MelissaH

Here's my chance to show you a couple of new features in my kitchen. The first is the knife holders we use. We were on a vacation over the summer and had the opportunity to visit the IKEA in Burlington, ON. (Hi, Kerry!) We think these knife holders must be new, because we didn't remember seeing them when we put the kitchen together last summer. The drawer on the left is my husband's, and the drawer on the right is mine. These holders are much easier than the cardboard sheaths we used to use for everything. And the clock was a gift from my sister. It's over the door leading out to the deck, so you can read it from the living room. It's the only clock readable from the living room. My husband set the table this afternoon. Here's your chance to see the red chairs again! They're really quite red, although they don't look that way in the pictures. The placemats are bright yellow, to match the Lion of Flanders. We're still keeping our eyes open for other Lions of Flanders, or even things the appropriate yellow color. My husband also cooked down some onions this afternoon. Here he is, sniffling and crying as he sliced. The sliced onions went onto the stove, with some olive oil and salt and I don't know what else because I wasn't in the kitchen when he did them. They cooked down to golden lusciousness, and even had time to cool to room temperature before dinner. While the onions cooked down, I sliced and chopped some other pizza toppings. The pineapple just needed to be drained. This knife is my $10 special. Yes, it's cheap. But the handle feels good in my hand, and the blade's holding an edge nicely, especially since we sent it in to be sharpened. I also chopped a little goat cheese, from the Lively Run Goat Dairy. The last bit of prep work was getting the dough warmed up and out of the bags. I try to remember this a couple of hours before we light the grill. To start, I oiled a half-sheet pan, took each dough ball out of its bag, and flattened it into a disk. The oil coating keeps the dough from crusting over, prevents anything from sticking to the grill, and also helps to carry the heat in and make pretty grill marks. When our dinner guests arrived, we all helped to carry things downstairs and outside to the grill. When I grill pizzas, I set the outside two burners on my grill to medium, and the middle burner on low. First, I flatten a dough ball and put it on the grill to cook the first side. Once the underside (facing the burners) is cooked enough to hold its shape, I give it a little twist to get the pretty grill marks, to make sure it isn't sticking to the grate, and to help things cook evenly. When the first side is done enough, I use a spatula and my peel to take it off the grill. I flip it over so the cooked side is up, and then top the pizza away from the heat. Once the pizza is topped, it goes back on the grill. On the second side, after a few minutes I give it a 180 degree turn, to again be sure nothing's sticking and to make sure both ends cook evenly. I leave it on as long as I dare, to get the crust done without burning and to get the cheese melted and as browned as I can. Then the finished pizza gets rushed upstairs and onto either a rack so it doesn't get soggy, or into a warm oven until all the other pies are cooked. One pizza makes a nice dinner for one person. We each had our own pizza for dinner. I topped mine with caramelized onions, goat cheese, and tomato slices. No sauce, but I was the only one not to use sauce. I think everything I prepared went onto at least one pizza. Our guests brought us some corn, which we steamed and ate with butter and salt. And we had salad: romaine and tomatoes. Good food, good company. MelissaH

I actually don't often buy the brand in the tin, because I've had problems with previous tins costing a fortune and being rancid straight out of the tin for the first serving. When I'm in a city with a Trader Joe's, I get their brand in the cardboard cylinder. It's less expensive and they seem to get decent turnover and therefore no rancidity issues. I got this particular container over Labor Day weekend, when we were up close to Sault Ste. Marie, MI. I was thrilled to be able to find good oatmeal at the Soo, but not thrilled at what I had to pay for it. MelissaH

The concert was wonderful. We heard music by Poulenc and Britten, for solo piano; horn and piano; tenor, horn, and piano; mezzo-soprano and piano; and mezzo, tenor, and piano. My favorite of the evening was a song by Poulenc, one of a group of poems by Careme that Poulenc found, put together, and set to music. The mezzo told us about the first of the songs being a mother's lament that her child refused to sleep, and the rest of the songs were her version of Scheherazade. By the end of the last song, you could practically hear her quietly leaving the child's room as he finally slept. The song I particularly liked was the sixth in this set, about the Thursday angels who play Mozart on their harps. The very last song of the evening was somewhat food-related, and very appropriate to these parts at this time of year. Britten took some folk songs, and used the words and tunes to write his own settings. The last of these folk songs was an audience sing-along! The tenor would sing the first part of the verse, and everyone else including the audience added the "Hee haw" part: It was lots of fun. We walked home, and I went back to work because I had sorbet base to prepare! First, though, I changed my clothes because I had grapes to deal with. I also put an apron on, for good measure. First thing was to give the Concord grapes I'd gotten on Tuesday a rinse. Then, the grapes needed to be pulled off the stem, and because Concord grapes have thick skins I needed to at least nick the skin of each grape. There are a lot of grapes in 3.5 pounds! I added 40 g of water to the grapes and set them on the stove. They cooked on medium-low heat, covered. The kitchen smelled like a brand-new jar of grape jam while I cooked them, and I periodically got the pleasure of taking the lid off the pot and sticking my nose in to inhale, when I stirred the grapes. Finally, the grapes were all cooked and soft. I took them off the heat and let them cool a little bit as I assembled my food mill. The food mill is a marvelous invention. I couldn't imagine trying to do push all this through a sieve. But my food mill was just barely large enough to hold all the grapes, and they splashed a little bit as I poured them from pot to mill. Then, as I milled the grapes, they splattered a little more. Before I did anything else, I cleaned the purple splatters off the kitchen before they could set and become permanent purple polkadots. Then I used my spatula to scrape the pulp from the bottom of the food mill disk, took this picture, and cleaned up. The milled grapes were still pretty warm, so the corn syrup (I started by measuring out 1/4 cup as the recipe prescribed, but I only added half of it to the grapes. I tasted the mixture, and it tasted like it needed more so I added the rest) mixed in nicely. I also added a splash of vodka. I didn't want to put such a hot bowl into my refrigerator, so I stayed up a little while longer waiting for it to cool, and finding more purple splatters to clean up. Finally, shortly after midnight, the outside of the bowl was no longer hot, and I put my silicone trivet on the fridge shelf for the bowl. And now you know why I slept in so late this morning! Casey's finished cleaning and re-sealing the floor, and I see he's moved the cardboard barrier so I can go back into the kitchen to rinse out my breakfast glass and start caramelizing onions to go on pizza tonight. MelissaH

