blue_dolphin

Thank you so much for mentioning this in another thread when I was complaining about harsh-tasting onion powder. Since I don’t have a dehydrator and was using the dehydrator setting on my oven, I just did one onion to test it out. I used the 1/8” julienne setting on my Oxo slicer, spread them out on parchment, put them into the oven at 140F for ~ 4 hrs and powdered them in my whirly blade spice grinder. Holy cow! That stuff tastes sweet and oniony - nothing like the jar in my cupboard! Now that stuff was likely past its prime but I’m sure it never tasted that good, even when it was fresh. I put 2 more onions in the oven for now. Once I see how long it lasts, I can easily scale up.

Another TJ's Taiwanese green onion pancake, this time with a smear of Vivian Howard's Little Green Dress, a sprinkle of grated Parm and a fried egg

Sort of but I should try it again. Ottolenghi has a grape & fennel seed focaccia that gets sprinkled with sugar. I tried it but left off the sugar. I should do it again, maybe with this recipe as I think the whole wheat flavor would complement the sweetness. I also made a Tuscan grape bread from a Diana Henry recipe and liked the toppings but thought the bread itself was boring. That could be fixed.

Grains for Every Season: Wild Rice Salad with Roasted Beets, Cucumbers and Dill p 294 made with Yogo Ranch Dressing p 313 Nice, healthy-ish lunch. Peeling and roasting the beets in small chunks seemed fussy but it certainly does enhance their sweetness. I neglected to seed the cukes - putting instructions like that over in the ingredients list apparently challenges my little brain 🙃. I wish I'd had some of @Okanagancook's homemade onion powder for the Yogo Ranch Dressing. I let it sit for about 3 hours prior to plating and the onion powder flavor was still a bit harsh. Didn't bother me in the salad but I should probably have made it a day ahead and as she reported, it's very thick. I just went for small dollops here but it does need to be diluted to actually "drizzle" as this recipe calls for.

Yes. Someone on one of the Creami Facebook groups asked the company about a minimum volume and was told that it should be fine down to around a quarter full.

She estimates half a pound of berries for a cup of purée. That's what I used and it seems about right.

Upthread, I mentioned that I'd prepped a batch of the Philly-style vanilla ice cream from Baking with Dorie. It's nice but there's just a faint touch of that spoon-coating butterfat thing that I've observed with other high-fat but uncooked Ninja preps. Nothing awful, and barely noticeable when served with...say....hot fudge sauce but not quite perfect either. Here it is with some of the first strawberries of the season from Harry's Berries that I picked up at the farmers market and a drizzle of extra vecchio balsamic vinegar. Great berries and great vinegar! Focusing on those berries, I decided to try a sorbet and went with the recipe in the Zuni Cafe Cookbook. So simple and built around the berries. Purée and strain the berries. Add sugar to taste. The recipe calls for 1-3 T sugar for a cup of strained purée. I used 2T. Judy suggests testing to see if a pinch of salt helps elevate the flavor. I thought it did. It can be frozen here or you can add 1/2 - 3/4 t balsamic vinegar and a little more sugar if necessary. I added the balsamic but no additional sugar. At this point, the recommendation is to freeze a small amount to test the flavor. I put it in the coldest part of the fridge and tasted than I went ahead and froze it in one of the Ninja containers and scraped a bit off the top to taste before spinning. I figured I could always thaw it out if it needed adjusting but it was good. Here is it with a scoop of the vanilla: It's as perfect as the berries. The balsamic vinegar doesn't stand out, it just enhances the flavor of the berries.

Today's breakfast is courtesy of a link that @Kim Shook shared over in the TJ's topic that included the idea of using their Taiwanese green onion pancakes as taco shells, filled with scrambled eggs for breakfast. First, I warmed up some leftover Szechuan green beans. Scrambled the eggs in the pan with the beans before piling it all on a crisped up green onion pancake. I suspect this breakfast will keep me going til dinner.

I believe you're quite correct in saying that the bulk of fresh greens sold or offered for delivery at this time of year in your area are not grown locally. That said, there are many greenhouse growers in adjacent areas providing the same. Market Wagon, an operation recently discussed here, does operate locally at this time and doesn't offer long distance shipping.

I have mostly been reading business-side articles, of which there are quite a few. I'm sure you saw this blog post, a pretty good run-down from the customer perspective. The delivery fee is indeed $6.95 but there are options to pay in advance for a month @ $14.95 or $149.95 for the full year. Obviously, those options would seem to encourage regular orders. As an aside, I can see from their map that they are not operating in my area but the website doesn't seem to have a "sorry, check back soon" message when you enter a zip code out of their area but just dumps you out on to their site. Maybe they want to keep you clicking around. I dunno.

