MelissaH

Does anyone know whether these bags can be sealed with a FoodSaver? I'm thinking in terms of hedging bets against leakage. MelissaH

Is it normal for you to have work meetings on what Americans consider the weekend? I've only heard of one such regularly occurring meeting, and that (surprise!) was also in the academic world, and had been happening every Saturday for the last 40 years or so. MelissaH

Y'know, I like seeing the underside of the frog. It's almost as if the frog's inside the chocolate, and you're seeing him cling to the top as if it were a window. (The partner to this view would be the cat sliding down from the outside of the chocolate... ) MelissaH

But they're not the same! They never will be! Any more than a pecan pie without nuts will be the same as a butter tart (which I also love, after many business trips to Ontario). Also, something I didn't note before. In Owen's picture of the half-moon, you can see his hand behind the wax paper holding the cookie. A half-moon is a substantial piece of baked good. In my experience, a black and white is a much daintier pastry. Half-moon = 5" diameter -- black and white about 3". Not that I'm a size queen or anything. There are things that clearly share a common ancestor, but have evolved into separate entities. And two of those are the Black and White and Half-moon Cookie. ← I've never heard of a dainty black and white, traditional-style. Black and whites are generally quite large, as big across as my hand. The last batch a friend brought up from NYC was so-called mini black and whites, and those were the 3-inch variety. But no, that's not standard. MelissaH

I used Paula Reds this time because it's still early season apples. Later in the season I'll use Northern Spies, with a couple of Ida Reds thrown in because those are Casey's favorites and ones we have on hand. The Paula Reds seemed just a little sweeter and softer than I'd aim for, but in mid-September one can't be picky. MelissaH

What markemorse said. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of this week! MelissaH

I did one more thing in the kitchen tonight: baked an apple cake. I nearly always make an apple cake to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, because it's the right time of year for apples (a little early this year), and I like it better than the traditional apples with honey, or honey cake. This became one of the recipes in Dorie Greenspan's book but it started out as mine. Or rather, as my great-grandmother's. It came to me through my mother's sister. As always, I started by getting my ingredients together. I didn't get the eggs (2 of them) out of the fridge for the photo because I realized that the kitchen was warm enough tonight to make the butter a little softer than ideal. I wanted to keep the eggs cold, to try and chill the butter so it would stiffen up a touch. First step: make the dough. Two sticks of butter, two eggs, and a cup of sugar go into the mixer bowl. When it's nicely creamed, add a tablespoon of baking powder (yes, you read that right, a whole tablespoon) and about half a teaspoon of salt. Then add the juice of one lemon; this will make the dough slosh around the mixer bowl, and you'll need to scrape the sides to get everything combined. Finally, add the flour. The exact amount of flour depends on how juicy your lemon was. Because this is an old touchy-feely recipe, I don't measure too exactly either. I know that it always takes at least 3 1/4 cups of flour, and I always use King Arthur AP flour for this. I generally get the first three cups in, scoop up the fourth cup, and little by little add as much of it as it needs. You're aiming for a dough that will eventually be rollable but you don't want to add so much flour that the dough gets dry. In this case, I used about half of the fourth cup of flour. It will look something like this when you're done: (actually, I probably could have used a little more flour in this batch. Guess my lemon was extra-juicy. The oversoft butter didn't help either.) Divide the dough into two parts. Getting it exactly even isn't tremendously important, because you have more dough than you need. Flatten each dough portion, wrap each in plastic wrap, and let them chill in the refrigerator for a while. I typically leave them in while I make the filling, but my kitchen was apparently on the warm side because the dough really needed to be colder to be properly rollable. But fortunately, for this recipe it's not a big issue. Before you begin the filling, turn the oven on to 350 degrees F. For the filling, start by peeling, coring, and slicing about 8 apples into a large bowl. You want lots of filling in your apple cake, so it's better to prepare more apples if yours are small. I'm using some of the Paula Reds that I got from Fruit Valley Orchards earlier in the week. Because these are a somewhat softer apple to begin with, I kept my slices a little on the thick side. Taste a sample or three to see how your apples taste before you add anything. Squeeze the second lemon, and add the juice to the apple slices. If your apples are sweet, add it all, but if your apples are tart you may want to be more sparing. Toss the slices in the juice to separate them from one another, and to coat each slice with lemon juice. Add cinnamon and sugar to taste—again, this depends on your apples. If your apples were sweet to begin with, you won't need as much sugar. These apples were pretty sweet, so I only needed a couple of spoonfuls of sugar. I added a generous sprinkle of cinnamon because I like cinnamon. Toss it all together with your hands, and taste again. Once the filling is mixed, it's time to roll the dough. My dough was still really soft, because my butter started out really soft and the dough didn't have enough fridge time to firm up. Nonetheless, I floured my counter and tried rolling it anyway. I was able to get it rolled, fold it into quarters, and use my scraper to convey it into my pan (a pyrex deep-dish pie pan), but I couldn't unfold the dough without it sticking together and tearing. Oh well, never mind. This dough is quite forgiving, so if you don't like to roll dough or if you run into trouble, all you need to do is press the dough together, and push it where it needs to be. You can even get away with no rolling whatsoever: just pull off chunks of dough and pat them into the pan. There will be extra dough left over, so set it aside. Then, the filling needs to go into the lined pan. I don't usually just dump the filling in from the bowl, because all the juice from the bottom of the bowl will make my crust soggy. Instead, I use my hands to move the apple pieces from the bowl into the pan, leaving the liquid behind. Next up: another rolling session. I don't know why I bothered, because if the first half didn't go in nicely, the second certainly wouldn't. And it didn't. I rolled it out, folded it in quarters, and again failed miserably in unfolding the dough on top of the filling. So I got to patch it together. This is actually what most of the family does with this dough. To my knowledge, I'm the only one since my great-grandmother to actually successfully roll this dough and neatly get it into the pan. I usually have better luck, but I usually also have a much colder kitchen. So I'm just another family member tonight. Once the top crust goes on the cake, you need to cut some vents. The dough will tend to close up on itself in the oven, so twist the knife to make the slits wider. And then, into the oven it goes! The trick is to get the filling cooked without underbaking the dough. The absolute worst thing you can do is underbake the bottom crust. That's why I use a glass pan: I can pick it up and look at the underside to know if it's done. I always have leftover dough that didn't fit into the pan. I gather it up into a disk, wrap it in plastic, and put it back in the fridge. Tomorrow, I'll roll it out, cut it with a star-shaped cookie cutter because that's what my great-grandmother always used, sprinkle the cookies with cinnamon and sugar, and bake them off. My grandmother's older sister would take the leftover dough and form it into a roll to slice, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar, and bake. Expect the apple cake to take at least 45 minutes to bake, and often closer to an hour or more. Eventually, it will be done (meaning the dough on the bottom is starting to brown). It then needs to cool before you can cut it and enjoy it. I'll leave mine to cool overnight. It's not a beautiful dessert by any stretch of the imagination. This one in particular is aesthetically challenged, since I screwed up the dough-rolling. But this is the only recipe I have from my great-grandmother, whom I never met, and because of that I don't want to fancify it or pretty it up. I hope she'd approve. MelissaH

