I like this time at night on HBT

Thanks. This is pretty much it. Different year though. Mine has a long burner in the middle that, if I remember right, is actually 27,000 BTU.

I bought a HUD home, so no appliances when I moved in but a busted dishwasher. I would have preferred the range with the gas cook top and the double electric over, but I couldn't afford it. Eventually that will go downstairs in the kitchenette, and I'll get the range I really wanted. That's not a priority right now though.

 

Me? Anal retentive? Noooooo, not me. I'm really not, I just try to follow a recipe as closely as possible the first time.

Yeah, I should have worked the dough more. It kept sticking to me, so I'll admit I got kinda sick of that and just panned it.

Yeah, I would like some yeast and malt powder. I love homemade bread, and it's cool enough that the heat from the oven is welcome. I don't bake much during the summer, it seems backwards to bake something and then run the AC to cool things off.

 

If you happen to have a fedex or USPS account, I can pack the box and send you dimensions weight for you to ship a label. I can just send parcel post now that I think of it, so even with work winding down for the year, I think I can still afford that.

 

Hmm... Brewers and bakers around here. Any of you folks familiar with Daniel Leader?

 

Nope.

According to the googles, I get as much (or more) for bread as he does.

 

Hmm, who's the candlestick maker then? .. . Ok, yeah I've made a candlestick before. Candles too for that matter.

 

I had a couple of chicken sandwiches tonight made with ground chicken thighs. They were fantastic! Just seasoned with salt and pepper like any other burger. Cooked up beautifully. The texture was great, even better then I usually see from hamburger. Juicy too.

I decided to try grinding some chicken because beef prices have been pretty high lately. $4+ per lb for ground beef. I tried chicken breast, it was horribly dry. Even with lard added to it. So, I thought I'd try chicken thighs. More collagen, more fat. Very tasty. $1.29 a pound. Here's the funny part. It is cheaper, but not by much. $1.29 an lb, but after removing the bone and skin it's actually $1.88 per lb of actual meat. That's pretty cheap, but I only de-boned and ground 3lb and it took me about 45 minutes. So, I effectively paid myself $8.48 an hour to do that in saved money.

I'll still grind and freeze chicken thigh meat, but I'll buy boneless skinless thighs. Minimal work for those, even if they are $2.49 per lb. The flavor is worth the work. Boneless skinless thighs should only take about 10 minutes, instead of 45. When beef is on sale for $3 a lb I'll still buy it too.

 

What's your grinder of choice?

I've been thinking about getting the kitchenaid attachment for a while now.

 

Anything Kitchenaid is pretty low duty these days. You'd probably do better with an old fashioned hand grinder.

Unrelated, just what I'm listening to:

 

Well I agree with the new mostly plastic attachment but I was actually thinking of the older all metal attachment. They are supposed to mate just fine with the newer mixers.

 

I use that attachment. It works great. I wouldn't bother trying to use the stuffer tubes for sausage though. You want to get a separate vertical stuffer for that.

 

This is the grinder I bought. Despite being plastic, I haven't had a single problem with it. I've put probably 100 lbs through it in the year and a half or so I've owned it.

 

I went to go make myself a keylime mojito. Key limes beaks sent me, some white whiskey, spearmint from my back yard, corn syrup.... I'm out of soda water. No sprite, no tonic water.... Made the drink with diet Mt Dew anyway. So yeah. Hadn't planned on mixing alcohol and caffeine, but it's actually pretty tasty.

 

Thighs have so much flavor then titties, only issue with boneless is you lose out on the stock you can make with the bones but they are more work.

 

I the older one on my newer mixer mate up just fine.

With the snowstorm that swept through the northern prairie states, last I heard was 100,000 head of cattle + dairy cows dead.

Not that it makes the so called news channels, a friend in the Dakotas has been without electric for almost 3 weeks now, making out with his pellet heater and old Franklin stove. His farm was hit pretty hard so far

 

True, but then you have to make stock. I might buy bone in if I was going to do chicken to can the same day. Then I would be able to trim them faster too. I could leave some meat on the bone and it wouldn't go to waste.