Now, back to last night. I had just enough time before the concert to make up my pizza dough. I started by gathering all my ingredients together: flour (King Arthur all-purpose, in the yellow-lidded container), water (yes, that's the kettle I used to weight the cabbage; I keep water in it so I have room-temperature water available), sugar (in the smaller container in the back), olive oil, yeast (SAF instant, in the blue-green jar), and salt (Diamond Crystal kosher, in the clear jar). My scale is a small Ohaus scientific balance, which does both English and metric measurements. I got it before home cooks weighed much, and therefore before home scales became cheap and readily available. The KitchenAid mixer is dark blue because the year my mom asked me if I wanted one for my birthday, the dark blue one was on sale and much less expensive than the others. I don't mind the dark blue, but it does show every grain of flour. The thing on top of my flour container is a dough whisk. I use it to get everything mixed together before I attach the bowl to the mixer. I like to start this way because when I combine ingredients by hand, I get less flour puffling through the kitchen and onto the mixer. Once wet and dry are combined, I can put the bowl into the mixer and use the dough hook to take care of the rest. I also got out an apron, because I knew I wouldn't have time to change into "play clothes" to cook, and get back into my nicer clothes again before the concert. I'm not normally an apron-wearer, but I keep some around for dealing with stuff that stains or for clothing challenges. This particular apron was a gift from my mother-in-law, who is well aware of my proclivities for opening my mouth. This dough was made following the recipe for grilled pizza dough from Peter Reinhard's American Pie. I started by weighing out 1 pound, 6.5 ounces of flour. The cookbook called for 22 1/2 ounces of flour. Does anyone out there actually have a scale that says 22 1/2 ounces of flour, rather than 1 pound 6.5 ounces? The flour is also the only ingredient given by mass, which I find odd. To the flour, I added the rest of the dry ingredients (1 Tbsp sugar, 3 tsp salt, 1 tsp yeast) and gave them a stir with the dough whisk to combine. I then added 1.5 tsp olive oil, and the water. The cookbook called for 1 3/4 cups of water. I put the bowl back on my scale, tared it, and added 14 ounces of water. Everything went back in its place after I added it, except the olive oil. After using the dough whisk to get all the dry stuff wet, I put the bowl onto the mixer, and mixed at low speed for 4 minutes. The dough got a 15-minute rest, during which I ate the leftover cabbage and noodles for dinner, and then the dough went for another 4 minute spin at a slightly higher speed. While the dough finished mixing, I got out and opened six ziplock sandwich bags and a loaf pan. I also took the cap off the oil bottle. From here on out, I had a hard time taking pictures because my hands were gunked with dough, and I didn't want to get the camera messy. But at the end of the second mixing period, the dough windowpaned nicely. I took the bowl off the mixer, set my scale to metric, pulled the dough out of the bowl, put the empty bowl onto the scale and hit the tare button, and then put the dough back into the bowl to get the mass of just the dough. I did all this because I wanted to have a decent shot at dividing the dough into 6 equal pieces. I yelled downstairs to my husband to do the arithmetic, because my hands were dough-gunked, and he yelled back that I'd need each piece to have a mass of 178.33333...... grams. I figured that if I got each of the six pieces to be 180 grams, plus or minus 5 grams, that I'd be close enough for a family dinner. I started by eyeballing the dough and cutting it in half, and then dividing each half in thirds. Each piece then went into the tared bowl on the scale, so I could see which ones were too big and which ones were too small. I made adjustments as necessary. In the end, I got six pieces of dough that were all pretty darn close to the same mass. I rounded them into balls and then things got really messy as I poured a little oil onto my hand, picked up a dough ball and fondled it to give it an oily coating, slid the oily dough ball into its own ziplock, and then put the ziplock in the loaf pan for easy containment. When all six dough balls were bagged and panned, I washed my hands so I could grab the oil bottle without it slithering free, and poured a little oil over each ball in its bag. Then I could put the oil away. Finally, I sealed each bag, pressing out as much air as I could. Although the recipe said to leave the dough at room temperature for half an hour, it was time to leave for the concert. So I just slid the pan into the refrigerator, where it quietly reposes still. I took off my apron, put on a jacket, and we walked to campus for some music. MelissaH