Well, like I've said before, I'm not really a drinker. I put about two fingers' worth in the bottom of my conical glass, and that was plenty for me. It tasted like wine. Sorry. I'll ask my husband for a better description. MelissaH

The recital this afternoon was fine. This pianist always puts on a good show, but this was not the best concert I've heard him do. (Some of it might be the piano: two summers ago, there was a bit of an energy crunch here, and the call went out for energy conservation. The university complied by killing the AC in all nonessential spaces, with disastrous results: the Steinway concert grand was sealed up in a non-AC room, and wound up getting virtually destroyed by the humidity. Last year they borrowed a Yamaha, which would have been fine for a pop music concert but just sounded all wrong for a classical piano recital. This year they had a Baldwin, which sounded somewhat better. I still miss the Steinway, as other people apparently also do.) The highlight this afternoon for me was the piano sonata by Samuel Barber, which I hadn't heard before. After the concert: dinner! Neither of us was particularly hungry. We went grocery shopping this early-afternoon, and when we got back I had a bowl of cereal and Casey had a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup. (I've never liked canned tomato soup.) I met our next-door neighbor at the recital, and invited her to come back for some ice cream. She, too, loved the PB&J combination. I still have some left! But that was just a stopgap measure. I needed to make some real dinner. And I decided to try something brand-new, to use up some of my carrots. The recipe came from this book which I acquired courtesy of Anna N. The author was born in Belgium, but married a Chilean and lives in Chile now. We also have her Belgian cookbook, and the recipes we've made from that have meshed with what we've eaten in Belgium. I was looking through this book earlier this week (yes, I read cookbooks as if they were novels) and found a recipe for a carrot omelet. Since we had all the ingredients on hand, I decided to give it a go. This was the first recipe I've cooked from this book. The ingredients: I forgot to include my flour container in the photo, but you'll need two tablespoons of flour also. I started by separating three eggs. I broke a yolk. Oops. The other prep work: peeling and grating the carrots. The recipe calls for 2 1/2 cups of grated carrots, from 2 to 3 carrots. I used 3 carrots and didn't measure anything more. And I minced the clove of garlic. I don't know what variety of garlic this is, but it's grown locally. The preparation of this omelet was different than any other omelet I'd done before. It started by beating the egg whites and a pinch of salt to soft peaks. Yes, I did this with my whisk, by hand. It wasn't so bad. Then, the yolks get folded in alternately with two tablespoons of flour. The whites deflate somewhat as you do this. You season the eggs with salt and pepper, and then use a fork to mix in the garlic and carrots. This omelet gets cooked in a small nonstick frying pan. I heated mine over medium-low heat (the cookbook said medium, but I know how my stove heats!) with a touch of oil. The batter goes into the hot pan, and cooks for 3 or 4 minutes. I poured in the batter, and shook the pan to help distribute it. I used my heat-resistant spatula to make sure the edges stayed free, which was a particular problem around the rivets holding the handle in place. Once the edges were free, I could just shake the pan occasionally to make sure the whole thing was loose and unstuck. Then came my trouble spot. The recipe said to invert over a plate. If I'm going to try that again, I want a Spanish tortilla plate with a knob on the bottom. If I ever visit Spain, I want to get one and bring it home, because I can't find one here. Next time, I think I'd treat this like a frittata and put the pan under the broiler to cook the top side instead of trying to flip the omelet. It takes just a couple of minutes to brown the bottom side. And that's it! The recipe said to serve with a salsa, for which it gave a recipe. I was lazy and just used some salsa from the bottle open in the fridge. I wouldn't have thought to make a whole omelet of carrots, but it tasted pretty good. I liked the sweetness the carrots brought to the party, and the garlic's bite kept it from being one-dimensional. The salsa was an unusual addition to me, as I generally prefer combining chips with salsa rather than veggies, but the sweetness worked nicely to offset the spiciness. I'd make this again. MelissaH

Oh, this is a sad sight! I actually thought about swinging by on my way home Wednesday (well, not really on the way, but not too far out of my way either) to get some ribs for dinner, but then I realized that with the concert, I wouldn't have time to eat them. Let's hope they rematerialize soon. And in the meantime, you're on for a smackdown! MelissaH

That's interesting. My husband likes bananas, but doesn't eat them often because they give him heartburn. Conventional brands of yogurt do also, but the organic brands with sugar rather than high-fructose corn syrup don't. We were wondering whether maybe bananas are high in fructose. Maybe I'll see if he has a problem with organic bananas. MelissaH