I periodically slow cook a couple of whole chickens. Then I pressure can the meat in the resulting broth. I pressure can the broth too as long as there is space in the canner. Some broth usually ends up in the freezer though.

Ouch. Pellet stoves are nice, but no power for three weeks?

I just put some curry powder in my chili. Yummy.

 

Ugg pellet stoves. Lived in a place for a while that had one. It's nickname was loud and dirty. Ate through fuel like crazy and only heated the immediate room (kitchen, living room). The rest of the house was cold as hell. It was actually kind of a nice model with variable feed and blower settings. Heaven forbid you opened the door to break up the clink or it would rain ash everywhere.

 

Beats freezing to death

 

I've never thought about grinding chicken but seems like a good idea. That got me to thinking about Chinese pork hash for some reason. That's what my wife calls it. Not sure if it is called something different. Very simple recipe

Steamed pork hash
Ground pork
fresh crushed garlic
chopped water chestnuts


combine the above, make meat balls around the size of a golfball
steam till done.
serve them hot and with some shoyu and chopped green onion

Another of my wife's favorites, mine too. She calls it Chinese fish. We usually use a whole, cleaned red snapper

I'm not sure I remember the recipe exactly but it's something like this
steam a fish
heat some oil till just under smoking hot
chop garlic, shredded ginger and chopped green onion to your liking. at least enough to cover the fish. I love both garlic and ginger.and use quite a lot.
Once the fish is cooked remove from steamer and sizzle the hot oil over the fish. add the garlic, green onion and ginger plus a little more hot oil. lightly pour on your favorite sesame oil. Eat immediately.

okay one more
beef unchoy, or onchoy. We can't get unchoy in the mainland very easily. I asked a grocer why and he said something about it being banned because it is considered a hostile weed or something like that. Our loss, truly. But in Hawaii it is readily available. Big leafy veggie, the stems are hollow.. It is fantastic roughage and full of vitamins.

Sliced beef sauteed with some garlic and onions. Throw in the chopped unchoy steam till done to your liking. Add oyster sauce, not much. mix it all up and serve immediately with steamed rice.


Guess I'm hungry

BTW. Daniel Leader was a successful NYC chef who fell in love with bread. Quit his job, traveled to Europe to learn the bread making art. Came back to NY and eventually opened his own bakery. If you have any interest in creating the best bread ever read his book "Bread Alone" probably the best bread book on the market. Ever! It is not just recipes and procedures, it is a story and history of bread..Quite amazing.

http://www.breadalone.com/how-we-started

 

Yeah I guess, but just barely. Of course the one I had wouldn't run unless it was plugged in.
Horrible winter that year. Got over two feet of snow in about 24 hrs at one point. Winter sucks.

 

This one has a gravity feed mounted on the wall with a timer and 12v battery to run the auger. Several years back we used an old stationary bike a treadmill motor and a power reg so they can charge batteries using human power. He's trying to get completely off grid but is harder if you don't have a ton of disposable cash. Somewhere I have stashed a spare cog and chain to run my mill off my road bike.(just in case)

 

So, today I replaced two double panel windows that were broken with single panes of poly-carbonate. I removed the old panels. Cut a new poly-carbonate panel that was 32x54". Then siliconed that over the old aluminum window frame. Then placed pre-drilled 1x3 stock over the outside of the frame. Screwed that in place to hold everything together.

I like the new single panel window much more then the old double panel ones. It took me a few minutes of looking at them to figure out why. The double panel windows have an aluminum frame section that bisects the window. It's right at eye level, so it feels closed off with them there. The single poly-carbonate window panel has no such piece at eye level, so it feels open. The new single panel windows won't open of course, and the double panel ones will. That isn't really a problem though. There are 8 windows on my back patio, and I only need to replace 1 more.

The last one is going to be a PITA. It was broken, so the old resident put a poly carbonate panel in instead. The problem being that they didn't take the aluminum framed glass panel out first. The mechanism that lets you release the panels so you can remove them is now trapped between the aluminum frame and the poly-carbonate panel. In order to re-do this in a way I would like I'm going to have to remove the old poly-carbonate panel first. Then the glass panels. Then install a new poly-carbonate panel. I might be able to re-use the one that's there, I'm not sure yet. The old busted window also has metal HVAC tape all over it. Between the glass and the poly-carbonate. It looks like garbage. That's a project of another weekend though.