Good morning, and happy new year! My breakfast this morning actually started last night. I gathered my ingredients: two cups of water, a pinch of salt, and half a cup of steel-cut oats. The water and salt went on the stove to come to a boil. When that happened, I added the oats (slowly, because if you don't it boils over and you get to clean your stove), stirred everything together well, and then put the lid on the pot and set it aside overnight. (I'm almost ashamed to admit that I learned this method of oatmeal cooking from Martha Stewart, but I'm not a huge fan of quicker-cooking oatmeal, because the texture goes completely to mush. The steel-cut oats retain some texture and chew, but if you don't start them the night before, they need to simmer for something like half an hour in the morning. I don't know about you, but I'm generally too hungry to wait that long, nor am I awake enough to do that much active cooking before breakfast!) In the morning, this is what it looks like: But like any good pet owner, before tending to myself, I fed my animals. Our boys have dry food out all the time. Lyon loves eating dry food. But they also share one can of wet food each day, half a can in the morning and half a can at dinnertime. Their only option nowadays is Friskies Special Diet, with chicken in sauce. Last year, Lyon had a bout of feline lower urinary tract disease, so we've had to put the boys on food that's specifically formulated to keep urine pH low (meaning acidic). Of the flavors that come in Special Diet, the chicken in sauce is the only one they'll eat. We tried all the others. We consider ourselves fortunate that this brand of food is doing the trick, and we don't need to go to a more expensive or less available cat food. I just wish that something existed for both urinary tract health and hairball reduction! With the cats both happily eating (or rather, licking off all the sauce for now, and saving most of the chunks to come back for later), I was able to turn my attention to my breakfast. Once the steel-cut oats have sat overnight, they only need to be heated to be ready. I learned the hard way to do this on fairly low heat, because the oats have absorbed enough of the water to be capable of scorching. I also learned that I need to be extra-careful since we got the new range that goes to 11, or something like that: if a recipe says "medium" I start at medium-low. I like having firepower! I heat the oatmeal till it's boiling, because once that happens I know the starch in the oatmeal has been heated enough to become creamy throughout. Wonderful as this oatmeal is, I like my oatmeal with stuff. Today's "stuff" is maple syrup (grade B) and yogurt, with a seltzer and OJ chaser. (We're out of limeade.) I got this yogurt yesterday at Wegman's. We'd seen it there before, but this is the first time I'd tried it. It's from a nearby farm. I had my choice of plain or vanilla, and decided to go with plain. There was, in fact, a layer of cream on top of the yogurt when I opened it, but I couldn't get a photo that showed it. The yogurt has a nice flavor, not too sour, and a wonderful creamy texture. I'm thinking of all the wonderful things I can do with this yogurt, besides just eating it with fruit, or honey, or maple syrup and oatmeal. Mango lassi, anyone? Frozen yogurt? Yogurt cake? Dolloped onto pie? Eaten with chocolate graham crackers crumbled into it? Breakfast is served! MelissaH

Freezing may also work (another "heat" treatment) ← Nope, sorry. Doesn't work. Freezing is actually a common way to keep enzymes and other proteins good and active. My husband (actually some of his students) did an experiment where they froze pineapple in liquid nitrogen, and then brought it back up to room temperature. It still kept gelatin from setting because the enzyme was still able to chew up the protein. MelissaH

Whew! Today's errands made for a very long day, and it's not over yet. As I left Oswego, it was raining quite hard. By the time I got to Fulton, 10 miles south, the rain was no longer coming down but the road was covered with puddles. By Phoenix (another 7 miles on), I needed to dig out the sunglasses that live in the car. And in Syracuse, it was actually quite warm in the sun! My first stop was at Home Depot. Before I left, I measured my oven rack, because I wanted to get quarry tiles to fit. I had some, but they were sized for the oven-before-the-last, which was tiny. Because I'm still not convinced the weather will cooperate for grilling tomorrow's pizzas, I want to be sure I can cook multiple pizzas at a time, which means I need a full rack's worth of tiles. I would have liked to have gotten the tiles locally, but the Lowe's here doesn't have anything unglazed. I found the tiles, which looked exactly like mine did when they were new and clean. And I discovered that I should be able to fit 4 rows of tiles across, and 2.5 rows of tiles deep, on one rack. Therefore, I needed a total of 10 tiles, two of which needed to be halved. It just so happened that while I was there, the flooring section had one person working and about a dozen groups of people needing her attention. Who knew that a Wednesday morning would be so busy? So instead of scoring and snapping the tiles herself, she sent me to the tool rental area. And the person working there actually got out the tile wetsaw and cut the tiles rather than just snapping them. Total cost, including tax: $3.24. That's hard to beat! Then some rather boring stuff, not at all related to food, and finally, to lunch! I met Owen at Ponchito's Taqueria, which was in a section of Syracuse I'd never visited before. I had a burrito, and he got a taco with chips and guacamole. The chips and guac were excellent. My burrito was waaay better than what I can get in Oswego at Fajita Grill (which people here rave about because they don't have much to compare to), but not up to the standard set by Big City Burrito in Fort Collins, CO. The salsa was nice, I could actually taste things other than black pepper or HOT!, and the burrito was nicely stuffed and rolled, and I liked that they used whole chunks of chicken, which they cut into smaller pieces only when I ordered. But I still miss the texture in the corn salsas that Chipotle and Big City make. If I were in the area, I'd go back there, but I don't know that I'd go out of my way to eat there. Then, I went to the Knitting Connection, another yarn store, because I was in the area and their yarn selection is different from what North Wind typically has. This errand actually became food-related when I looked at their selection of sock yarn: the latest thing is, apparently, a yarn that's made partly from soy and chitin (from shrimp shells!) fibers. It felt nice, but I wasn't in the mood to spend that much on sock yarn that I'm not going to get to for a while because I have too many other projects in the queue. Finally, my last stop was at Wegman's. The store I went to is the Syracuse area flagship store, but it's been under renovation and expansion for a while, and is not expected to be completed till at least mid-November. Things move around every time I visit, which makes it difficult to find what I'm looking for, but the produce is still nice-looking and beautifully displayed, and they (as always) make a point of labeling things that are grown locally. The workers still look happy to be working there. I bother to go there because it's so much nicer than the local supermarkets in Oswego. But more about them later, when I have more time: maybe Friday? I got what I went for, and nothing that wasn't on my list other than a Coke Zero to drink as I drove home. And when I got home, this was the view after I unloaded the car: What a difference a few hours makes! Tonight's a bit crazy: we have concert tickets! Oswego has a vibrant arts scene, largely due to the college but other groups also help. Tonight is a chamber music concert featuring the music of Francis Poulenc and Benjamin Britten, performed by some of our music professors with some guest artists. I'm looking forward to the music. If I have enough time before the concert, I'll try to start prepping some of tomorrow's dinner. The grapes from yesterday need to be made into sorbet base and chilled well, and the pizza dough needs to be made either tonight or first thing tomorrow. I forgot to get half-and-half, but fortunately the peanut butter ice cream base doesn't involve eggs and doesn't get cooked, so that can easily be both blended and chilled tomorrow. Once those are done, all that's left will be a bunch of chopping and slicing, which is pretty easy to handle. MelissaH Casey just got home, and I hear him loading the dishwasher. This means I need to see what's up. I suspect tonight's dinner will be yummy leftovers. Now that I think about it, I realize the pork and gravy from the crockpot will go nicely with the cabbage and noodles from yesterday!