The hard part about a foodblog is catching up with everything that happened after turning the computer off. Yesterday during the afternoon football-watching session, I ate a little bowl of munchymix. Munchymix is our generic term for whatever we eat in front of the TV, if it's not a single ingredient like cashews or candied peanuts or M&Ms. My favorite munchymixes come from Trader Joe's, and they're relatively easy to haul back because they pack nicely. I liked this mix, because I like dried blueberries. (I know I've gone on the record above as saying that I don't like raisins. But I do like most other dried berries (blue, cran, straw), as well as other dried fruits such as cherries, pineapple, apple, papaya, and mango.) And then we headed over next door. Our next door neighbors are both retired: he was an art professor, and she taught music for the Fulton school district, and still conducts the Fulton Community Band. (Disclaimer: I play flute in the community band. We usually have either rehearsal or a concert on Thursday nights, but we take the month of September off after a busy summer season.) It was very much a culinary crowd for dinner last night. Both of us like to cook. As we were arriving, we met another couple coming for dinner, and he used to cook for a hotel here in town that's since become a nursing home. And the other two people were already inside: they're here for school, but he's a CIA graduate and cooked on a cruise ship for a bit. The other guests of the evening were just babies: They're about two months old, and were adopted a week ago. The evening started with rosemary cashews, cheese and crackers, and conversation in the studio. The wedge in back is St.-André. In front is Drunken Goat, and the piece on the left was something unremarkable coated in cocoa. (It was a tasty cheese, but the chocolate flavor didn't come through.) From there, we moved to the dining room for a sweet potato gratin with pecan topping, pork tenderloin with fried sage leaves because the garden's been prolific in its sage production this fall, and a dish of green beans, tomatoes (from the garden), and crispy pancetta with shaved parmesan. To drink: For dessert: I think this is a peach parfait recipe from Fine Cooking earlier this summer. The peaches were peeled and sliced off the pit. The whipped cream was sweetened with honey. And the crumbs were crumbled biscotti. We'll probably see our neighbors at the recital this afternoon. This professor always puts together a nice program, and it doesn't hurt that he's drop-dead gorgeous! MelissaH

Happy Sunday, everyone! When I opened my eyes this morning, I was greeted by a chorus of meows. You don't need to speak Cat to understand what the boys were saying: "FEED ME!" But our boys have been known to lie to us before, so instead of automatically getting dishes and a can from their storage place in my morning-fogged state, I first checked the fridge. And this is what I found: We always put the half-can of food for the boys' dinner in a green-lidded container. I know that if I see a green lid like this one in the fridge, my husband the early bird has already taken care of the boys. Most mornings, he's way ahead of me. But some mornings, I find the container holding the cat food sitting on the counter instead of the fridge. Sometimes when that happens, the lid's not even on the container yet. And once I found the container, uncovered, with all the juice licked off. The cats are not permitted on the kitchen counters, or the dining room table, but the rules only apply when someone's there to enforce them. Ah, the mind of a cat. After satisfying Leo with a rub behind the ears and nearly getting tripped by Lyon weaving through my legs so he could bash his head against my ankles, it was time for a drink. It was chilly last night, so I decided I wanted something hot this morning. Same old electric kettle. I like this one because all the wires are in the base, and you can pick up the water-containing part with no strings attached. And (I tried but couldn't get a decent photo) when you turn it on, there's a cool blue light inside. The tea and teacup both came from our last visit to Belgium. I like that the cup's clear, so you can see how dark your tea is getting without having to lift the lid. The tea we picked up at a shop in Brugge called Javana. Here's a better look at the label: I don't speak much Dutch beyond the basic polite phrases. As far as I can figure out, this is Fruits of the South tea, mixed from hibiscus, rose hips, and dried pineapple, apple, and lemon chunks. The tea brews up to a beautiful reddish color. Some tea you can pour fresh water over the infuser and get a second cup of tea out, but not this. All the goodness has been extracted after the first cup. Today, there are two events on the agenda. First, there's a football game to watch! I grew up in Pittsburgh, and I'm old enough to remember the last of the glory years of the Steel Curtain. You can imagine the horrors I experienced when I moved to the Cleveland area. But at least living there, our TV antenna could pick up the stations from Youngstown, which usually carried the Steeler games rather than the Browns games. Here, the closest team to us is the Buffalo Bills, but you also find a fair number of Jets and Giants fans as well. This week, the Steelers are hosting the Bills, which means that I get to watch my team on TV. But I'll probably only see the first half of the game. This afternoon, we'll be heading onto campus. There's a piano recital! One of our music professors (the same one who plays jazz on Wednesday nights, and who took part in the chamber music concert this last Wednesday) will be performing works by Mendelssohn, Beethoven, J.S. Bach, Liszt, Barber and Gershwin. His recitals are always a treat. MelissaH

I was rudely surprised the first time I ran into a half moon cookie. My family has roots three generations back in NYC, and I've long been a fan of black and whites. When we moved here, I saw a cookie that looked like a black and white, but the nameplate said "half moon cookie" instead. I got one. I still haven't gotten over my disappointment and I still haven't bought another half moon. Can you believe, you can get them with a chocolate cookie? That still seems just as wrong to me as the gooshy icing. The only place I regularly see them in Oswego is Ontario Orchards. Even our grocery stores don't seem to have them. MelissaH

I haven't had Owen's ribs, but I have had the pleasure of eating John-John's. I, too, fail to be impressed by Dinosaur BBQ, and prefer to make my own. I like sauce on my ribs, and usually use =Mark's South Carolina Mustard Barbecue sauce. This is sounding like it may turn into a smackdown at some point. MelissaH

