My local Goodwill had a bounty of Corning Ware today. Up until somewhat recently, items like this were shifted to their online auction. Glad to see these back in the community. They had other pieces throughout the shelves and a good assortment of clear Pyrex as well.
I had two mint plants, one peppermint and the other spearmint, in planters in my backyard. The plants are gone, but the planters remain. The ceramic pot is fine, but the 50 gallon grow bag is torn and ripped down the side where the mint was. (It was an older bag, so it would have taken less force to tear than when we first got it, but still..) The other plants in the bag were untouched.
The entire plants are gone—there one week and gone the next. I’ve smelled skunks in the yard and have seen a rat and a possum at night. Many years ago there were sightings of raccoons in the neighborhood, but nothing recently. I grew the plants from sprigs and are sad to see them get to a reasonable size and then just disappear. What do you think is the likely culprit?
This loaf is based off of our favorite Thanksgiving dressing recipe from Delish*. A one pound loaf bakes well start to finish in my Zojirushi bread machine, but we wanted a larger loaf this week so this was done on the dough cycle and then baked in the oven.
I use onion and mushroom powders to stand in for the broth and savory cooked onions and apple cider to stand in for the apples. The original recipe uses fresh herbs, but experimentation had me conclude that for the bread only fresh thyme really made a difference. Dried parsley could be added, but the bread doesn’t seem to need it. The cranberries are unsweetened, but sweetened also works.
This loaf is the max dough I’d put in my Cuisinart Compact. The cranberry amount is a workout for the paddle and I add them a third at a time 15 minutes into the first knead. For this loaf I used a preheated lidded clay baker, set the dough in, then spritzed with water before putting the lid on and putting it in the oven. Oven initially 450ºF, then turned to 425ºF after the dough went in. Baked for 30 minutes lid on and about 6 more lid off.
The bread toasts well, but it better toasted in an oven because the cranberries are a bit sticky. Makes excellent grilled cheese.
* https://www.delish.com/holiday-recipes/thanksgiving/a22628293/easy-cranberry-stuffing-recipe/ (we modify this a bit to include less liquid, extra cranberries, and no celery)
I cooked some hulled barley in an Instant Pot for dinner. Lately I’ve been trying to think of ways to use the cooking water (tasty!) that gets drained from the grain and decided this time to use it instead of plain water in bread. Added apple flavor with some boiled apple cider and chopped soft dried apples. We really like the pairing and the bread is pillowy soft. Toasts well.
The recipe tweak I would do next time is to not soak the barley flakes. Oversoaking probably made them disappear into the bread dough. Also I’ll let the barley water cool a little more. It looks like there was some overproofing starting at the loaf top.
My Zojirushi mini (BB-HAC10) baked today’s loaf of cinnamon raisin pecan bread. I really like the flavor. The cinnamon adds a little depth and there is a little bit of whole wheat flour as a slight nod to nutrition. It toasts well and I’m betting it will complement many of our favorite sandwiches.
It also slices well, but I was picturing a lot more to look at. When I was putting the raisins and chopped pecans into a bowl to include at the add-ins beep, the amount looked like too much and I scaled back. Going to add more in the next test and see how that goes.
This one came out really well and makes great toast and sandwiches. (Sorry, no photo pre-slicing.)
I started off with a poolish that was 50 grams of golden wheat flour (King Arthur). The intention was to let poolish go for about 10 hours, but I overcorrected the temperature and decided to go with an abbreviated time of 4 hours because it had doubled and was quite bubbly. My kitchen was 63ºF, but the mat I put under the poolish took it to almost 80º. Oops. 😬
The dough was kneaded and risen in my Cuisinart Compact bread machine, then baked in the oven in the vintage Corning Ware pan in the picture. The loaf came out with a nice rounded dome until I put my thumb in it trying to release the loaf from the pan. Turns out I missed greasing a portion of the pan. Oops again.
For the kneading, I started off with all the ingredients except for the whole seeds and added those roughly 10 minutes in to the dough cycle. Oven time was 30 minutes at 350ºF. A little butter is on the loaf top to accent the crust.
Edit: Inadvertently filtered out my salt content when taking the ingredients screenshot. Salt was 2%.