Good morning, everyone! Breakfast: yummy cereal, again. If it stays chilly, that may change tomorrow. We had rather a blustery night last night. At about midnight, we had some thunder and lightning, and it rained on and off throughout the night. And this morning, we're getting some lake effect. No snow, but lake effect rain! (Same idea as lake effect snow: cold wind blowing over the warm lake, then crashing into land and letting go of the moisture.) When I looked at the NWS radar this morning, I saw a beautiful plume of echoes streaming off the lake. The skies here are cloudy and gray, no sun to be found anywhere. It's really this dark and ominous-looking. The 10-minute average wind speed now is 27 mph, and we've had gusts up to 46 mph. This is also not unusual for us, as the wind howls off the lake. I'll be heading down to Syracuse in a little while, to run a bunch of errands and have lunch with Owen. I'll try to remember to get an outdoor shot down there so you can see the difference 50 miles can make. To answer a peripheral question to the one Sandy asked: it's about two hours, or 75 miles, from Ithaca to Oswego, pretty much a straight shot up NY-34. We go to Ithaca only infrequently, and only during the summer. Our main purpose in going there is to eat ice cream from the Cornell dairy. We've occasionally caught the Ithaca farmer's market, but the only vendors of interest to us are the cheesemakers. Everything else, we can get for less $$$ at our own farmer's market. MelissaH

I think you may be doomed, if you must boil the agar in lemon juice. Agar is a polysaccharide: a bunch of sugar molecules hooked together. If you want to chemically break up a polysaccharide, a common way to do so is to boil in an acidic water solution. You might want to do such a thing, on purpose, when you're making caramel: this is why many recipes call for a touch of lemon juice or cream of tartar in with the sugar and water. If you're boiling agar to get it to dissolve, and you have acid in with the rest of the stuff, you're starting to dismantle the structure of the agar. It won't set as well once you've started to chew the molecules apart, and that's where your problem is coming from. You have a better chance at getting this to work if you can wait to add the acid till after the agar has been boiled. MelissaH

Dinner tonight: It started with that giant head of cabbage. The knife is my 8-inch Henckels chef's knife, the first good knife I ever bought myself. Or, rather, half of it because it was so huge. I quartered the head, cored the four quarters, put two of the quarters in a plastic bag and then into the fridge, and sliced the other two quarters into strips. The strips went into a colander, and the colander got set into the sink. I tossed the cabbage with a couple of tablespoons of kosher salt, set a plate on top, and then put my filled kettle on top of the plate to press out as much water as I could in about an hour. After about an hour, I rinsed the salt off, put my largest-diameter pan on the stove, turned the heat on to medium lowish, and added (to me) an unconscionable amount of butter, about half a stick. Once the butter was mostly melted and bubbling, I shook as much water out of the cabbage as I could, and added it to the pan. I gave it a good toss, and it started to crackle and pop from the remaining water. When the crackling died down, the bottom started to brown. At that point, I turned down the heat and let it cook for about another half hour, tossing it every so often. In the meantime, I put a pot of water on to boil, and used the boiling water to cook about half a pound of fusilli. I know that egg noodles would be traditional with cabbage if you're Eastern European, but I don't have any and I like the way the cabbage shreds get tangled into the spring shape. Once the pasta was cooked, I dumped it into the cabbage, and mixed it all together. Dinner is served! Tonight's salad is a couple of the green zebra tomatoes, chunked up, along with some of the yellow pear tomatoes, halved, with some freshly ground black pepper and a drizzle of cheapo balsamic vinegar that I reduced to a syrup, put into an old maple syrup bottle that pours nicely, and store in the fridge. Tomorrow, I go down to the Big City to run still more errands. MelissaH

