ALenore

I made a big panzanella salad today, using my home made bread and a bunch of different colored tomatoes I bought at the Farmers' Market. There's still plenty of the Peach Blueberry Buckle left from yesterday, so that will be our dessert. The coconut curry chicken soup looks really good, I think I'll try it next week to use up the rest of the box of rice noodles I have in my pantry.

A few weeks ago I opened a jar of Chipotle Pepper Jelly, which I order from a place in Vermont called Catamount Farms. I really like the stuff, I order 4 jars at a time and use it over the course of a few months. The jar I opened had actually been bought back in May, but I hadn't opened it until the other week because I was still using the remaining jar of the last batch. To my surprise, it was so thin and watery I couldn't spread it on crackers, or anything else. All the other 3 jars were the same. I called the company to complain. They were very nice, they apologized, said they'd had a problem with a prior batch, and sent me 4 new jars. Since then I've been trying to figure out what to do with the runny stuff. It tastes fine, but is just too thin to spread on anything. Last night I decided to use it as a glaze on chicken breasts. It worked out great. I even boiled some down to use as a dipping sauce. The boiled down version is too hot to use as a spread, but is fine mixed with other things. Tonight I'm grilling burgers for the holiday weekend. I had planned to buy steaks from the vendor at the Farmers' Market, but he was out of everything but roasts. I had already bought ground beef from another vendor, so I just switched to hamburgers which I'll grill along with corn and zucchini. Since the dinner is so simple, I decided to make a nice dessert, I baked a Blueberry Peach Buckle, which I'm looking forward to trying,

Stephen Colbert’s Spoofs of Podcast Ads for His Late Show Podcast Are Dumb, Brilliant http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/09/04/stephen_colbert_s_podcast_ad_spoofs_for_his_late_show_podcast_are_dumb_brilliant.html I've been listening to Stephen's podcast, and love his fake ads.

I made the one pan pasta with spinach and tomatoes tonight. I came out better this time than the last time, since I used a frying pan to cook it. The last time I used a Dutch oven, and it never cooked down enough. I saw an article in Slate about the recipe, and the article mentioned using a skillet. A previous recipe I saw just showed a picture from straight above, and it looked like they were using a Dutch oven, so that's what I used.

The BLT with homemade mayo came out great. I've never made mayonnaise before, and when I first tried it yesterday it didn't set. I found a solution on the internet, in which you beat another egg yolk with some lemon juice and mustard, then gradually add the non-set mayo a little at a time while whisking. I tried it and it worked fine. I started off using a hand whisk, then changed to a stick blender about halfway through. The recipe I use for baguettes is from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day http://www.food.com/recipe/5-minute-artisan-bread-325571. I form the dough into a baguette instead of a round loaf. You can use the same dough to make regular sandwich bread, but I never tried it until today. I don't use sandwich bread that often, so I usually just buy a loaf at the grocery store and freeze it. But this recipe was really easy to do, so I might start making it more often.

I just now decided to change what I'm making for dinner. I was going to make One Pan Pasta with Tomatoes and Spinach. But then I was talking with my husband and said I'd like to try out the bread I just made, it's sandwich bread, made from the same dough I normally use to make baguettes. I also made some mayonnaise this morning, which I've never done before. He suggested BLTs, which would work out great since we have some really nice tomatoes still left from the Farmers's Market. I'll make the pasta tomorrow, but I'm looking forward to trying out the BLTs.

They announced the guests for Stephen's second week: 9/14: Emily Blunt; Justice Stephen Breyer; musical performance by The Dead Weather 9/15: Jake Gyllenhaal; musical performance by Run The Jewels with TV On The Radio 9/16: Kevin Spacey; Carol Burnett with Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer of Broad City; musical performance by and interview with Willie Nelson 9/17: Naomi Watts; United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon 9/18: Lupita Nyong’o; Sen. Bernie Sanders; interview with and performance by An American in Paris’ Christopher Wheeldon, Robert Fairchild, and Leanne Cope. I'm interested in seeing the interview with Justice Stephen Breyer and the one with Ban Ki-Moon.

Last night I made chicken, mushroom, and kale chimichangas. I wasn't sure how much to fill each one, so there was enough left over to use for something else. The recipe suggest using it for tacos or enchiladas, which I may do. Tonight I'm making tilapia po'boys. I'll have grapes and baby carrots on the side.

I found them at WalMart, Mainstays brand (their house brand) in the housewares department.

My mother made the same thing, but she used regular noodles instead of macaroni, and added a can of corn. She called it "glop." I hated it, but we had it at least once a week.

This isn't exactly a kitchen gadget, just a convenient item I just bought and used yesterday. I make chicken broth frequently, and when I do I strain it through cheesecloth. The cheesecloth is pretty expensive $4 for about 3 or 4 uses). It tends to fall apart when I strain the broth through it, and it isn't wide enough to be able to gather up the edges and squeeze to get all the liquid out. I was in the store yesterday and I saw a package of flour sack cloths, 10 for less than $8. The label on the package said it could be used for cleaning or culinary uses, straining and cheese making. Since I was planning to make chicken broth, I decided to buy it and test it out. It worked great. Each cloth was plenty large enough to fit in the colander with enough excess hanging off the sides that I could gather it up. Best of all it's reusable. I rinsed it out and will wash it next time I do a laundry and I can use it again. I'm sure these cloths have been around forever, but I thought they were just for cleaning, so I didn't bother. Glad to have decided to try them out.

