patti_h

@KikiAnn I'm so glad you posted here- I have been watching for Aldi's to sell that blender since seeing your post about it last year! I am glad your mom's is still going strong; I'll definitely head to Aldi's Wednesday morning!

My younger son is very excited about Pi day so we discussed it this weekend and decided on a key lime pie with nilla wafer crust.

You might like to check out the website "Food in Jars". There are lots of recipes and a canning 101 section. See what you think, I have made 1 or 2 of their recipes and enjoyed them. You might also like that some of the recipes are sweetened with honey (I think you are a honey fan).

I just found this "Fireworks" bar while shopping today, and happened to have a Chuao firecracker bar for comparison. Same ingredients, tastes exactly the same. These bars were $1.99, while I've seen the Chuao retail around $6. Sorry for the upside down pic!

My husband buys the frozen tamales, and saw the refrigerated ones last shopping trip so picked the. Up. He really liked them, so we will probably stock up on the next shopping trip. Bought the frozen Mac and Cheese bites, baked in the cuisi-steam oven, little guy loved them as an after school snack! He also loves the cookie butter ice cream. I don't think I mentioned this- I had never returned anything to Trader Joes until recently- I bought some chicken sausages and I thought they were vile. The taste and the texture. I decided for something that made me feel sick the rest of the day, I was getting my money back!

Great timing on this thread; I just bought a rack of pork today (at Costco, too!) to make for my husband's birthday this week. The Mario Batali recipe sounds great, however my husband hates fennel. Any thoughts on whether I should just omit the fennel and fennel pollen in the recipe, or should I replace them with something else?

I agree with Darienne, the texture of cream cheese after being frozen will not make a good cheesecake, in my limited experience.

Rotuts- we ate the poutine, and although I really have no frame of reference, we thought it was great! Fried the fries in lard, it got a big thumbs up from both of my boys and even the son's picky girlfriend! Now, next time I go shopping I'll have to buy ten bags to stick in the freezer because I bet we'll never see it again. The downfall of shopping at TJ's- you love something and it disappears!

In the freezer section, I found French Onion Soup. I didn't try it but my son really liked it. He loves French onion soup but my homemade is too "oniony" for him.... It comes two "bowls" per package, you can heat in the oven or micro. It does have croutons and cheese in it. Also found the poutine and decided to try that. I will probably follow the recommendation to fry the fries in lard. We have also found the "Virgil's" root beer to be quite good. We don't drink much soda and I prefer my son to not ingest all those chemicals so at least at TJ we can get Hansen's or Virgil's and it is somewhat better than drinking coke. Or at least, that's what I tell myself!

Mick, I don't feel like this thread has disintegrated- look how many people you have trying out sourdough as a result of your writing! I think all the posts here, from you and others, have been very encouraging to us sourdough newbies to just go ahead and mix flour and water and see what happens, whether it is white flour or rye. I have in the past tried the method using grapes from my yard ( Nancy Silverton) and the raisin water method (Peter Reinhart) and neither worked out for me. I'm traveling to my parents' house today, and I have my scale & starter with me because right now I have a great smelling and active starter and I'm going to keep it that way. To me, you have had wonderful success with this thread! I thank you for all the advice you have given because I think this thread has encouraged me to really work on my bread baking.

I don't really remember what we had when we were young, but once we were in high school, our birthday cake was Cassata Cake that we drove to the West side in Buffalo to buy it at an old Italian Bakery. Man was that an awesome cake!

Cyalexa- this is probably a dumb question, but how do you make your white starter? 100% white flour, 50% water, and how much rye starter? Do you bake right after mixing it, or do you let it rest before baking with it?