It's been one of those mornings where I should have started oatmeal last night. I was up fairly late, finishing knitting the cabled band for my hat. This morning, I rolled out of bed just as my husband announced that he was going out to deal with the hazmat disposal at the transfer station. This so discombobulated me that I showered, dressed, and stumbled downstairs without eating breakfast. I arranged myself in front of the TV, knitting in hand and instruction book in front of me, to try and graft the ends of my band together. This was at about 8:30 this morning. The next couple of hours involved much nonverbal grumbling. When I used actual words, it came out as even worse language. Fortunately, the only ones around to hear me were Leo and Lyon, and they seemed to not understand English (in this case, Anglo-Saxon? ) this morning. They're cats. Sometimes they understand perfectly. Other times, they don't have a clue what you're saying. I grafted the ends of my band together, only to discover that I'd managed to do the whole thing backwards. So I picked all my stitches out, painstakingly catching each loop back on a knitting needle as it was opened back up, and started again. I had problems again, and picked the stitches out again. Then I got a different book to see if a different set of pictures helped at all. They didn't, the third time through. I started yet again. By now, both the yarn and my nerves were more than a little frazzled. I'm glad that yarn is more forgiving of do-overs than pastry crust. A couple of stitches into Attempt #4, my husband came home from the transfer station. He pulled on a pair of leather work gloves, grabbed the maul from the garage, and headed outside through the sliding door in the family room to split some firewood. He didn't close the door behind him. I kept on going. I goofed. I dropped loops while pulling my stitches out. I managed to pick them up, and got ready to start over. I decided that whatever happened on this fifth attempt, I'd go with it. The junction's going to go in the back of the hat, so it won't be too visible. The yarn I'd been using was starting to untwist, and I was starting to splice stitches. As I turned the pages of the third knitting book to figure out where I was screwing up, I realized that my fingers were cold to the point of being stiff, so I closed the sliding door. And then I did something radical. I'm very left-handed. My father is also very left-handed. His mother was left-handed. I knit right-handed because the whole world knits right-handed, and it's messy to follow patterns if you don't knit right-handed. Knitting right-handed has never been an issue for me, because you need to use both hands. But when I need to seam something together, I hold the needle in my left hand and sew left-handed. And that's what I'd been trying to do: graft left-handed. But my instructions are all for grafting right-handed. And because you're trying to duplicate what the yarn does, it's critical that you put the needle through each loop in the proper direction. So you can see where I might get confused, especially when I add that both my father and I are very bad with right and left, and we both have to think very hard about which way is left if we're driving and someone says "Turn left up ahead." My radical move: I continued to hold the needle in my left hand. But I started to graft at the right end, as if I were right handed. It was awkward, but I managed it. And then I got the idea to start each stitch as if I were working from the right end, but then turn it around to look at what I was doing if I were grafting left-handed. In the end, I managed to generate my own instructions for grafting left-handed. And this is the result: No sense in weaving ends in till the whole hat's knitted. And then, I realized that my stomach was growling, so I ate two bowls of cereal. That should keep me going till dinner tonight, with a bit of gametime munching in front of the TV. MelissaH

Who knew there were so many oatmeal lovers out there? And that's only including those who have come out of the woodwork so far! MelissaH

Dinner tonight: we went to Rudy's! We always walk there, unless the weather's nasty enough that we're getting it to go. Tonight was nice but windy, so we walked. Inside, it looked just the way Rudy's always does. It was still early so people were only stacked one-deep at the counter waiting to place their orders. During the heart of the summer, it will be so crowded that you can barely wiggle your way up. Here's what you order from. I got a guppy plate and an order of zucchini. Casey got smelt and onion pieces. We both got lemonade to drink. When they came out, here's what our dinner looked like. Haddock's a favorite of mine, and Rudy's does it well. This particular batch of zucchini was not as good as what I'd had a few weeks ago. I think the local zucchini run may be over, and this was frozen. At any rate, it was mushier than I'd prefer, although even mushy fried zucchini from Rudy's is still pretty good. Casey had never before gotten their smelt, or their onion pieces. They don't look all that different on the outside, do they? As you might be able to see from the pictures, we chose to eat inside at one of the half-dozen tables. We saw other people taking their food outside, but I was afraid that I'd lose something to the wind. Every time someone opened the door to enter or leave, we had to hold onto our tartar sauce packets and napkins! As we finished, the electrician who worked on our kitchen reno came in, and we chatted while he waited for his order to come up. He was in a good mood. Happy electricians are a good thing. Our meal finished, we walked home. And we saw all kinds of signs that summer is officially ending, like this one on the door of Rudy's: and this one at Bev's: Ordinarily we'd stop at Bev's and eat our ice cream as we walk home. But we have frozen PB&J waiting for us, so we kept on walking. As we walked, we saw more signs of fall, but these were nonverbal. Tomorrow, we're going to the transfer station in the morning because they're having a household hazardous waste drop-off day. We have stuff to get rid of that was in the garage when we bought the house. We'll probably spend the afternoon parked in front of the television watching college football—kickoff for the first game we care about is at noon. And then we've been invited next door for dinner. I hope our neighbors and their other guests don't mind me bringing the camera! MelissaH

