Franci

😂 honestly it’s not me, not anymore 😊, it’s the husband that is going all in!

Hi guys, after a short break from cooking, I am back😁 we really love Costco in Miami, so many things that were not available in NY 😁. First, after the Serrano we bought last month, the husband decided he had enough practice carving and we got a bellota from Costco, great deal. SO GOOD! Tonight we had our share of it! Then fried rice. Some sous vide cooked octopus from Spain, still from Costco with potatoes, olives and a good dose of oil and lemon. And a small Slice of Wagyu picanha 😋

Now I am even more confused. So, I use CalorieKing to count macros. For an average unsweetened cocoa powder I get the macros that you see in the picture. How can the numbers be so off? I tried with my fitness pal and Hershey is the same. Droste unsweetened cocoa powder is the only one that came exact at calculating in CalorieKing. Just thinking about all diabetic people wanting correct numbers...edit to add: I even thought law might allow to take off dietary fiber from calculating calories but still numbers don’t make sense to me. Do you know?

I was just comparing nutritional values of different cocoa powders and then I started to think...how come the ghirardelli is so low on calories? I wish they would just do 100g for nutritional data, people don’t want an easy math??? Anyway, attaching a picture. In my world 1g of fat=9 calories, 3g of carbs=12 and 1g of protein 4. For a total of 25 cal not 15. So 100g of product is 416 cal not 250. It frustrates me so much. With smaller numbers also mistakes are more difficult to see.

Another bread today and we are then good for a week or more 😙. This was done with the same method of last week bread. Made with a 100% biga for 18 hours (50% KA bread flour, 35% KA all-purpose and 15% KA whole wheat sprouted) 70% hydration. Very happy with how the crust turned out and the taste.

This is 100% durum made with an old dough plus some yeast. Finer crumb, which I prefer for bruschetta.

Son is still cooking...I thought he would be exhausted by now. Tonight he made this Korean fried chicken, it was quite good! I also made a small steak for me and the husband. My daughter liked her brother dinner, it came out less spicy than he intended, so she was happy. Kimchi on the side

Son didn’t want to show up empty handed to do homework with a class mate. Chouquettes often save me when I am short of time

Weird mix today of pizza in teglia and crab with Shanghainese dipping sauce, this is my house 😂 and in the picture my little chef showing muscles because he cleaned a claw for me and that requires a lot of effort 😁

Yesterday’s dinner was all done by my son. He is 12 years old. He worked so much for it, honestly it was more than edible, after dinner he was so tired and a little unhappy on how some dishes turned out that he said he is taking a break from cooking for a while. On the menu: tea eggs, marinated cucumbers, braised lotus roots, steamed rice and cha sao ( he didn’t want to go with my recipe and went for something he found on YouTube), just a tiny sweet 🤣

@JoNorvelleWalker I have this one , it’s not expensive at all. I will not deny that it moves around, looks like a toy, and it’s for small quantities, better for 400-500g flour max but I rarely do more than that anyway. I only reach for the Ka for cakes. Edit to add: in the past I owned also a different model with a central axel, that is much better for bigger quantities, one of the reason I disliked it compare to the model I linked-which has a tilted head-was exactly I never kneaded big quantities.

I have the commercial KA 8 QT but I rarely use it for bread. I lost the bread hook while moving, I should get one, so I use it even less than before. I take it out it sometimes for very hydrated doughs here I use the flat beater and since it’s not that hard of a dough I go to higher speeds, I’d switch to the hook again when the gluten is there, if I had the hook. But 90% of the time I admit I use my MUM Bosch, I like much more the hook shape there and It’s brilliant if you are working on small quantities. I maybe use KA if I need to make a cake where I need to beat my eggs for long.

@JoNorvelleWalker maybe this a stupid question...but how do you add your liquids? All at once? Add only part of them, when the gluten is formed, add the remaining very slowly in order not to loose what you already achieved

Since in my business I made only nut flour cakes, I gained some experience with baking with nut flours. Especially my hazelnut cake was only hazelnut flour, sugar and egg whites, so simple, so tricky. I tried already made hazelnut flours even the expensive imported from Piemonte. One of the secrets in that cake was the hazelnut flour, the already made flours compared to mine were so much oilier giving me a denser cake. For my experience is possible to have a light, not oily hazelnut flour. I had better success in making a light hazelnut flour than a pistachio flour.

I added some broken walnuts to the cookie filling. Not very sweet, right how I like it

I did afterwords but next time I’d cook a bit to soften, then pass to the sift and put back with the sugar and starch. Also I’d add some lemon juice. I already used some for “not my usual frolla” cookies. I am waiting for it to cool down.

@teo brilliant! My son is a very big fan of frangipane! He will love the tart and I think I also have for a small batch of blueberries butter.

Hi guys, I don’t have any experience making jams in the Thermomix. Maybe @Kerry Beal can give me some tips? I have a bag of Wyman’s blueberry in the freezer. It is taking very precious space and my daughter stopped eating frozen blueberries. I was thinking of making a curd or even better a butter, which seems more versatile. Any suggestion on how to do it? Or a recipe? I am not planning on canning, maybe refreeze some since I hope it will take less space. Thanks!!!

This is a bread half durum, 100% biga. Biga 20 hours. Then added water, malt, salt and oil.

Grilled tuna, salad ready to dress from in the fridge, leftover. My 5 minutes lunch 😁

Remember the coca de forner of last week? I made it again. With Saf this time and 70% hydration and the rest of 2 hours at room temperature. What can I say? To D I E for. Completely different result, much much better

Flap, grilled baby zucchini,some Greek yogurt, pepper in agrodolce (cooked by my son😄), steamed rice and I found at TJ’s a replacement for the Chile crunch, not bad!

Yes, definitely a lifestyle change. I thought I had one also before 😂 but stopped working. Life is an evolution, this is a simpler me.

I finished my diet, I was so thrilled about the results that I relaxed for 2 weeks, now I am back on diet. Not to loose weight but to keep my very hard earned muscles. Back on proteins 😁

Wonderful @Kerry Beal!