kayb

About half a peck of peas, ready for the freezer. The brown ones are crowders, the others are purple hulls. Corn in the process of being cut off before being blanched and frozen. Next week, I go out in search of cucumbers to make some pickles.

I'm convinced no one can top that one. Truly impressive. @mrdecoy1970, can I just come browse your library?

OK. I kinda cleaned up. Kinda. My house is a rental, and was built in the late 1940s/early 1950s -- the ubiquitous three BR-1-bath GI Bill house. Before I moved, someone had added a den, a laundry room and a storage room to the rear, taking out the back wall of the kitchen and installing a peninsula cabinet with overhead cabinets looking out into the new den. Said cabinet: This is where a lot of prep gets done, and fresh produce that doesn't need to be refrigerated is stored. I was making bread this morning. Upper cabinets hold dishes, plastic ware, assorted serving pieces; they reach all the way to the ceiling. Base cabinets hold baking pans, other pots and pans, and assorted junk. Drawers are, from right, silverware, gadgets, paper and wraps, more gadgets, and two junk drawers. To the left of the cabinet is the opening to the dining room; to the right, the doors to the den and hallway, and the cabinet with the sink. Immediately opposite this is the wall with stove, fridge and small (30") countertop. As you can see, this is also where my electrical appliances live, as it's the home of the only wall outlet in the kitchen. Food processor, electric kettle, blender and Kitchenaid mixer (under its hood) stay out at all times because all but the kettle are too big and bulky/heavy to move. Kettle could move now, as I don't use it as much since we got the Keurig. Upper cabinet holds spices. Drawers have utensils and hot pads, lower cabinet has other small electrical appliances. This wall/counter is the bane of my existence. Besides the obvious sink and dishwasher (those are CLEAN) pans draining in the sink!), there are antique Ball jar canisters and a conglomeration of stuff that doesn't seem to have anywhere else to live. The wall to the left is the wall of the pantry, which is full room height but only about two feet wide. There IS an outlet on the over-sink light fixture that I can use if I want to risk electrocution. It's far from a great kitchen, but it's not too bad.

Oh...my...goodness. I have just had my first poached-egg-on-toast with toast from the CSO. I now understand why everyone waxes so rhapsodic about CSO toast. Photo on lunch thread. I have to work on timing; the egg had to sit for a minute or two while the toast was finishing. This was setting 5 on the toast scale. I will go a little darker next time.

Toasted Anadama bread with a poached egg (mostly yolk; I don't like egg whites.)

Here are most of mine: A shelf and a half of a three-shelf, 36-inch shelf here; the basket is dog accoutrements, and the bottom shelf is assorted junk. The other three-shelf bookcase. These live in the laundry room, because that's the only place for them. A few books are out on loan, and a few have migrated into the dining room to rest on the bookshelf there. There may be one or two on my nightstand, as I tend to read them lilke novels. There is one on the back of the couch I've been perusing. I need to categorize my Kindle books, but I'm guessing I have in the neighborhood of 100 cookbooks there. The real monster, though, are the two groups of computer files -- one a documents folder of cut-and-pasted or emailed-to-me files of recipes, at least broken down by category, and the bookmarks file, also broken down by topic, of individual recipes. Plus I have probably 100-150 recipes saved in my "cookbook" on the NYT Cooking site, and another 100 or so on Food 52. A lot of my cookbooks -- most of the top shelf of pic 2 -- are assorted "collection" cookbooks published by churches, organizations, etc. Lots of Jell-O and Cream of Mushroom soups in them, but I keep them because there are two or three "keepers" in each book, which I can easily find by looking for the stained and wrinkled page.

Gorgeous kitchen, @Tere. I would be delighted to be within shouting distance of any dairy where they made decent cheese; our closest cheesemaker is Kent Walker Cheese in Little Rock, a two-hour drive. But I have a meeting there next week, so will make a KW stop on the way back. @sartoric, your kitchen looks like a marvelously efficient galley model. Like Shelby, I love the floor. I want hardwood in my next kitchen. Mine is presently too messy to take a picture. If I get it cleaned up this afternoon....

Knackwurst (from the Aldi trip), sliced diagonally and fried, with a squirt of honey mustard on the side; homemade kraut, fresh from the jar in the fridge; fried potatoes with onions; Rancho Gordo vaquero beans cooked simply with onion, garlic, and a sprinkle of steak seasoning rub. With a glass of pinot grigio. Simple, homey and it hit the spot.