I'm back from my errands. I'm hungry, so I'm eating a few Trader Joe's 50%-less-salt roasted cashews. These things are good! We'll have to get some more, next time we're at a TJ's. The closest stores to here are all about a six-hour drive away. My first food-related (sort of) stop was the transfer station, which was busier than I would have expected. They're closed on Mondays, so Tuesday mornings are often crazy, but not quite as crazy as Saturday mornings. Things usually quiet down by afternoon on Tuesdays, but I must have timed it just right to be there when a bunch of other people were there. So it took me longer than it should have, because I couldn't park right inside the recycling shed, and I had to make a bunch of trips back and forth to the car to get everything where it needed to be. On the bright side, by the time I was done with the recycling, the crowd had cleared out and I was able to get right into the rubbish area. I didn't take pictures here, because it's not a beautiful place unless you're Oscar the Grouch, and because I didn't want to make people nervous. My next food-related stop was much prettier. Have you ever visited an apple orchard in the fall? The trees are heavily loaded with apples, red orbs against the green foliage, and you sometimes have to wonder at the strength of the branches to hold up under all that apple-weight. Apples on trees are not shiny like apples in stores, because they haven't been waxed. The air smells of cider! I disturbed a few bees in the flax blossoms between rows of trees, but fortunately for me, they didn't mind too much and buzzed off elsewhere. There's not much left to harvest this year, but there are still lots of apples to be picked! These trees are part of Fruit Valley Orchard (Web site still being built), one of our many local orchards but one I particularly like. They're owned by the Torrice family. Those of you who shop the Union Square Greenmarket may have seen them, as they'll travel downstate to sell their produce. They're probably best known around here for having raspberry bushes in greenhouses, so they'll have fresh raspberries available on Valentine's Day. They sell for an outrageous amount of money, but I'm told they're quite tasty, especially when your sweetie gets them for you. In addition to apples, they grow and sell other produce. At the Fruit Valley farmstand, I got: Concord grapes, Green Zebra tomatoes, and Paula Red Apples. The grapes weigh about 3.5 pounds, exactly the amount called for in David Lebovitz's recipe for Grape Sorbet. (Guess I need to add the ingredients for Peanut Butter Ice Cream to my shopping list also!) The tomatoes were the last green zebras they had. They probably won't last long, but they'll look nice in a salad next to the yellow pears and regular old big red tomatoes we have, perhaps with a touch of balsamic vinegar and a sprinkle of cheese. And this kind of apple is a good pie apple for an early season variety. We're lucky to live in an area that still grows many of the old apple varieties. Way back in July, I made my first apple pie of the year, using Yellow Transparent apples. They're a little softer than I generally prefer, but they have a terrific and unique flavor that I only get to enjoy for one or two pies every summer. I like including at least some Northern Spies when I make apple pie, but they won't be harvested for another month or more. Fruit Valley doesn't grow cabbages or onions, but the Ouellette family does. Or at least, they grow cabbages, and they find other area farmers who grow onions that they sell at their orchard store. I showed you pictures inside in my last blog. So I was able to get a giant cabbage and a bag of onions. Can you believe I ran out of onions? In the interest of fair treatment, I should include a picture of the guy who's been keeping me company for most of today. This is Lyon, our other cat and Leo's littermate. They're actually quite easy to tell apart, once you've spent a little time around them. To us, anyway, they look completely different. Lyon spends many hours here, on the stand over my computer monitor, particularly when I'm sitting in front of the computer. Sometimes he's awake, but since he's a cat he'll also spend time dozing. He snores! Fortunately, his snoring is quiet enough to get lost under the hum of the computer fan, and rubbing his head gets him to wake up and move just enough to sleep more quietly. Lyon's not much of a lap kitty—he leaves most of that to Leo—but he does want to be in a room where there are people. So today, when I've been on the computer, he's been on top of the monitor. Better on top of the monitor than pacing back and forth so I can't see the screen! MelissaH

Is that the brand that comes in a plastic package, with kind of scripty writing on it? We see that brand at the Price Chopper in Oswego. That does sound good with caramelized onions! I need to get more onions today. But the skies are gray and it's sprinkling, so I'll be taking the car out on my errands. But I'd planned to do that anyway: enough trash and recyclables have built up over the last couple of weeks that I need to do a run to the transfer station sometime this week, and I might as well do it today when I'm not wishing I were on the bike. We do not have municipal trash pickup here. Either you pay a small fortune to one of the private companies, or you buy a pass for the transfer station (we buy a year pass every January, but some people prefer to get punchcards and pay as they go) and bring it in yourself. Recycling paper and cardboard, cans, and #1 and #2 plastic is included in any kind of punchpass. Breakfast this morning was cereal and milk from my new container. But it looks about the same as yesterday's, so I didn't take a picture. I ate more than I did yesterday morning, so I shouldn't be starving at 11:00 like I was yesterday. MelissaH