Certain other people kept bugging me while I was trying to work too. So, I started drinking about 3 hours ago. Right after I finished the two windows I wanted to get done today. I started with some diet Mt Dew and a double shot of vodka. I've been downing that 15.5% back-sweetened and carbed cider since then. Yeah, life seems much better now...

 

Oh, I also baked the focaccia. Topping was butter, garlic, and parmesan. I have to say, that doesn't taste anything like any of the other bread recipes I've got. Not even close. I enjoyed it greatly! It was a little to much dough for the pan I used. It's a non-stick cookie sheet. It's a little smaller then a true half sheet. I'll probably cut the recipe in half the next time I make it. It's a lot of bread for the pan, or two people for that matter.

Even with an oiled non-stick baking sheet it stuck a little bit. Not bad though.

My Mother is funny. She kept comparing it to sourdough. Yeah, it's not even close to sourdough. I guess she was talking about the texture. It's a little chewy. Nicely so, I think.

EDIT: It ended up about 1 1/2 inches high. I did dimple the whole pan before baking.

 

I want to see the mill its hooked up to

 

Breadsticks

 

Looks great, LG. I would probably use parchment on the bottom to make it really not stick.

 

That's a good idea. The non-stick coating on this is probably geared toward fat rather then carbohydrates.

 

Give your mom some credit! It's closer to sourdough than most bread, the poolish and the cold retard both deveop flavors more similar to sourdough than store bought bread tends to be.

Also, I can eat a pan of that by myself in under 24 hrs! That's only 4 sandwiches.

Restaurant supply stores are your friend. Half sheets are about 4 bucks a piece and you can get a lifetime supply of Qbake sheets for what a few rolls of the crap parchment at the grocery cost. I don't use parchment for focaccia though. More developed dough and touch more oil will help.

 

Oh, I do. She makes some good bread all by herself. I suppose it's just that to me sourdough means noticeable acetic acid. So I would never describe the flavor that way.

Wow, you eat a lot more bread then I do. It usually takes me about 2 weeks to eat a loaf of bread... Unless it's really good. Then it's more like 3 days.

I actually shop a Sam's club on a regular basis already. They do some restaurant supply, and I know they have half baking sheets for cheap. I was just thinking that the non-stick coating would help with the sticky dough.

 

When I make foccacia, I use a simple dough of water, flour, salt, yeast and just a bit of sugar to help start the yeast; enough for one normal loaf of bread. I mix half the flour with the rest of the ingredients, cover the bowl, and leave at least a few hours, until the mooshy mix (there's a fancy name for it I can't remember) rises and falls. If I think about it early enough, I'll do that the day before baking.

Then I mix the rest of the flour in, knead the dough until it isn't sticky, pat it or roll it out to cover half an oiled cookie pan, cover it with cling wrap or tent it with foil, and let it rise. After that I punch it down with my fingertips, spreading it out so it covers the entire pan,and is dimpled all over.

I keep a jar of olive oil with minced garlic and Italian seasoning in the cupboard. I cover the focaccia with that, making sure to get some of the garlic and herbs on it; let it rise again, and bake it in a 400* F oven.

And yes, it has a bit of sourdough taste to it - probably because I let the first mix of dough rise and fall.

 

Hmm, maybe I won't have any trouble eating the focaccia. It's even better after it's completely cooled then it was warm.

 

I just popped a double dose of melatonin. I need to head off to sleep before I start rambling about things that I'd wish I hadn't in the morning.

 

All this bread talk has me wanting to make my spent grain pizza and spent grain raisin bread!

 

I'm just getting off work; when I get home to my laptop maybe I'll post a picture of a focaccia I cooked on the grill ,a couple of months ago.

 

I don't need melatonin for that...

 

For the sleep part I mean.

 

Hmm, melatonin passed peak and I'm still awake. That sucks.

 

Time to break out the everclear.