This is such a great thread! Cyalexa- thank you for the links. I have read on the Fresh Loaf from time to time but I don't find the site real user friendly (to me). I really appreciate that blog post because I may have been in tears from a kitchen flop from time to time, especially when I was first married. (I even managed to explode a corningware casserole dish)! My starter is not looking so bubbly today...I think I will refresh with rye this evening and hopefully bake tomorrow? Can anyone answer this: when in the process do you use your starter to bake- right after you feed it, or when it is due for another feeding? Or does that part not really matter? Cakewalk- I think freezing starter instead of dumping it is a great idea. If mine gets bubbly again I'll freeze the portion I. Supposed to discard. Mick, if you care to share any recipes, I would love them. I am not a very experienced bread baker, but I would like to be! I have been baking my family's sandwich bread for the last couple of months, other than that it was a challah here, a pain a'la ancient there..... All passable but could be much better!

Elsie I think I started the day you started, or the day after. I used organic rye flour because I had read somewhere that rye starters were easier to grow. Today's refreshment I used white flour instead of the rye. I'll bake with white flour too. I'm very interested to see what comes of it!

Elsie I hope your new starter goes gangbusters! Mick I was only using rye as a starter because I read it is easier! I will go ahead and test out my starter tomorrow. I'm sure I can find a recipe. Somehow I though you had to grow your starter for a long time but really, you proved that wrong with this thread! I have never successfully made sourdough so I am really excited about this! And even if it doesn't work out, it's just flour, not gold!

This is my rye starter: I am discarding half and refreshing with equal amounts rye flour and water each morning. How long do you keep this up before it's ready to use, and how do you know when it is ready to be used?

Smithy, yes I braided it and put it in the loaf pan. After so many flops, I really wanted a pretty loaf!

I had a really wonderful salad recently at chef John Fleer's restaurant, Rhubarb, in Asheville. It was arugula, spinach, wood oven roasted apples, and goat cheese in Kabocha Squash. The apples were not crisp, but they weren't limp either. It was a really great salad.

Lately I have had flop after flop in the bread baking department- edible, but not what I was looking for. Luckily my boys will eat what I deem mistakes, however I tried a new recipe for their sandwich bread and today I produced an e-gullet worthy loaf (in my opinion!) The recipe is from here: http://rosas-yummy-yums.blogspot.com/2009/01/buttermilk-honey-bread-pain.html The loaves I made a couple days ago got rave reviews. This will be a keeper recipe!

Mick, your breads are gorgeous! I tried to make sourdough using Peter Reinhardts instructions in BBA, around a year ago, didn't work for me. I now have a rye starter that is looking nice and bubbly sitting in my kitchen, from following your thread! I'm very excited about this, thanks for all the information and encouragement!

Just wanted to pop in and say thank you Mick for these posts. They were very interesting and might get me to try sourdough. I love that you make it simple!

You can get seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and grow your own, if you are interested.

I popped Kerry's recipe in the oven last night while we were eating dinner, my first batch of blondies ever. My younger son is not a chocolate fan so I figured they would be up his alley- no nuts however as he doesn't like nuts. They loved them. Thanks for the recipe Kerry!

Anna N your ciabatta looks wonderful. I aspire to have a loaf with those beautiful air pockets like yours! In the meantime my family is enjoying my practice. Off topic but also wanted to say I just finished reading the Mantoulin thread last night. (I used to only lurk on pastry & baking). What a fantastic read, very inspiring. I am going to go backwards & read previous years! Thanks for putting in the work to document it all.

The ciabatta turned out nicely in this machine! I baked one loaf in there and one in my regular kitchen oven. The one in the cuisinart got great color; my kids reported back that they liked both loaves.... I need to work more on my bread because the crumb was horrible. Only a couple of nice air holes- but the bread was devoured.I did the proof with steam at 100 for 15 minutes, then. Baked at bake/steam at 450 for 25 minutes. I am definitely going to keep at the ciabatta and also try the pain l'ancienne (both from Bread Baker's Apprentice). As an aside, have made chicken thighs for dinner the last two nights and they were fantastic- moist with super crispy skin. Last night's I put pesto under the skin and sprinkled them with Cyprus sea salt. They were really fantastic. Tonight we're trying pork chops. I can't believe I have never had a toaster oven before & I'm really glad I followed this thread with such interest!