andiesenji

I had been doing some prelim planning for this year's holiday baking but had to put everything on hold after ordering the extra supplies I usually need. The cardiologist has told me I need to have my aortic stenosis fixed right away and has forbidden any "unnecessary" physical activity, including prolonged standing, lifting and in particular, vigorous stirring. So all the nuts/seeds/grains and etc., have been packed in Cambro containers and stored in the freezer (along with the various flours), the dried fruits vacuum packed and also packed into the big Cambro tubs. I had planned on Pecan crescents, fruitcake cookies, mincemeat cookies, oatmeal/cranberry/pecan, walnut sandies, orange creamsicle cookies, shortbread and peanut/peanut butter meltaways.

I believe the Sun Oven has been redesigned and made sturdier. Australia is increasing their marketing of solar cooking units.

I'm bumping this topic up because this has been whizzing around on FaceBook with multiple shares today and at one time there were several folks here on eG interested in solar cooking and baking. I think there was another thread but I couldn't find it with a cursory search. SunOven

When I was in the Army and would receive a "care package" from home with canned stuff (usually jam or jelly) I would use a dog tag. Those things came in handy for lots of little tasks like subbing for a screw driver, etc.

There are as many opinions as there are kitchens --- That being said, this from Food52 arrived yesterday in my email. Featuring info from Aarti Paarti: An American Kitchen with an Indian Soul it should help with the information requested.

I just use the backside of a table knife - slide it into the space between the lid and the spot where the threads are closest to the lid and gently pry up. I have been using this method for about 60 years as it was the same thing my grandma did and I have never found the need to use any "gadget" for this purpose. And some of the lids can really become cemented onto the jars with extremely sticky stuff when the rims have not been sufficiently cleaned...

Smith & Hawken make a tabletop "greenhouse" that most people put on a shelf by a window. Our local senior center has three of these for folks who live in the assisted living facility next door and want to do a little "gardening" - mostly flowers but a few herbs - that they can't have in their rooms. They have been set on shower pans (with the drain hole plugged) to keep any moisture off the flooring. Each has one grow-light that is fastened to the outside of the top with Velcro - the heavyweight squares for outdoor use. One was full of pink and red carnations last Christmas and the lady who grew them gave every visitor one with a little card.

I have used this recipe several times - using 2/3 cup of "poolish" or the flour/yeast ferment discussed in this topic that has been "working" for 8 hours - substituting it for the 1/3 cup of "sourdough starter" listed in the ingredients. This is a 50:50 white flour to rye flour ratio, which to my taste is ideal. Too much rye produces a gummy, heavy bread. This does require a very long (overnight for me) proofing time and after shaping should be allowed to rise until a finger poked into the dough leaves a small dimple - for me this usually takes an hour in the Excalibur at 85°F. or 1 1/2 to 2 hours at room temp in the winter - much less in the summer. At that point the "oven kick" will be at optimum and you will get the nice crumb with about 50% open holes that is the criteria for this type of bread.

It's essentially the ancient "wet sponge" method where hot water and flour were mixed, allowed to cool to "body temperature" and then the "yeast" or sourdough culture was added - fresh yeast or "ale yeast" in much earlier times, and the liquid allowed to ferment for hours before the rest of the flour was stirred and then worked into it. We used this method for German rye bread in my mom's bakery back in the 50s. It produced a much lighter product even when using 50% rye flour. We also used it for hard rolls to get the hard, thin crust with big open bubbles in the interior.

It was a very big farm - there were five barns besides the horse and pony stables and around the "kitchen garden" there were at least ten sheds for storing chicken feed, garden tools, the "outdoor" laundry stuff, the cookers and "pans" for the sorghum processing, my uncle Willard's woodworking shed and etc. There were "outhouses" near the barns - a long way from the water wells - for the outside workers to use or us kids if we were too dirty to be allowed to tramp through the kitchen - which happened often because we had to muck out after our own ponies and horses. We usually got hosed off where the horses were bathed and we actually thought that was "fun" except during the winter when it was damned cold.

I do this when I get chickens, ducks and game birds from my "egg man" because when I get them they have been eviscerated and plucked but not fully (head and feet still attached too). Ditto pork skin from the Mexican carniceria. "Finishing" baked hams with a brown sugar crust is much easier with a torch than in the oven. Browning the surface of birds that have been braised in a covered roaster (for old hens, wild turkeys and geese that do not get tender enough with regular roasting).