Dinner last night, post-paddle: Casey started by taking some of the meat from the pork anti-roast that I'd finished off in the crockpot, and putting a portion in each of two ramekins: He then peeled and chunked up a carrot (surprise!) and added half to each ramekin, along with some frozen corn. We'd eaten all our fresh corn from the market long ago. He then added some of the sauce along with a splash of water to thin it out a tad, and then gave the ramekins a stir to combine the contents. The leftover mashed potatoes went on top and then both ramekins went onto a baking sheet and into the oven until the top was browned and the instant-read thermometer beeped that the inside was up to temperature. Dinner is served! Pigherder's pie, with salad made of romaine, yellow pear tomatoes, and thin radish slices. Now, it's time to clean up the kitchen. MelissaH

I started knitting at the beginning of the year. I was looking for a way to generate hats quickly and cheaply (we have two college hockey teams, with prolific scorers) and something to keep my hands busy at the same time, beccause when my hands are busy I can't chew on my fingernails or stuff food in my face. Somehow, knitting clicked in my brain. I love trying new techniques and figuring out solutions to problems, to see what I can come up with. It's kind of like cooking for me, in that way. Last night's knitting did not end so well. I had both cat (Leo) and knitting on my lap. After a while, they co-existed in uneasy peace. The problem was not the yarn so much as the knitting needles: Leo finds them irresistible to chew on, both the bamboo of the needles and the nylon cord connecting them. (I prefer to use circular needles for everything, as I find them more ergonomic and easier to deal with than straight needles. And it keeps my total needle count down as well.) As a result of Leo's proclivities, the size 8 (5.0 mm for those of you in other parts of the world) 16-inch needle I've been using has tooth marks in one point, and I'm going to have to take some sandpaper to it and hope the whole thing doesn't splinter. But the real problem came at dinnertime last night. I was working on a cabled band to become part of a hat, loosely based on this hat from the on-line magazine knitty.com, got the cabled band long enough to go around my head, and decided to at least undo the provisional cast-on at the bottom to get ready to try and graft the beast together this morning. (For those of you who don't knit, a provisional cast-on is a way to start knitting that can easily be taken out later, so you are left with loops that you slip onto a knitting needle and can then knit. And grafting is a way to join two sets of "live" loops such that the join is seamless and invisible—it looks just like another row of knitting—but can be fiendishly difficult to accomplish.) When I undid the provisional cast-on, I somehow only wound up with 15 loops on my needle, not the 17 loops that were supposed to be there. I looked and looked and looked, and never did figure out what happened to my two missing loops, but I think the problem came in because this is the first time I've used a provisional cast-on with both knitting and purling in the same row. Matters went from bad to worse when I managed to drop a stitch, and it laddered back all the way through the cable down to the start because I didn't realize I'd dropped it at the other end of the needle. At that point, Casey was calling me to get my food, so I ate, spent a few minutes ripping out the entire piece, and started over. The second time through, I got smart, and after only knitting one inch or so, I tried undoing the provisional cast-on again. And again, I managed to lose stitches without figuring out where they'd gone. Rip out again. But I did figure out that things were apparently supposed to be tangled: where I switched from knitting to purling and vice-versa, the cotton I'd used for my provisional cast-on was woven through the real working yarn, just like it had been before. The third time, I knitted an inch or so, and then wove a stitch holder into my work before taking out the provisional cast-on. Cumbersome, yes; but no dropped loops this time. I hope to get this band done (for real!) today, in between all the other things I have to do. When I'm not working on something little like a hat, I have a knitted top in progress. I'm using a split-neck top-down pattern with 3/4 length sleeves, just like all the female TV chefs wear nowadays, and this one's knitted from the top down so I can try it on as I work on it, and so there's nothing to seam up afterwards. It's made from cotton, a little lighter color than navy blue but darker than royal blue. This winter, I'm going to figure out socks. I know how it's supposed to work, and I have some yarn that I got in the Czech Republic that should make very nice socks. I just need to put it all into practice. MelissaH

And if you're looking for something a little more downscale, take a walk to Chinatown and try Mother's Dumplings. In July, three of us ate way too much food there and walked away for $30 including everything. MelissaH

Casey came home from work today at about 5:00, and said, "Want to take the canoe over to Sterling?" So that's what we've been doing. On the way home, we discussed what to make for dinner. Suddenly, Casey snapped his fingers and said, "I've got it!" And after we got home and put the canoe, life vests, and paddles away, he proceeded to put dinner together. I took pictures of the process. It's in the oven, I took a shower to get rid of the DEET I soaked myself in (I'm a mosquito magnet), and if I don't get to post about it tonight, I'll do so tomorrow morning. I'm starting to put together my shopping list for the pizza party on Thursday. The weather looks like we'll be good to go on the grill. The family we've invited over usually does just pepperoni or bacon, and they generally order from Little Caesar's. We've also been told that as long as there's something that doesn't involve mushrooms, they'll find a pie to suit them. We've already warned them that grilled pizzas need to be lightly topped to come out well. Are there any pizza toppings I should be sure I have on my shopping list? We already have pepperoni in the house, as well as pineapple. Fresh tomatoes and green peppers too, as it's that time of the year. Are there sweet onions available from somewhere, or should I caramelize some of our local onions beforehand? MelissaH

