Miss me?

Its been too long, I know, seems like I was away for a while this time last year too, but with all the politics in the news I thought I'd share two items that have made Michelle Obama my favorite first lady of all time



And coming soon to a Kitchen Stadium near you...the secret ingredient is...Local!

Ideally I'd love to have one of these awesome cloches from breadtopia, keeps the loaf moist during the initial baking without having to use a pan full of water in the oven. Or in my case forgetting that it is a really dumb idea to let a glass pyrex pan heat up in the oven and then pouring water in it as I am about to throw the loaf on the stone. No I don't have pictures, you'll have to use your imaginations.

So minus the pyrex pan how do I keep my loaf humid for the first 30 minutes of baking?
with this.


Its not a perfect solution, but the price is right. Just grab an appropriate diameter pot and throw it over the top. (It gets hot so use mitts when removing)

The results? Better than the tray of water I my opinion.


I've also found that the method I use (whereby I make about 4 pounds of dough, and save it in the fridge until I need to use a pound to make a loaf) keeps the dough too cold to adequately rise in the 45 minutes time suggested in the article I pulled it from. 2 hours in a warm spot gets much better results.

And for those of us stricken with late blight this year there is hope. There are currently 3 tomato varieties listed as resistant, one of which "legend" is open pollinated. Buy now, there may be a run on these seeds come spring.

better late than never

since having lent the cable I use to connect my phone to my computer, I've had to deprive you all of the grainy blurry images that pass for photography around here.

Payback.



mmmm delicious.



I discovered I am capable of working with electricity and neither zapping myself nor burning down the house...go figure.



Anticip...




ation.

Fact!

Fact!

Warm homemade bread and homegrown chamomile tea is the perfect winter evening snack.

Fact!


seriously though, a question for no-knead veterans: do you end up with a lot of bubbles in the bread? The first couple loaves from the batch were fine, but the last two have a lot of air bubbles, does this have anything to do with the age of the dough? I should provide pictures, these are not the usual bubble holes that are common in artisan style bread, I had a couple that were the diameter of a quarter. That seems a bit large to me.

A productive weekend

As promised, the process pictures of the mostly finished sunroom...mostly.

Step one, tear out the bushes.





done.

Next they dug the holes for the footings (which was photographically uninteresting) then put in concrete footers and built the deck portion (which has an insulated floor).


then they pretty much did the rest in two days. I didn't get a picture of just the walls in place, (and I wasn't about to stand outside yesterday morning and take pictures of them working.)

Here is the finished product.


Note I have the blinds pulled down on the side windows (which are an enormous 57" wide). We got cellular blinds for the windows, and between that and the low-e glass, it was pretty warm yesterday despite being isolated still from the rest of the house. Note that I still have to put a door where the windows are, so entering the room does not involve gymnastics.

And that very same day, I put three dwarf citrus trees on order from Growquest.

I did a lot more this weekend. Starting with the window to the kitchen door (on the north side of the house.) We were contemplating making our own shades for the sunroom from "Warm window" fabric available at jo-ann fabrics. By the yard it is quite pricey, but one of the employees wholeheartedly endorsed the results. So we decided on a test. Make one for the kitchen, and if we like the results, do the whole sunroom. All in all it took about 3 hours to make a 24"x40" shade and hang it. I would rate the results as "not bad." A the part of me that thinks things like "I see where the errors are, and I know I can do the next one better," kicked into gear. Unfortunately the lobbying efforts did not pay off, and I can understand. The materials alone were helaciously expensive. Granted, some things you had to buy in bulk, like cordage, the brass rings, the eyelet screws, and a branded weight rod (instead of just using some 3/8" round bar stock and cutting it to length.) but at $140 it is hefty. And professional looking it ain't. So we compromised and got some rather nice cellular shades which do a decent job of insulating.



I really should have followed the optional step of spraying some kind of light adhesive between the insulation layer and the inside facing fabric to give it a more crisp look. In all fairness we used a rather heavy upholstery fabric as well. I'd love to give it another try on some other windows. Maybe the bedroom windows of the kids rooms which face north and west. It would mean saving up a bit first, as I said, quite expensive, but you can definitely feel the difference if you put your hand behind the shade at night.

And on a different note, I made my first loaf of "no-knead" bread. It looked and smelled amazing. Fresh warm bread made a nice complement to Chicken Marsala and wild mushroom risotto for valentines day. (In my case it was "chicken" made with Quorn cutlets.)


I did notice that I should let the stone warm up a little longer, as the bottom wasn't quite as crisp as the top...which as you can see from the picture, was perfect. It was extremely well recieved. In fact, it was gone before the evening was out. I have plenty of dough and I will make another tonight with a little longer warm up time.

I also put cabinet doors on the area below the counter where our garbage/recycling bins sit, but for some reason they weren't on the card.

One last thing, last night my wife inquired now that the sunroom is "done" why I don't have anything growing out there yet. Simple answer: After everything that went on, I'm tired. Of course that was yesterday, today I'm rested.