And as to the question I didn't address earlier, that was the browning I got from the 40 minute bake. No burning/overbrowning problem. I checked and was prepared to put foil over it, but didn't need to.

Holy hell. That'd cut into my Scotch-drinking severely.

Enabler.

@Anna N, the recipe is Peter Reinhart's. It's here. @rotuts, the pans are my standard 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 Calphalon pans that I use for most loaves. They fit just perfectly. I made up the soaker the night before, and started on the bread about noon (after I finished all my errands). All was according to the reicpe except I used perhaps 1/4 cup less flour, and as noted earlier, it took the loaves more than an hour to rise in the CSO, rather than the 20 minutes the instruction booklet suggested. The molasses is locally made sorghum molasses, not strong at all. Very good flavor. My daughter announced, when she smelled it, that she wanted cinnamon toast for dinner. I happily obliged. It makes most excellent cinnamon toast.

Sounds an awful lot like a biscuit to me.

You could always move to Arkansas, the home of cheap liquor. Last Balvenie I bought, I paid $38.99 for a 750-ml bottle at the nearby discount liquor store. The cylinders it comes in also make excellent "banks" for spare change collection. I save it all year and take it to the CoinStar counting machine around Christmas time. It'll generally pay for the gift cards I'd buy anyway (and on which I get 4x fuel points when I buy them at Kroger, which forgoes its CoinStar fee if you take your loot in a gift card vs. cash. I got this racket figured out).

Stopped by my Aldi this morning. No dehydrators. Probably a good thing. I really don't need another kitchen appliance.

As noted, the 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 pans fit perfectly. Lovely, smooth crumb, and I am entranced by the glossy, crispy crust. We seem to have gotten over the rocky beginning to our relationship.

Peas, packaged for the freezer. I do nothing but shell, let them dry for an hour or so in the bowl, and scoop into plastic bags. My grandmother contended they froze best in a pillowcase. Three half-pints of tomato sauce (just tomatoes and sauce) from the garden.

@Lisa Shock -- A big bowl of slaw with cabbage, cucumber, sauteed leek, grapefruit sections, nectarines, with toasted peanuts and pecans and either canned (drained) garbanzos or some of your dry beans, cooked, for protein; with a dressing of honey and lime juice with a neutral oil, spiced with whatever strikes your fancy. If you have some bread, baked, toasties with that swiss cheese would be excellent; Or even a quiche, as someone suggested, with the swiss and onion.

Y'all with your water views, know that I am well and truly jealous. Beautiful!

I'm having some blossom end rot on my Romas. A friend who grows tomatoes tells me a good remedy is a mixture of 1 cup Epsom salts to a gallon of water, and dispensed among the plants. Picked up Epsom salts today and will try that tomorrow. The Romas and the cherry and grape tomatoes are bearing nicely; my hybrids have almost quit, and the Bradleys are producing small tomatoes, but they're very tasty. This is about a week's worth of tomato pickage: I made three half-pints of tomato sauce with them yesterday.

I don't care for Chick-fil-A's politics OR their food. But I will say they make the best fast-food lemonade I've ever had.

I am SO going to try this. Scotch and salmon sounds like it would be a match made in heaven. I'm not much for really smoky, peaty Scotches either, but I can see they'd be good in this. But I'll likely use Balvenie 12, which is my usual pour.

It leaks half a tank of water over the course of 15-20 minutes. No leak since I tightened it. Not sure what its purpose is, other than to cause me agita.

Yes, I used mine for two loaves of anadama bread yesterday. It took an hour, vs the 20 minutes the book said it'd take (albeit that was for a different kind of bread). I did it on steam at 100F; I think next time I may bump it up to 110, as it didn't feel very warm to the touch. I tend not to slash my loaves (heresy, I know, but I always forget! and I don't do baguettes much), so I can't testify to that. The Anadama bread was most excellent, both plain and toasted, btw. Exactly. Thankfully, the water did not get into the power strip and fry the whole house.

Found the black knob probably about the time you posted that. Thanks! We're going on an hour on steam at 100F to proof bread loaves. They ain't there yet. This is not an auspicious beginning to our relationship.