Today's lunch was another Creative Use of Leftovers. It involved the goat cheese and caramelized onions that hadn't gotten used on pizza last night. I reheated the onions in the microwave for a minute. While they warmed, I put my nonstick frying pan on the stove. A tortilla went into the pan, and I smeared the warm onions on one side. Over the top of that, I scattered the goat cheese crumbles, and folded the uncovered tortilla half over the top. After a few minutes of cooking, I flipped the whole thing over with my asbestos fingers. When the cheese had melted, I declared lunch cooked. Voilà! An onion and goat cheese quesadilla, alongside a Diet Dr Pepper. I wish I could find the caffeine-free equivalent, but nowhere here seems to carry it. Speaking of beverages, I realized that I didn't show you what we drank with our pizza last night. So here they are, or what's left of them. The bottle on the left contained hard cider. Earlier this summer, we circled Lake Ontario, taking our time to do the trip so we could explore. This cider was one of our finds. Almost directly across the lake from us is Prince Edward County, Ontario. The County is quite agricultural, similar to what we have around here, but they get less snow than we do. There are few commercial examples of hard cider available here so we look for different versions to try. We made a point of visiting County Cider, where we tried everything they had before deciding what to buy. This bottle held their Waupoos Premium Cider, which is pleasantly dry and bubbly. I like bubbles. When we were at the cidery, we purchased a bottle of their ice cider to bring home. Our first experience with ice cider was in Montreal, where ice cider, sometimes called applejack on this side of the border, refers to cider that's been pressed, fermented, and then frozen. When an alcoholic beverage is frozen, the water in that beverage freezes, and can then be removed while it's solid. This increases the alcohol content of the beverage. In effect, it's like distilling the beverage, but without adding heat so you can keep more of the low-boiling compounds. And it would be considered right up there with making moonshine as far as legality goes. County Cidery ice cider is a different beast, closer to ice wine. Despite the lyrics of the Oliver Cromwell song, not all apple varieties fall off the tree when they're ripe. They leave some of their apples on the tree, and harvest them in January when they're frozen solid. Then they press the frozen apples, which yield juice with a higher sugar content because much of the water's frozen. There's so much sugar in the juice that it's tricky to get it properly fermented. But based on what we tasted, the cidery has it figured it out. Casey's inspired to talk with some of our local orchards, to see if he can get permission and cooperation to try using some of their apples this winter. The other bottle is one that we acquired on a wine tour we did with Casey's mother and aunt. Our niece Kali, one week shy of her 11th birthday, was also along. Since I'm really not a drinker, I was designated as the driver. We started our trip with ice cream from Cornell's dairy store, and then headed to the east side of Seneca Lake to start our sampling, eventually working our way to the west side of Cayuga Lake. Kali and I were both pleased to find that many of the wineries are accommodating drivers, children, and other non-drinkers. One place offered Otter Pops, which were wonderful on a hot day. Several had friendly dogs on the premises. Everyone had munchies. And at least three wineries now press some juice, sulfite it immediately to kill any yeasts and prevent all fermentation, and bottle and sell it as grape juice. Each winery uses its own blend of grapes for their juice. This particular bottle was from the Swedish Hill Winery. MelissaH

Today has been somewhat busy. Breakfast was back to cold cereal with milk. I have a little bit of oatmeal left over, but I think I'll include it in my next batch of bread dough. I never have the same amount of oatmeal left over, so it always turns out differently. I'm usually a scientific-type baker, anal about measuring everything, but Leftover Oatmeal Bread is one case where I tend to just wing it. I had some errands to run downtown today, and I brought the camera along. My first stop was at the bookstore, where I dropped off a container of frozen PB&J. (I'm good to them, and they're good to me.) Banna, Jackie, and Bill were all most appreciative, and I'm sure I'll hear their opinions when I next see each of them. I always make a point of looking through the bookstore shelves when I go in, and this time I found something interesting to bring home: I've always been interested in the cuisines of other cultures. Although the suburb where I grew up has a large enough Indian population to support a Hindu temple, I did not grow up eating Indian food. My father is not a curry fan, and to him, Indian = curry. In fact, I didn't eat much Indian food until we moved to Ohio. The former department chair at the school where Casey taught was Bengali, and his wife was a marvelous cook. We were geographically close enough to visit my parents, and on the rare occasions when we were visiting but my father was unavailable for dinner, the two of us and my mom would go to a South Indian vegetarian restaurant near the Hindu temple. Then we moved here, where there's no good Indian to be found, although we had excellent Indian in Scotland and the Czech Republic (of all places) early in the summer. This book has no recipes, but I look forward to learning at least a little about some of the different regional Indian cuisines so I can look at cookbooks with a more educated eye. While I was downtown, I decided to go for a little meander along the river, because it was a beautiful (if windy) day. The city of Oswego has encouraged businesses to adopt clusters of plantings, which means that either they care for the plants or they hire someone to do it for them. This particular grouping, including a crabapple tree and some other kind of tree, has been adopted by one of the local power generation companies. (Gardening's not my strong suit.) As I walked along the river, I saw a few men fishing. Later in the fall when the salmon start their run, people will be packed shoulder-to-shoulder along both sides of the river to fish. The first couple of people I talked to had just gotten started, but this man had been there for quite a while. He'd wheeled his scooter down to the sidewalk, set up his gear within easy reach, and moved back and forth as the fishing required. His catch today included a four-pound bass. He said that most days he came down, he could pretty easily catch his limit. As I watched, one of the other men got a bite. He worked the fish on the line but as I watched, the end of the line went PING! and rocketed back onto the sidewalk behind him. He reeled the empty line in, rebaited his hook, and cast it back into the water. Ah well. Where there are people fishing, there are bait shops. This one's down at the river, practically under the bridge. The door was open, and people were inside. I didn't go in. I crossed under the bridge, and looked across the river at Lock 8. There are seven locks because there's no Lock 4. While we think of the Oswego River as a river, part of it is maintained as the Oswego Canal. This canal provides a way for boaters to get from Lake Ontario (and by extension, the rest of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway) to the Erie Canal. From there, it's possible to get down to New York City via the Hudson River. There's not much commercial traffic, but every year we hear people in town making the circle trip. From there, I headed back up to street level. My next stop was the lakeshore, because it was a nice day. From the west side of town, you can see our lighthouse and also the Marine Museum. The gray boat docked at the museum (the white square building) was the last commercial fishing boat out of Oswego. Now, the only fishing is on people's private boats, or by charter. As I stood at the lakeshore, I noticed that it was still windy. However, this wind is not the normal breeze off the lake—it's a wind from the south. As the afternoon's worn on, it's stayed windier. Our weather forecasts are predicting storms this evening and tonight, and tomorrow's supposed to be a rotten day, only getting to 60 degrees F if we're lucky. It sounds like a good day to stay inside and watch college football! MelissaH