Yeah, I'm working on crafting a letter that's not too grumpy-sounding. I suspect that'll get a better response. Well, you'll have to let Owen handle all questions about that bowl, because that's one of his photos. I'd be happy to show you some new-kitchen pictures, but any action shots will likely have to wait till Casey gets home. I find it exceedingly difficult to photograph and cook at the same time. Lake Erie, which we lived near in Ohio, wasn't quite the same refrigerator that Lake Ontario is here. The difference: Lake Erie is quite shallow, so it changes temperature much more readily. During the summer, Lake Erie heats up, so you don't see as much temperature swing. And during the winter, Lake Erie will freeze over sometimes, and once that happens, there's no more moisture available to create lake effect snow. And as we all know from the news last February, Lake Ontario generates snow all through the winter! But this time of year, it's quite nice to live lakefront. Here in Oswego, we can be ten degrees cooler than Owen in Syracuse. It's rare for us to get to 90 degrees F. And we always, always, always have a breeze. Because we're so close to the lake, we have a delayed frost in the winter. Last year, my next-door neighbor was able to get mint, chives, and sage from her garden until the week before Thanksgiving. (She's got a very green thumb, and is kind enough to let us use her herb patches, so this time of year I also have as much mint, chives, and sage as I can use.) The downside is that it takes us quite a while to warm up in the springtime. While Owen in Syracuse might be comfortable in shirtsleeves, we're still wearing hats and coats. We might not hit the extremes in temperature either way, but our changes happen more slowly. I remember thinking, when we visited Duluth back in March, that it was maybe a little colder but the weather was about what we'd left back at home. MelissaH

I'm back from my errands today. Since I was only going a couple of miles downtown, and I didn't have anything huge to carry, I rode my bike. It's a 1992 Bridgestone MB-3, with most of the original components still on it. The rear rack is by Blackburn, and the panniers are my original set of Maddens, purchased at the Madden factory outlet in Boulder. Back when a bike was my only mode of wheeled transporation, I'd do all my grocery shopping like this. Between the two panniers, my backpack, and a bungee cord over the rack to handle the oversized but light stuff like TP, I could easily carry enough to get me through a week of eating. I'd always load my own bags, because I wanted to make sure I got the two panniers weighted evenly. This trip, I was headed first to my local yarn store, North Wind Yarns and Weaving. I needed to get some yarn to knit a hat. Mission accomplished, I headed back up the hill to the dairy, where I replenished my milk supply. I got somewhat of a hard time at the dairy. They do not have anywhere for me to lock the bike, so just like in the past, I brought the bike inside and leaned it against the ice cream chest, just inside the door. In the past, it's never been a problem: I leave my bike there, I get my milk, I pay for the milk, and I leave. The bike's out in about two minutes, I've never seen anyone getting an ice cream cone inside, and my bike's cleaner than most people's shoes. But this time, one of the employees told me that bikes were not permitted inside. I replied, nicely, that I'd be happy to lock my bicycle up outside if they provided me with a rack to lock it to. She suggested I use one of their picnic tables, or one of the plastic chairs. I explained that those were not possible: a U-lock, the most secure form of bike lock and the one that I use, is incapable of fitting around a picnic table. Furthermore, if I locked my bike to their picnic table, it would not be possible for people to sit at that table until I moved the bike. And a plastic chair is not an acceptable bike rack either: even if there were a way to get the lock around the chair, it's too easy for someone to lift up the bike with the chair, plop both into the bed of a pickup truck, and drive off. We left it as a lose-lose situation: I won't be going back as long as they can't give me a proper parking place for my bike. The head office is also going to be hearing from me, because this should be a relatively easy problem to solve. So, I got home, put the bike away, and made lunch. I started by toasting a whole wheat pita on one of my stove's burners, till the edges were just slightly charred and the whole round was pliable. Then I snipped it in half, and opened the pocket of each half. Inside went Jarlsberg cheese, some sliced turkey from the deli, and a bit of lettuce. This time of year, I prefer my tomato on the side, because they're so juicy and will turn the bread to mush. This tomato came from one of our local farmers. We travel enough during the summer that we don't grow our own. To drink: the last of my limeade, with seltzer. MelissaH

Yup, Byrne still sells milk in glass bottles. You buy the milk and pay a deposit on the bottle, and then you return the rinsed-out bottle and get your deposit back...or just swap the bottle for a full one. I did their milk in glass bottles for a while, but it seems to last better for me in a paper carton. I think it has to do with light getting to the milk. Paper cartons are also less prone to spilling and lighter, important considerations if you're hauling milk on a bike. Now, off to...Byrne Dairy! MelissaH

Salt potatoes are something I'd never heard of before we moved to Central New York. And they're a big thing around here. They're sold in a bag, exactly as they look in the teaser photo: a mess of potatoes with a bag of salt. The potatoes themselves are maybe a little larger than a golf ball. Around here, small potatoes that might be sold elsewhere as "new potatoes" are labeled as "salt size." I believe they came about because the city of Syracuse is built on top of a large salt reserve, so salt was readily available. To prepare salt potatoes, you put the contents of the bag of salt into a pot of water, essentially making a saturated solution. You then boil the potatoes in the brine till they're done. When the potatoes are cooked, they get drained and then slathered in melted butter. If you want to go really upscale, you can then add some snipped herb of your choice. If you go to a food festival, potluck, or BBQ chicken dinner, salt potatoes are usually on the menu. Truth be told, they're generally a little too salty for me, if the package directions are followed verbatim. The package directions for the "low salt" version tell you to use either half the salt or twice the water. That's more in line with my taste. But all things being equal, my favorite treatment for salt potatoes is to boil them up, and then smash them a bit while they're still hot, let them cool, drizzle with olive oil, and reheat and crisp them in the oven. I got that treatment last year from a Fine Cooking article. This is a great time of year, not just for potatoes but all the other produce that's grown in the area. I don't know if we'll make Thursday night's farmer's market downtown, but we might be able to catch the Saturday morning market in the town ten miles south of here. MelissaH

