflower/potatoes. We had enough of that no matter how varied in herb/spice and starch accompaniment. So here are some meals, mostly over the last few days when I could stand up for a bit longer again. Thank goodness for a halfsheet of foccacia (1/3 each parmesan/herb topped, herb topped, and cracked black pepper and rosemary topped, for variety) I made on Friday we had good bread to go with whatever over the worst of it. Dying for a salad one night so I had a sliced chicken thigh and ham grilled with shallots, slices of pummelo and crumbled bleu over Romaine hearts drizzled with basalmic/EVOO. Black pepper/rosemary foccacia. Another night I made mixed (and yes bag from the store) pasta tossed with grilled then sliced butcher-fresh hot Italian sausage, our summer tomatoes rescued from the freezer, dried basil/oregano and garlic all from the garden, onions topped with fresh grated Parm Reg. Parm foccacia. Wanted soup again, but still tired of chicken so made a pot of beef stock one evening with beef neckbones and hunks of chuck roast, then a veg/beef/barley soup the next night. Lots of baby carrots/onions/peas/ with our own rosemary/thyme/opal basil and garlic. Served with (ta-da!) the last of the herbed foccacia. Finally last night, I baked some light rye/sour cream/carraway seed biscuits. Sauteed ham and onions to serve on those with Swiss cheese sauce, and topped with pan crisped tender baby asparagus. Salad of green leaf lettuce, tomato, hard boiled egg and crumbled bleu with fresh ground black pepper (and an extra drizzle of Brianna's bleu cheese dressing for DH).