This is as good a time as any to discuss the supermarket situation in Oswego. When I last foodblogged, we had three supermarkets in town (Tops, P&C, and Price Chopper), as well as a smaller grocery store (Mike's Big M), and Ontario Orchards outside of town. And during my last blog, it was officially announced that Tops would be pulling out of CNY, and that Price Chopper would be moving into the Tops store. Their reasoning was that the new store is bigger, and had better parking. Sure enough, that November, they closed the old store at 6 PM one night, and reopened in the new location the next morning. We are not impressed. The new Price Chopper store may be bigger, but the aisles are still so narrow it's hard to get two carts to pass. They may have more shelf space, but it's just more of the same old same old. The produce department still has the same suppliers as always, andd they still run out of cilantro and flat-leaf parsley regularly. The meat counter is staffed with cooperative people, but most of their stuff now comes pre-cut, and they seem to do less of their own butchering. The fish counter reeks of the chlorine bleach they use to clean, and I won't buy fish from them because it tastes like chlorine bleach. The pharmacy got axed in the changeover. Yet, we continue to shop there because it's the best we have. The new location is also much less convenient, not just for me but for a lot of people. The old store was pretty much right downtown. It was a walk away from much of the senior housing. The new store is out east of town, a mile and a half from the old store. It's now in a location that almost nobody can walk to. If you don't drive, your only options are to ride the bus (if you're near a stop), hire a taxi, or get a ride. Our other remaining supermarket, P&C, is generally more expensive for everything. It's in the shopping center next door to the Price Chopper shopping center. We'll go there only rarely, usually when Price Chopper's run out of cilantro. Our next-door neighbor, who does some catering, likes the meat from Big M, the smaller grocery store. Another friend says that the people there steered one of her neighbors to exactly the right cut of beef for his stew recipe. But everyone in town agrees that the produce is horrendous. Nonetheless, Big M is now the only place to get groceries close to downtown, and it's the only grocery store on the west side of the river in Oswego. Ontario Orchards does a nice job with produce. They also have some frozen meat (which we haven't tried), birdseed and pet supplies (but nothing our boys can have), a few baked goods (ehhh, I make better), and other grocery odds and ends. But they aren't open year-round. Once apple season ends, they'll scale back their hours pretty dramatically. After Christmas, they'll only be open on weekends until planting season starts up in March. They're not within a walk of anything and they're five miles from the nearest bus stop, but they're also on the west side of the river. Why the big deal about east and west sides of the river? Because Oswego, like many river towns, has bridges. Here's a link to a Google map of our area; look at the satellite photo for the full story. The two parallel bridges are the two road bridges; the one to the north is the one in the photo below. We also have an old railroad bridge that's been turned into a pedestrian bridge; this is the one at an angle across the river. This isn't a great picture, but it lets you see at least the shadow of the Bridge Street bridge, which is the more-used of the two in town. (For one thing, Bridge Street is NY-104, which you can take east to I-81 and beyond, or west to Buffalo and the Lewiston-Queenston bridge. The Utica Street bridge is not a state route, and Utica Street doesn't go through to anywhere.) The Bridge Street bridge is now 40 years old, and the engineers say that the cracks showing up in the sidewalk mean that there are structural issues with the bridge. So, starting next March, the bridge will be removed and completely replaced from the ground up. The bridge is scheduled to be closed for 8 months. The entire area is shuddering with fear of what's going to happen with the traffic. There are elementary schools and fire stations on both sides of the river. But the hospital, junior high, high school, and university are all on the west side. The predictions for traffic flow say that during peak periods, there could be half-hour delays to get across the remaining bridge on Utica Street. The school district is wondering whether the school buses will be able to finish their routes for the high school and junior high in time to start the routes for the elementary schools. The city is discussing options for dealing with pedestrians—one idea I've heard is a shuttle bus, to take people from one side of the bridge to the other. (While I'm glad they're considering such options, it's only an extra three blocks of walking to use the pedestrian bridge instead. If the traffic issues are as bad as they're prognosticating, it'll take far less time to go around than it would to take a shuttle bus. The people who really will need help are those with mobility issues, and those are the people who are less likely to walk anyway.) We live on the west side of town, very close to the university. And for us, the big deal is that both supermarkets are on the east side, as is the nearest transfer station for rubbish and recyclables. Getting to the Big M won't be fun by car or bicycle, because they're right across the street from the Utica Street Bridge. (On the satellite photo, it's the longish building with a cupola, just to the right of the green arrow.) And Ontario Orchards is not really a viable option for everyday shopping because of the goods they stock and don't stock. What to do? We've already started to explore our options. We've discovered another of the county's transfer stations, in Hannibal. We can get to it on back roads, so we won't need to go near the bridge snarls. We've already checked it out, so we know the traffic patterns there. And we've learned that it's an easy trip from the Hannibal transfer station to the Price Chopper store in Fulton (the next town south), as long as you don't mind driving around with your garbage containers in your car. (We use a rectangular Rubbermaid bin that can hold a 55-gallon plastic liner. When the bin is full, we pull the bag up. When the bag's nearly full, it's time to go to the transfer station.) But the Fulton Price Chopper store has all the same failings of the Oswego Price Chopper. (The Fulton store still has a pharmacy, though.) It, too, was a Tops before the pullout. And while it's nice to know that we can get to a full-service supermarket without having to deal with a bridge nightmare, it's depressing to know that we're driving 20 minutes for something mediocre. Fortunately, there's something else we can do. Once you've driven from Oswego to Fulton, you're halfway to the nearest Wegman's. From Fulton, the rest of the way there is on highway except for the very last bit. And even though this is a smaller and older Wegman's without all the bells and whistles of their newer, bigger, better stores, it's still a Wegman's, with beautiful produce, an unstinky fish counter, and employees who seem happy to talk with you and help you get what you want. It might be a bit more expensive than Price Chopper, but I'm willing to pay a bit of a premium for a more pleasant shopping experience. I foresee that we'll be making more frequent trips to this Wegman's. We'll get what we can at Ontario Orchards, we'll plan our meals better than we do currently, we'll make a point of thinking ahead if we'll need to defrost something from the freezer, and we'll make Wegman's runs when we need to. I have the luxury of being able to go in the middle of a weekday when it's less crowded, but Casey and I have always gone food shopping together because we both cook, we both enjoy the shopping process, and it's more fun to shop together. The bridge closure will certainly present a challenge, but one that will force us to think carefully about how we shop and therefore how we eat. We're fortunate that we are both good cooks. I don't know how badly it will hurt other people, especially the students who live off-campus and those less mobile. MelissaH edited to fix a minor typographical problem that nobody but me would probably notice anyway