It seems an interesting combination of e-commerce platform + service since they provide the online tools, packaging materials and delivery.

I thought the info on their "How it Works" page was relatively simple. They're not in my area (or yours from what I can tell) but this page shows where they are.

Check for the pecan in the next month or 2. These are the usual Kringle flavors and when they tend to appear at TJs: Pecan - late winter Raspberry - spring Cheesecake - summer Pumpkin Caramel - fall Almond - early winter

My TJs has them very regularly. I hesitate to say always because it’s TJs and things disappear all the time. They must be shipped frozen as they are often still in that state when they put them out.

Thanks for that review. I’m planning to make that today to go on the beet & wild rice salad. I was debating whether to make a half or full recipe and based on this, I think I’ll go with a full batch!

You can view a list of the recipes and ingredients called for over on Eat Your Books here. There's also a second volume by the same author, published in 1992. EYB has not indexed that one yet.

I think it’s the kitten and in the interests of full disclosure, the book does NOT come with a kitten 😻

Not modernist, but PBW (powdered brewery wash) can be a handy cleaner to have on hand. Also bottle cleaning brushes of various shapes and sizes and bottles for homemade gifts.

Yesterday was a fried egg sandwich on whole wheat focaccia Today was a scrambled egg with toasted slices of the same whole wheat focaccia which is topped with caramelized onion and Parm

White grapefruits are still the most common at the farmers markets in my area. Oroblanco is a hybrid variety that I see most often. According to a David Karp article in the LA Times it is a cross between the Siamese Sweet pummelo, an acidless form of the parent species of the grapefruit and the Duncan grapefruit, which is the seedy, white-fleshed variety from which all other commercial grapefruit originated. It's largely seedless and has good flavor although it inherited thick skin from the pomelo so it's good to pick big ones.

Whole Wheat Focaccia from Grains for Every Season p 266 is one of the recipes that offers a lot of variations. The result is fine. I routinely sub up to half whole grain flours into other focaccia recipes that come out just as well so I can't say there's anything magical about it. I made the Classic Focaccia topped with with olive oil, rosemary and flaky salt: and the Caramelized Onion and Cheese Focaccia topped with caramelized onions and Parm: Crumb shot with the onion & cheese on the left and classic on the right: This recipe actually uses 2/3 white bread flour and 1/3 whole wheat plus a small amount of rye. I used a mix of Glenn and Red Fife flours for the whole wheat. There's an overnight starter, then the dough is mixed, given a series of 6 turns and folds at 30 min intervals, followed by an overnight to 48 hr rest in the fridge so it's one of lengthier focaccia recipes I've tried. The amount of dough this recipe makes is rather enormous. With 1210g flour + 1040g water, that's over 2.2 kilos of dough. The largest focaccia recipe, written for a half-sheet, that I've made is the one from Dessert Person which calls for 780g flour so this is a lot more. The recipe says to knead the dough in a stand mixer for 8 min but once it got going, the dough was climbing up over the top of the dough hook so I had to keep stopping it to scrape the dough back into the bowl and eventually gave up. I could have processed half at a time in the mixer but I decided the turns and folds could take care of things. Given the amount of dough, I decided to make one half-sheet (the classic) and one quarter sheet (the onion & cheese). The result is fine. I routinely sub up to half whole grain flours into other focaccia recipes that come out just as well so I can't say it's magical. If I owned 2 quarter sheet pans, I would have made 3 varieties. Guess I could have used a 9 x 13 pan or gone halfsies on the half sheet but I didn't think of it. Most of this will be for sandwiches so maybe it's just as well. I think it would have overflowed the pan if I'd tried to put it all into one half sheet. The other variations in the book are: Cherry Tomato & Garlic Spring Onion & Olive Plum, Honey & Black Pepper (suggests serving with fresh goat or sheep cheese or ricotta) Rhubarb Apple Butter + thyme or rosemary The sweet flavors intrigue me but I don't think I'd have use for a lot so maybe I'll just add a small strip of one next time I make a batch.

Not sure I’ve seen them but I like the idea of frozen Taiwanese green onion pancakes as taco shells, filled with scrambled eggs for breakfast.

Good question. The jam I used was the St. Darfour stuff that has no sugar added but it is sweetened with fruit juice. Overall, due to the dark chocolate I used, I did not find them too sweet and the jam was a welcome addition. I'll look for something unsweetened to compare for next time.

Agreed. Down to the individual store level if almost everyone on a given shift calls in sick. I do most of my shopping at the farmers market, a local miller/baker and Trader Joe’s. TJs was randomly out of all their Belgian pound plus chocolate bars for most of Dec and my usual herb guy was MIA at the farmers market last week but otherwise, I haven’t seen any shortages of anything in my area.