Tropicalsenior

I seem to have gone on a bread buying strike. The prices here have gone way up and the quality has gone way down so if I want decent bread I have to make it myself. Here are some of the breads that I have made in the last couple weeks. Small baguettes Russian black bread Hamburger buns and sandwich rolls English muffins And plain white sandwich bread. It seems like a lot of bread but at least it's bread worth eating.

One of the things that I hated most about being a breakfast line cook was leaving every day smelling like bacon and sausage. That was 40 years ago and to this day, I'm not crazy about either one.

As I have said before, I am sick and tired of hearing everything cowboy. They slap that label on anything that they can stick a jalapeño or Chipotle in. This showed up in my inbox today. Pancakes with jalapeño and cayenne pepper. It's from one of my favorite cookbook series and it's sad to see they sunk to the level of this fad.

It's not an option for me either. In my area I have a choice of fried chicken, fried chicken, or fried chicken. I may not know what I want but I do know that that's not it.

I've got no advice because I'm suffering from the same thing. For about the last month, the only thing that appeals to me for lunch is salami sandwiches on homemade bread. And yet, like you, I have two refrigerators full of food. I'm anxiously awaiting to hear some good answers.

Be careful what you wish for. I have plenty of counter space which just means I have more space to stick stuff and I still don't have enough space to work.

My grandmother and my mother both had these and they just referred to them as cake savers. I doubt that they would keep things any fresher than just keeping them in an airtight container. I never got one because I remembered them as being a colossal pain in the neck. They always seem to be smudged and every day they had to be washed and polished dry by hand.

@Shelby that is so true. My husband absolutely refused to eat stroganoff. He hated it, but for years he happily ate my beef and mushrooms in gravy with sour cream. It was one of his favorite dishes.

Have you seen the potato prices in Costa Rica? Actually, I'm not much of a fan of fried potatoes. I make them for Carlos because he loves them. And I had the tail end of a package of tots and the tail end of a package of french fries. If you enlarge it and look very closely I think there's a ninth fry hiding underneath.

I'm so glad you're home and doing well. I was beginning to wonder when I hadn't seen anything from you for so long.

That same website had a fascinating article on the origin of the pork taboo.

I thought I would hold the record but you've got me beat. I have a 1982 Maytag washing machine that is still working like a champ. I bought it used in 1998 and it's never had to have a repair.

I was reading this recipe yesterday for Gâteau Basque and it uses Jam. Might be a good one to check out.

Well, I made it and I wasn't terribly impressed. It might have been the beef that I get down here. However, later that week I made Frikadelle using the same beef and your recipe and it was delicious. No pics. It got eaten too quickly.

That even looks delicious. Would you care to share the link?

More muffins today and I think these are my favorites. They are Panettone Muffins. The recipe made 23 but I had to taste one for Quality review. They, of course, do not have the fluffy texture of panettone but they do have the great flavor. I can live with that until they start selling the real thing again at Christmas time.

Thank you. That is a beautiful video and it is delightful to hear that after all your world travels you still have your delightful Scottish brogue.

That's exactly what we've said about the stores down here. All of a sudden there will be something in the store that we've never had before and it's a really great find. Then you never see it again. Your sardines are like our frozen peas. Every store in the country carried frozen peas and all of a sudden they disappeared. Everywhere! I haven't seen a frozen pea in 2 years. We had a type of salami that was pretty good and it was ubiquitous. It too has disappeared never to be restocked.

Don't look now but I think you've moved to Costa Rica. Things like that are just daily occurrences here.

That looks exactly like the ones that we saw when we were in Argentina. I didn't see any that had olives but possibly they aren't commercially viable. It brought back some good memories.

I think that you will like these. They have a thin crispy crust and a soft interior but they are strong enough to hold up to the juiciest filling. I used them for the pork sandwiches that I mentioned, the next night we had Subs with Italian sub dressing and the final night, I made meatball sandwiches with quite a bit of sauce. The only change that I will make next time is that I will use all white flour.

I just wanted to add my latest tip for livening up potato salad. I've always put onion and chives in my potato salad but because of Carlos's severe allergy to onions I've had to leave it out and every potato salad that I have made tastes flat to me. The other day I was desperate to find something that would give it a kick and I grabbed a bottle of Italian Sub Dressing that I make. It was great. I later used it in pasta salad and it was also delicious. And, by the way, it is the very best dressing for Subs. I do want to say that I only had to add a few tablespoons to the regular dressing to give it whole new flavor.

We had an ice house when I was a kid. It looked very much like this one. It was probably built around 1902 when my grandfather built the main house. It was used constantly until the 50s when my parents got a refrigerator and no longer needed it for an icebox. We had a small lake on the property and every winter they would periodically harvest the ice with huge ice saws and pack it into the ice house in about 2 ft square blocks. It was packed in straw to keep it insulated. As I remember it was about 12 ft deep. My Grandmother had a cold room that was about 12 ft below the level of her basement. Because it was below the permafrost level it was cold enough to store meat all summer long and during the winter it was as cold as a deep freeze. One house that I lived in in Lake Tahoe had one 4-ft cabinet that had a cold shaft that went far below the permafrost layer. It was heavily insulated and kept things as cold as any refrigerator. I was told that house had been built in the 1890s. So yes, long before the turn of the century, refrigeration was a common thing. Our ancestors were pretty ingenious people.

@ElsieD as I suspected, the crumb isn't much different, still quite fine but it does have a definite sourdough type flavor. I will be making it again and probably will leave the preferment for a longer time before I bake.

I'll let you know in a couple hours when I cut into it.