Syracuse is a very different restaurant town from Oswego. We have bars a-plenty, but our choice in restaurants is limited. We have three Subways, two McD's, a BK and a Wendy's, and a combined KFC/A&W, if you're looking for junk. The newest addition to that roster is a Ruby Tuesday's. For nicer fare, we have two Italian restaurants, Vona's and Canale's. It seems that just about every family in town goes to one or the other, but since we're relatively new here we have no loyalties. I stay out of discussions about whose red sauce is better. Another nicer restaurant, Avanti Bistro, has gone downhill since they changed hands a couple of years ago, to the point where the cost/benefit ratio is no longer favorable in my mind. It's tough to be a nice non–red sauce Italian restaurant in this town. Another place east of town seemed like they were positioning themseves to make a run for the nicer-dining crowd. But they completely lost me as a potential customer when they started to advertise such specials as a giant steak and five bottles of Labatt's, buckets of crabs and Coronas, and "Cans & Clams" night. Not my thing, and not in our definition of a "nice" restaurant. There's a restaurant right on the river, Patz, but we haven't actually gone there specifically for a meal. Most of the social events associated with the men's hockey team are held there, and that's the only context we've been there. The food we've had is neither superb nor offensive. Casey says that their offerings on tap are among the best in town, and they're reasonably priced. I'll take his word for it. They do Coke rather than Pepsi, which is what I look for. We have a brewpub downtown, but I'm not impressed by their food. I was really surprised to realize that they're actually a brewpub and make their own beer, because they have neon signs for commercial beers in their windows. I guess they feel that they won't survive without offering up the familiar stuff that's available everywhere, and the law here permits brewpubs to sell stuff other than what they make. (The owner of the brewpub, who would know, says this is a Molson town.) I'm not a beer drinker, but my husband says the beer they make ranges from OK to good, and they apparently do a good job keeping their tap lines clean. The best thing about the brewpub is their bar. Or rather, my favorite thing about the bar is the music on Wednesday nights. Several of the music professors, and some students, get together and play jazz at King Arthur's bar every Wednesday night there isn't another music department event. (This last Wednesday, jazz was pre-empted by the chamber music concert.) The only cost is whatever you order, and of course everyone who goes feels obligated to get at least a little something. We've been unimpressed by the menu offerings, but they make their own potato chips. If you can catch them just out of the fryer when they're still hot, they're fantastic. My husband usually gets one of the beers brewed there, and I tend to go with club soda with a big wedge of lime. If you have a suggestion for another non-alcoholic, non-caffeinated beverage that isn't loaded with sugar, doesn't look like a kiddie drink, and doesn't take a whole lot of talent to put together, please let me know! We'll generally stay for the first set and maybe the beginning of the second, since it is a weeknight. And because, dare I say it, we're getting older and don't stay up late as well as we used to. But mainly because it's a weeknight. There are two choices for Mexican, without having to drive 45+ minutes: Azteca and Fajita Grill. Of the two, Azteca's better. They're a sit-down restaurant, and if you order the right things from their menu, you'll get a tasty meal. My big knock against them is the lack of vegetables: it's hard to find them, other than the tomatoes (always canned) in their salsa, and maybe a sprinkle of lettuce if you order something that comes with a sprinkle of lettuce. Fajita Grill is a Chipotle wannabe. We don't care for it, but we'll occasionally go there if there's a fundraiser. A week from next Tuesday, the university's baseball club will get some percent of the night's proceeds, and because a former student who's house- and cat-sat for us a few times is involved with the baseball club and specifically invited us to come, we'll probably go for dinner. If we want serious Mexican, we'll drive to Sodus (about halfway between here and Rochester) and eat at El Rincon if it's Thursday through Sunday and we don't mind a drive, or we'll make it ourselves. (We actually try to plan our trips to Rochester for days that El Rincon is open, so we can have a meal there.) Casey makes killer mole colorado, and since we got a range hood that sucks, we can make it any time of the year without suffocating ourselves on chile fumes. We make large batches, and keep it in our freezer so it's easy to whip up a good and quick Mexican meal when the mood strikes. There are a couple of "Chinese" buffets. We don't like either one. The newer of the two started out decently, but we noticed that every time we went back, the number of vegetables on offer got smaller and smaller, to the point where about the only green stuff you can be sure of finding are green beans. There are other Chinese restaurants, but we can do better at home. Casey has a mongo burner that he uses outside when he brews beer, and it does great things with a wok. One of our favorite places to eat is Thai Garden. I haven't been to Thailand so I can't speak for its authenticity, but the food tastes good to me. I like that they can make the food spicy-hot but still flavorful, something other restaurants here have trouble doing. We like it best for lunch, but dinners are good there also. Another favorite, especially for lunch, is the Port City Cafe. They're right downtown, and they do a very brisk midday business of soups, sandwiches, and salads. They've recently hired the best bread baker in town, and he's getting things set up to bake bread for them right there. I'm expecting something good to get even better once that's up and running. They also have ice cream, coffee and espresso, and pastries. I wind up there about once a week, usually to meet with my knitting mentor Esther so she can solve my technical problems over a beverage and pastry. They don't mind if we stay for a few hours, and they have big windows that let lots of light in. No discussion of Oswego restaurants would be complete without two institutions: Wade's and Rudy's. Wade's is the greasy-spoon diner on the east side of town. If you like raisin toast, theirs is supposed to be great: they slice it thickly, and toast it on the griddle. I'm not a raisin person, so this doesn't float my boat. I'd just as soon go to Port City for breakfast...or make myself a nice bowl of cereal with milk. And Rudy's you can see in my last foodblog. I'm hoping to get there again during this blog, because it's a seasonal restaurant. This summer is their 61st season, and it's coming to an end. I do all kinds of things. When the university finds themselves short a warm body, I'll teach. This semester, they didn't need me, so I'm freelancing, as well as working on a few little things on my own. I'm always looking for projects! MelissaH

