The 4 R’s : Reduce, Recycle, Reuse & Refuse plastic bags!

I know this isn’t an original title, but it is at the heart of my environmental awareness at the moment. I have been looking for ways to avoid single use plastics: bags, cups, bottles, etc. A friend sent me the link to a pattern for a knitted produce bag. I had large bags for grocery shopping, but nothing for buying produce at the grocery store or farmer’s market.

This knitted bag weighs just 10 grams or .4oz, so it doesn’t add significantly to the weight to affect the price of the item. The holes are too large to use for small items like blueberries or cherry tomatoes, but it is strong enough to hold 6 large apples!

This is a link to the pattern: Cotton produce bag

This is an easy knitting project. The bag is small enough to stuff into your purse or pocket and always be ready to use.

Jon cooks! Yummy dinner!

Yes, I know he is my son, yes I am a proud mom, but the guy is a genius in the kitchen! To my delight he cooked dinner tonight for the four of us.

Seared salmon filletes with hollandaise sauce

Oven roasted potatoes

Corn & red pepper vegetable medley with wilted spinach

The salmon was rubbed with a spice mixture that contained: cumin, corriander, brown sugar, dried mustard, chili powder, salt and pepper - his invention. (When he was a little boy he has loved getting into the spice cabinet and mixing up concoctions. Only the saffron was off limits.)

The cast iron skillet was heated and the salmon was dotted with pats of butter. After searing it on both sides, a little water was added to the pan to steam the salmon. The heat was turned down to low and the pan was covered. The salmon was served with a tarragon hollandaise sauce.

Triple-sweet corn was cut off of 4 ears of corn, bought today from the local farmer's market. Chopped onion, garlic, and red sweet bell pepper were sweated in a little olive oil. The corn was added. In a couple of minutes, when all of the vegetables were tender, chopped fresh spinach and fresh thyme were added to the pan just long enough to wilt the spinach.

New potatoes, skins left on, were cut into 1 inch cubes drizzled with olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted in a 400 degree oven on a half sheet pan. 

All I can say is Oh My Goodness! 

Venus and Jupiter close together!

Venus and Jupiter have been moving closer together in the night sky during all of June. Tonight the sky was clear and we could see them clearly! That is Venus on the lower right and Jupiter close and above to the left.

This diagram of Venus and Jupiter orbits show why the two planets appear to be very close from our line of sight on Earth. They are so close together in the sky that you can cover them with one finger. Thanks to NASA for this great diagram.

EarthSky.org is a great site for information about astronomy and more. The charts and explanations of what you can see even without a telescope are fantastic.

Happy Observing!

A great night to gaze at the skies!

The skies cleared enough to see Jupiter, Venus and the crescent moon tonight!

You can see the moon in the center, Venus is above on the right and Jupiter is barely visible above and on the left. The large yellow light at the right is a street lamp. 

At 9:13pm tonight the International Space Station passed over and was visible for about 4 minutes. 

Bettween now and the end of June, Venus and Jupiter will move closer together (from our perspective on Earth) and by June 30 will be so close together you could extend one finger and 'cover them up' in the sky.  

Earth Sky is a great newsletter with all kinds of science information. You can sign up to receive their notices at the bottom of their web page. Go to Earth Sky.org. I have been following the movements of Venus and Jupiter after reading their articles.

To find out when the International Space Station will be passing over your location, go to Spot the Station and enter your location. You will receive email notices for the dates and times when it will pass over your location. spotthestation.nasa.gov

 Tips for stargazing is a link to a great article from EarthSky.org.You can access lots of star maps for each month of the year on the internet, but a Planisphere is a great tool for orienting you to what can be seen any time of night and any day and month of the year..

Marbled rye and whole wheat spent grain

Marbled rye made with a sourdough starter is a light savory sandwich bread. It makes a great grilled cheese sandwich. It is made with  a rye sourdough starter, and bread flour. Two batches are made and coco powder is added to one batch to get the dark color. Caraway seeds and orange extract add to the aroma. It has the wonderful rye flavor due to the starter, but is light like a sandwich bread because it is made with bread flour. Layers of light and dark dough are rolled up and placed into a 5 x 9 loaf pan. The top is brushed with an egg white wash. The recipe can be foundd in Peter Reinhart's book artisan breads every day. 

The whole wheat spent grain again used the whole wheat starter plus bread flour, whole wheat flour and spent grain. It is a dense loaf, but very flavorful. I began with the sourdough starter I have been feeding since September 2014 and added whole wheat flour to make a whole wheat starter. Again, the directions are in Reinhart's book, see above. This starter ferments at room temperature for 6 to 8 hours, then goes in the refrigerator overnight. The next day the rest of the ingredients are added, the dough goes through a series of stretch and folds and then goes into the refrigerator overnight or for up to 5 days. The slow fermentation simply adds flavor.