The banana bread I made yesterday came out really good. I'll probably wind up freezing some of it so I don't eat it too fast. I'm making chicken stock today since I finally ran out of the stuff I made a few months ago. I don't use chicken stock that much in the summer, just small amounts in sauces. In fall and winter I use it often for soups and stews. For dinner I'm making something easy, grilled kielbasa, tomato salad, and creamed corn made with fresh corn on the cob. MargeGunderson I've never heard of brown sugar roasted garlic pot roast, it sounds interesting. I assume there's just enough brown sugar to caramelize the garlic, not so much that the pot roast tastes sweet.

ethalfrida, it's just baking yeast. I actually did buy nutritional yeast to use in a recipe once, but I haven't used it since then.

I'm going to make some banana bread today, since I have a bunch of bananas that have gone soft. When I went to the local health food store to buy flax seed (called for in the banana bread recipe) I saw that they had yeast sold by the ounce, only $5 a pound. This is a really good price, when I buy a jar at the supermarket, it's $7 for 4 ounces. Prices at this health food store are generally fairly high (it's a small store, not a chain, so that's kind of expected), but I do like to buy spices there since I can buy them by the ounce in small quantities. Now I'll start buying yeast there. I won't need the yeast for the banana bread, but I do make bread at least once a week, and tonight I'm making sausage pizza, so I'l be using yeast for the pizza dough.

Quof, I love the Mark Bittman recipe for pizza dough, and I use it to make Margarita pizza all the time (although the tomato and basil are from someone else's garden, not mine).

John Oliver was cited in a Ninth Circuit Court appellate decision (in a footnote). This was the one where he talked about U. S. Territories, and involved residents of Guam and a tax refund program. http://abovethelaw.com/2015/08/the-ninth-circuit-hearts-john-oliver/ I guess the judge is a fan of the show.

Tonight I made a salad of cannellini beans, grilled Vidalia onions, and chopped cucumber topped with two tuna steaks I had left over from last week and froze. It came out really good. Both meals had a lot of other things in them, so the two 5 oz. tuna steaks were plenty enough to eat.

I wish more retailers sold pants for women in actual measured lengths, instead of just short, regular, and tall. Men don't have to put up with that, they get to choose both inseam and waist measurements. I'm not quite 5' 1" and petite isn't short enough for me. Right now I buy most of my pants from Land End catalog, since they will actually hem pants to the exact length you want. But it would be nice to be able to buy pants in other stores. I almost never find any pants short enough, and I'm not a very good seamstress, and certainly don't want to pay as much to have pants hemmed as the pants themselves cost.

Last night I didn't doing anything fancy, just grilled chicken thighs, zucchini, and corn on the cob. Also I roasted some potatoes to use them up before they went bad. Tonight I made some fancy grilled cheese sandwiches. They had cheddar cheese, grilled red onions, spinach, tomatoes, and bacon. I grilled them in my panini press. I made just two sandwiches, but cooked up enough onion and bacon for four, and I'll grill two more for lunch tomorrow. They were very tasty. When I cook them up tomorrow I'll probably add a little more cheese than I used tonight.

annzeepark I'm using spring roll wrappers, made of rice paper. I got them in the Asian section of the supermarket. I've never used them before, they're really cool. They are stiff and imprinted with a lattice pattern. You soak them one at a time in warm water for 30 seconds and they soften and become transparent. Then you lay them down on a kitchen towel and put the filling ingredients on the wrapper and roll it up. For this recipe I didn't cook them, but they can be deep fried.

More grammar/spelling complaints. I had a boss once who sent around a memo (this was before e-mail) where she said someone had almost "past out" at work. I pointed out the error to one of my coworkers with some sort of comment like, "Wow, you believe that?" She said "Oh, that's terrible, I hope they're okay." I've seen this error frequently and hardly anyone seems to realize it's incorrect.

Last night I made spaghetti with fresh tomato and mozzarella sauce. Very nice, lots of different colored tomatoes I bought at the Farmer's Market. Tonight I'm making Asian Shrimp rolls, something I've never tried before. The rolls are filled with shrimp, rice vermicelli, cabbage, and peanuts. I'm making a mango/tomato salad on the side.

I don't think the whole Sad/Rabid puppies mess had much effect on either of the Dramatic Presentation Hugos. Guardians of the Galaxy was nominated by both the Sad and Rabid Puppies, and won the Hugo in its category since it was such a great movie. The other short Dramatic Presentation nominees were popular shows, (some of which had been nominated and/or won previously) and I don't think there was any feeling that these shows were unfairly nominated by the Puppies. Orphan Black may have won simply because Game of Thrones and Doctor Who had won several times previously.

Orphan Black won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form, beating out Game of Thrones, Dr. Who, The Flash, and Grimm. Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form Orphan Black: “By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried”, ” written by Graham Manson, directed by John Fawcett (Temple Street Productions, Space/BBC America)

I made pork chops with a "green sauce" of capers, cilantro and scallions, served with additional sautéed and raw scallions. Had noodles and broccoli on the side. annzepark, your dinner sounds great.