We visited Cooperstown a few years back, and docsconz is right that it's marvelous. At the time, we hadn't yet been able to sell our house in Ohio and therefore had an aversion to vacations that were more expensive than they absolutely needed to be. I was surprised that we were able to find a campground to take us and our tent for a couple of nights in early October. My main motivation in visiting Cooperstown was to see the Baseball Hall of Fame, but the Fenimore Art Museum was a gem, and the Farmers' Museum turned out to be the real highlight of the trip for me. I grew up in suburbia, and the only thing in the area resembling a farm was a rather industrial dairy. I didn't attend the junior high school in our area, but friends who did always complained vociferously about the aroma at milking time! We need to get back to Cooperstown. I hadn't realized it before our visit to the Farmers' Museum, but before 1900, central New York was a leading hop-growing area. (Production moved to the Pacific Northwest later, because it's dryer and therefore less prone to disease.) The Farmers' Museum still grows hops, so we need to find out when they'll be planting in the spring, and then harvesting in the fall, to watch the process. I suspect most or all of the hops they grow find their way to Brewery Ommegang, another Cooperstown sight worth a tour. Even if you've seen other breweries, this is a Belgian-style brewery so it's a little different. MelissaH

A spoonful of Nutella. A big spoonful. MelissaH

Dessert followed dinner. I actually started prepping the other half of dessert just after I finished chopping pizza toppings. As always, I first gathered my ingredients and equipment: I then put things into the blender container: 180 g peanut butter (the book says to use something emulsified, and I chose one with less sugar because I know the recipes in David Lebovitz's book have a tendency to be over-sweet), 160 g sugar (down 20 g from what the recipe says to use), 2 2/3 cups of half-and-half, a pinch of salt, and a smidge of vanilla extract. The actual prep is really easy: buzz it all together in the blender. Then get it good and cold before freezing in the ice cream maker. After dinner, I got out the ice cream makers. Yes, I have two. They're identical Cuisinart models. We'd gotten the first one at Williams-Sonoma, for a pretty good price considering that it came with two freezer bowls. A year or so later, we were at our local warehouse club and saw the same maker with the extra bowl, and picked it up thinking that we'd have more bowls and a complete set of extra parts if anything happened. All four bowls live in the freezer, so they're always ready. This is the first time I've used both motors at once. First, I grabbed a spoon and tasted the grape sorbet base. It was still pretty tangy, but I really didn't want to add any extra sugar. I put the first machine together, turned it on, and added the sorbet base. Then I put the second maker together, whisked the peanut butter ice cream base together because it had somehow separated into a tan top layer and a white bottom layer, turned on the motor, and added the base. Both machines churned away for a while, during which conversation was difficult due to the noise level. As I watched, the sorbet apparently got some air incorporated, as I kept on seeing a purple mountain rise up and up and up. (I'd had quite a lot of sorbet base, not so much ice cream base.) When the sorbet started to peek up and out of the top, I decided that everything had gone long enough and it was time to eat dessert. I was able to remove the tops and dashers from both ice cream makers without incident, and without dumping any cold goodness on the floor or countertop. My husband doesn't like peanut butter in his ice cream, so he went with just sorbet. The rest of us did a mixture. And oh, what a combination! The grape sorbet was on the tangy-tart side, and the peanut butter ice cream was definitely a little too sweet by itself. But put the two of them together and you have what every school lunch dreams of! I definitely need to come up with an appropriate cookie for an ice cream sandwich base, because this combination is a winner. After we finished dessert, I packed the remaining sorbet and ice cream into their own rubbermaid containers. I pressed a covering of plastic wrap directly onto the surface before putting the lids on the containers. And these leftovers went into the freezer. My plan is to load them into a cooler with some cold packs and bring them downtown to the local bookstore tomorrow when I run errands. The backstory: I ordered the ice cream book, and when I picked it up, one of the employees commented that I'd have to start bringing ice cream in now. (I'll often bring in something that I've baked.) The first time, I brought some pear sorbet. I'm guessing this will blow their socks off! Time to head towards bed. The dishwasher is running, and although Casey did a drainerful of stuff by hand, there's still plenty more waiting for me in the morning. Tomorrow's a school day, but it will be interesting to hear whether people take tomorrow off to make a four-day weekend. Good night! MelissaH