Teff flour is available from Amazon in the UK. I have a friend who now lives on a canal boat in Norfolk and who has been experimenting with teff and other African grains for breads and etc.

On my grandpa's farm in western Kentucky where I was born and raised, there were several outbuildings with galvanized metal roofs on which fruits were dried. I know from personal experience how hot the metal could get. The fruits were on large screen frames (like window screens) that were covered with curtain "netting" and if a storm threatened the activity to get the fruit undercover was frantic. To prepare for the drying activity my uncles or some of the farm workers would set up sawhorses with planks so the women could walk along them to distribute the fruit and remove the frames when the stuff was dried. As it was always quite humid the drying did take longer than it does here in the southwest. The one problem we had was that wasps and bees also like to try to get at the fruit - not to mention naughty children who were absolutely forbidden to climb onto the planks...

Where are you located that you can't find teff? I buy it all the time, both the grain itself and flour (Bob's Red Mill) which is available at Amazon, NUTS.com, they even have it at my local Walmart and of course every health food store in urban areas. You can also order it direct from an Idaho grower, Teffco, Maskal Teff I buy both the "red" (brown) teff and white (ivory) teff Many of the "traditional" Ethiopian recipes now include a portion of millet flour because so much teff is being exported from Ethiopia. A friend directed me to this site for a superior traditional injera recipe and method.

Yes. All the food was donated. At the time I had a friend who worked for Carnation - at the plant in Van Nuys - and he would give me large insulated containers of dairy - cottage cheese in 10-pound bags - other cheese and milk and eggs - probably a couple of hundred dollars worth - (that was when a hundred went a long way) and one of our members had family who raised vegetables near Oxnard so we would get crates of veg - mostly greens and root vegetables and depending on the time of year, strawberries and other berries, apricots, etc. Other folks donated what they could - many of the younger folks had parents that supported their hobby and provided food supplies. There was a fair amount of drinking - but the beer was fairly low alcohol so there were none of the problems with heavier drinkers and "weapons" were locked up before the "revels" began.

The SCA events I attended back in the '70s often had a set up called the "Stone Soup" kitchen (I have no idea why) where a group of folks dedicated to medieval foods would cook for the group attending the event and recreate dishes from the era. There were no potatoes, tomatoes, corn, peppers, etc., but there were foods that included lots of spices, including some unusual combination of flavors - beef so heavily spiced with cloves and such that for me it was practically inedible - but in medieval days it was a ploy to cover up the flavor of meat that had gone "off" but was too expensive to discard. We had several hunters who provided venison, wild boar (hunted in northern California), elk and even bear (ghastly flavor) as well as rabbit, hare and various fowl. At one even a swan was cooked but hardly anyone could eat it because the flavor of the flesh was muddy and fishy - UGH! Ditto the carp dishes that one family insisted on producing. One group was also dedicated to producing the "traditional" ales and "small beers" that were universally consumed in those days and they were nothing like the brews of today. I'm pretty sure I still have the SCA cookbook that was available back then. I do have numerous issues of Crown Prints and other SCA publications.

Many years ago when we went camping in the High Sierras, I would wrap a roast and whole vegetables (potatoes and carrots, etc) in three layers of foil, put it on a wire grid over the manifold (big Chrysler engine) and by the time we got to Convict Lake it was done and the inside of the wagon smelled so good everyone was drooling. Because it was so cool in the mountains, I would put yeast dough in a plastic bucket in the wagon so it would work like a proof box when it was sunny (most of the time) and I made wild strawberry jam in a baking pan on the dashboard (metal dash before the days of padding). Worked like a charm.

The first time I worked a ren faire we had a guy costumed as a faun - with a set of pan pipes and he had his legs and feet done up as goat feet. He used to take his breaks in the back of our booth where we had a cot so he could rest his feet. He did a lot of sitting on rocks and such - this was at the old Hope Ranch in Thousand Oaks where there was a lot of uneven ground, ditches with little streams and lots of rocks and many live oak trees. It was incredibly hot to have to dress in semi-court dress and after one weekend I gave up the pleated collar and opted for a lightweight shawl. I was quite slim back then and I would lose on average 10 pounds over the weekend, even with eating several times during the day and evening. I also danced a lot every evening... We had some interesting foods - meat pies in "coffins" - with practically inedible crusts except on the top. Soups in bread bowls, etc. Steamed artichokes with melted "butter" ... It all tasted good because we were hungry.