 This is the marbled rye. Thanks to my neighbor for this great picture of the loaf he sampled. 

 This is the whole wheat spent grain bread. It is one of my 'experiments'. Of the 454g of flour, 254g of unbleached flour, 100g of whole wheat flour, 100g of spent grain flour. The spent grain was half barley and half wheat, from the brewing of  Slam Dunkel Weizen beer from Natty Greene's Brewery.

The nice thing about using the starter is that you can divide the bread-making process up into a couple of days and not feel tied to the dough over a whole day. Of course this does require patience to wait for the finish product, but it is well worth it. 

If you haven't seen Reinhart's class on artisan breads on Craftsy.com, it is well worth the time. He is a great teacher!

Kranz Cake Chocolate Babka

The last lesson in the Artisan Bread class by Peter Reinhart is Chocolate Babka. This was much less intimidating that I thought it would be, mostly because of Reinhart's instruction and demonstration on the video lessons (see previous post).

Everything mixes easily in the mixer then the dough ferments overnight in the fridge.

The dough is rolled out, slathered with partially melted chocolate chips and butter then rolled up. The log is then split into two halves lengthwise.

The ends on one side are pinched closed and the two lengths are twisted.

The twisted dough is placed on a cookie sheet and baked.

Then a sugar-milk-vanilla icing is drizzled over the slightly cooled cake. 

Ready to eat! This picture shows the swirls of chocolate throughout. Sorry the picture is fuzzy!

This recipe is also in Peter Reinhart"s book Artisan Breads Every Day.

Now I have a few more 'homework' assignments to finish from the video lessons!

Learning from a master - Peter Reinhart

Since retiring I have been obsessed with baking bread, all kinds of bread. When someone at a local bakery said that making brioche was hard, I knew that was my next challenge. It was a wonderful dough to work with. If I could make brioche, there was nothing that I couldn't try. I have accumulated lots of books about baking bread, spent hours pouring over the recipes. There was just one thing missing - time with a baker to watch their techniques and ask them questions.

Problem solved! In my email one day appeared an online course with Johnson & Wales baker Peter Reinhart. I knew he taught there, but going to culinary school was out of the question. Taking an online course was a new adventure:10 lessons, with PDF files for directions, a chat platform to ask questions! Of course I signed up. It has turned out to be the answer to my desire to make better bread. Reinhart answers the questions you pose, provides a place to share projects and pictures of your bread triumphs. You can watch the videos again, if needed. The course is offered through Craftsy.com and is called Artisan Breads.

One of the things he explains is the baker's formula. Using this information I increased the amount of liquid in the spent grain dough to 68% of the flour weight. It created a lighter less dense crumb. The shaping instruction Reinhart provided helped eliminate the tendency of the loaves to split when baking.

This is the recipe for spent grain (dried and ground in the blender) that I have used most recently. It probably will continue to be a work in progress:

• unbleached bread flour   (2 and 1/2 cups)    404 grams
• spent grain     (3/4 cup)     86 grams
• sourdough stiff levain        308 grams
• fine sea salt       10 grams
• water & wort (liquid from the production of spent grains)  333.2 grams

I measure everything on a scale usually in grams. Combine the flour, spent grain, salt and water/wort and mix thoroughly. Cover and wait 20 minutes for the flour to become hydrated. Add the levain, mix with the dough hook or by hand.

Let the dough rest for 5 minutes. Do 4 stretch and folds at 15 minute intervals, covering the ball of dough when resting.

Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover and let rest 60 - 90 minutes to ferment.

Shape and place on an inverted half sheet pan or cookie sheet on top of a linen couche or kitchen towel. Spray with pan spray and lightly cover with plastic wrap and allow to proof for 60 minutes.

Preheat oven to 500, with a baking stone in place if you have one. When the loaves are ready, make diagonal slices in the tops of the loaves and slide them into the oven. Mist the oven to create steam. Reduce the heat to 450 and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, rotating the loaves after 15 minutes. 

Adjustments in temperatures in your oven may be necessary depending on how it cooks. Aim for an internal temperature of 200 degrees in the loaves.

When it has cooled it is easy to slice by hand in thin enough slices for sandwiches, grilled cheese sandwiches tonight. When it is still warm, or you rewarm it in the oven for a few minutes, slice it thicker for dunking into soup. Anyway you slice it, Yummy!