I'm not a coffee drinker. I love the way coffee smells, and adore good coffee ice cream that's not too sweet. I don't mind a little coffee in with my chocolate; I've been known to add a splash from the coffee pot to my hot chocolate-from-an-envelope when I'm at meetings, to kill some of the sweetness from the cheap hot chocolate mix. I like the way Vietnamese and Thai restaurants do coffee, with ice cubes and sweetened condensed milk. I'll even drink a little coffee, with sugar and lots of milk, when I'm in New Orleans or Europe. I'm just not a big fan of bitter anything, and most coffee fits into that category for me. But I love bubbly drinks. My current favorite is this: Dump a can of seltzer into a large glass. Fill the glass the rest of the way with prepared limeade. All the bubbles, half the sugar, no caffeine. Last week when it was hot, I went through an incredible amount of this elixir. Just before preparing my beverage, I took care of some unfinished kitchen business: taking care of the leftovers from last night's dinner. We were doing a bit of food shopping yesterday, and I asked my husband what he wanted to eat. He said, "Something roasted, with gravy and mashed potatoes." My go-to roast is generally a roast chicken, so I went to look at the available birds. But the smallest chicken they had was a whopping 7 pounds, twice the size I'd normally want! We'll sometimes see turkey breasts or turkey halves (exactly what it sounds like: either a right half or a left half), but not yesterday. So it was time for Plan B. And on sale this week was what the wrapper called a "boneless shoulder butt roast." These were more reasonably sized, so I got one. My husband cooked it last night, and we discovered that "roast" was a misnomer; if you roasted it, you wound up with something that required a very sharp knife and teeth to eat. (My husband roasted it on a bed of vegetables for a longer time than the package said. He then pureed the cooked veg into some broth to thicken the gravy, which went over the mashed potatoes that used up nearly all my milk.) We agreed that the problem was not flavor, just toughness and texture. So after we ate, I chunked up what was left of the roast and put it in the crockpot. We added the gravy, turned it on low, and left it overnight. When I woke up this morning, I turned the crockpot off, and left it to cool for a little while. Then I opened it up, removed the better-cooked meat chunks with a spoon (they're now tender enough to fall apart) into one container, and then poured the liquid into another container. They're both in the fridge, and will probably make an appearance in this blog at some point. Carrots were on sale this week, buy a pound, get a pound. So we have nearly two pounds of fresh carrots in the fridge. What do you like to do with lots of carrots? MelissaH

Thank you very much, Susan! My name's Melissa, and I live in Oswego, NY. My home is about a ten-minute walk from the shore of Lake Ontario, and about 50 miles from the city of Syracuse. I share my home with my husband and two cats. This week I'll be going through a fairly normal routine, with a couple of added twists. First of all, I have some errands to run in Syracuse. We generally make a trip down that way once every month or six weeks, to get things that are unavailable here. Since I need to head down to that area anyway, phaelon56 and I plan to get together for lunch one day this week. Second, the university where my husband teaches is giving the students Thursday off for Rosh Hashanah. We plan to celebrate the new year with friends by making that traditional round(ish) bread...pizza on the grill! My week started the way most of my mornings do: with a little breakfast: The cereal changes depending on my mood, and what was on sale when I went shopping. In this case, breakfast was smaller than I'd normally want, because my husband made dinner last night and used all but about two tablespoons of my milk in the mashed potatoes. So I'll be going out to get some more later today. It's shaping up to be a beautiful day: blue sky with only a few clouds, and a little breeze. If you want to follow along with the weather in Oswego, you can look at the meteorology department's weather station for current data. Pay special attention to the wind gauge: situated on the lake shore, we get some good gusts. (Currently, we have a 10-minute-average windspeed of 13 mph, with gusts maxing at 24 mph.) If it stays this nice later in the day, maybe I'll do today's errands on my bike. MelissaH

Is THAT what happened!! I made some grilled spot prawns with a pineapple/red bell pepper/red onion/basil relish in the morning and brought it to work for lunch, and the prawns were so soft I was really concerned about eating them. Huh! Besides cooking, how might my pineapple be "otherwise treated to denature the enzymes?" ← That's my guess: the bromelain in the pineapple went to work on your shrimp, started to break down the proteins in them. Result: mush. Same thing that happens when you put raw pineapple (or papaya, or kiwifruit) into gelatin. If you want a real trip, take a little piece of raw pineapple and hold it between your lip and your teeth. Feel the prickle? That's the enzyme starting to chew away at your lip proteins! As far as denaturing the enzyme so it doesn't turn your shrimp to mush: heat treatment, AKA cooking, is the most reliable way, and the only thing I know of for sure that will keep your meal edible and non-toxic. The other thing you can do is keep the pineapple and the protein separated till the very last possible second. Put the prawns in one container, the relish in another, and put a little of each on your fork at lunchtime. MelissaH

Be sure your pineapple's cooked, or otherwise treated to denature the enzymes that turn proteins to mush. MelissaH

Suzilightning, I wish I lived in your library district! Our library's currently undergoing renovation, and they won't be back home for a good long while yet. MelissaH