I have several of the battery powered mills because I use several varieties of peppercorns. I prefer the ones that dispense from the top because I got tired of the "debris" that constantly leaked from the bottom of that type. I had to keep the mills on a tray to keep the counters clean. Also the distribution of the pepper for my purposes is more even and easier to control (for me) but it is, like so many other things, strictly personal preference.

I blend the different types of curry paste to get the exact flavor I want for a particular dish. For some chicken dishes I want a "sweeter" flavor and it a bit more subtle so it does not completely mask the flavor of the chicken. I like a more pronounced spicy flavor for lamb and goat because those meats have a basic flavor that stands up to the curry. For vegetable curries, I take a middle road with one of the curry pastes that has more of a sour component (the Korma) and I add a tablespoon or so of the Tikka Masala and mix it with yogurt (homemade) prior to adding to the vegetables that have been sauteed in ghee.

I like the Patak brand of prepared curry pastes. Some are not quite hot enough so I cheat and add a little sambal badjak paste, either homemade (when I have been feeling ambitious) or a commercial brand - currently I have a jar of Kokita brand. I "tweak" the prepared pastes to get exactly the flavor I prefer - if I want it sweeter I add a dollop or so of Mae Ploy sweet chile sauce. I've tried the Mae Ploy curry pastes - the red and the green - and I don't really care for them as to my taste the heat overwhelms the more subtle flavors that I prefer. However, If you are cooking strictly Thai dishes, I suppose they would work. I prefer the more versatile Patak and currently have on hand the Madras, Kashmiri Masala, Korma and the Tikka Masala. I recently finished a jar of the mild curry paste.

What can it do that can't be produced in any pressure cooker? Here is one method for berries. I have in the past used this method for extracting flavor from rose petals, lavender blossoms, orange blossoms and from bushels of anise hyssop leaves (for the "rootbeer" flavor) and from celery for a "refined" celery juice. About 70 years ago Cornell (their archives are a great source for cooking and baking arcana) published a booklet on steam extraction of juices from fruits and vegetables. So this is not "new." Here are some accessories that can be used. I just use an elevated grid with a stainless steel colander (no handles so it fits in the pot) to hold the fruit.

THIS appeared in my email today and reminded me that I used to make a "Wellington" galette, loosely based on Beef Wellington. I use about 12 sheets of phyllo dough to make the crust and if I am feeling ambitions, smear some of the duxelles in between a couple of "layers." It consisted of beef cut into small pieces, sauteed in browned butter with a little garlic and incorporated into a galette with confit onions and mushroom duxelles - on which I posted a photo essay some 9 years ago. HERE It looks complicated when you read the recipe in a cookbook but the execution is actually very simple which is why I did the step-by-step photos. The nice thing about making a batch of duxelles is that it can be used in many other applications. On toast topped with a poached egg, as a component in bruschetta with anything from smoked trout to chopped hard-boiled egg to slivered chicken or ??

I'm waffling about making a couple of fruitcakes because I haven't made much candied peel yet this year. I'm really picky about the stuff that goes into my cakes because I like to know the source. I might make the old traditional (in my family) pork cake that was discussed so thoroughly several years ago. And of course I will make the fruited cocoa cake which was also a long established tradition in my family and which was often "dressed" with cherry brandy. I can't do that because of my allergy to alcohol but I do remember from long ago that it was very tasty...

I need to order some but have a large supply of rattlesnake beans I have to use up. Odd that I left them off my list above. But then I left off some others too - Pigeon "peas" which are just a small bean - I use them in salads where I want a really mild flavor. I checked the bean shelf in the pantry and have some Orca beans, some Marrow beans, a jar of green rice beans and a small handful of Scarlet Emperor beans. The latter way at the back of the shelf so they may be old. I put an order in for some Trout beans a while back but they were out of stock at the time. I note that they are back in stock at Purcell so perhaps I should re order. They are an interesting bean which I cook until mushy and most of the liquid is gone, mash and puree and make a bean with roasted garlic dip. They have a totally different flavor from most beans.