More goodies being added soon

 Good evening to all.

This coming week we have berry fools and snickerdoodle cookies available for ordering.  Just a moment ago, I updated the menu for the following weekend.  We're doing another round of milk chocolate snack cake with caramel frosting and also sweet spiced pecans.

I will be updating a new item to the menu in a couple days and more are coming besides that.

I love adding new items to menu because, as any of my readers knows, I only add my favorite foods.  So soon there will be a new chocolate tart on the menu, some sandwiches, a strawberry cake, a non-traditional ice cream, a traditional ice cream, cinnamon rolls and more.

My list of foods that I want to add is very long and it will take a while to reach the end of it.  

That's all for tonight.  Have a great evening, everyone.

Pancakes

A new item has been added to the menu this week:  pancakes.

These pancakes are about 6 inches across, have a perfect thickness (in my opinion), and will come frozen and ready for you to thaw and warm up in any way you choose.

For most people, the choice of syrups is a simple one when it comes to pancakes and waffles.  Most people usually go with the cheapest variety, it seems.  For me, though, I will always choose to use 100% pure maple syrup that has nothing else added.  A syrup that has lots of corn syrup added with maple flavoring is not for me.  If you haven't tried 100% pure maple syrup, please do.  It's definitely more expensive, but it's worth it.

Look for these pancakes to appear on a weekly offering soon.

Lasagna varieties

 

Over the last short while, I've done some tweaks to a few recipes.  For instance, the snickerdoodles will now be made with a touch of lemon zest.  My test eaters heartily approved of that specific tweak.  And a few other recipes were tweaked in ways that were slight enough that I won't bother mentioning them.  But tweaks, large or small, from time to time are an important way to keep improving my craft, to make the recipes just a bit better, and make the eating even more enjoyable.

While most of the time tweaks are small and sometimes a particular tweak is in the production process itself (changing from machine paddle mixing to machine whisking, for instance), sometimes they have a larger impact.  Such is the case with my lasagna.

The lasagna will now come in three variations, the original as well as a second with all beef and a third with all chicken.  I finished testing a batch with all three varieties yesterday and I am very happy with the final testing.  I've already updated the menu listing on the website.  And soon I'll put them on a weekly offering so that everyone can choose their favorite variety.

That's all for today.  Bon appetit.

Warmer days?

Warmer days?  Are they coming or not?  It seems we get a couple warm days, then we get a couple really cold days with snow and sleet.   But the days are getting longer.  The calendar says they are coming.  So we will assume they are.

This upcoming weekend we have pudding and snack cakes.  And next weekend we have snickerdoodles and something that is appearing on the weekly menu for the first time:  berry fools. 

These berry fools are especially yummy fruity desserts, and I think they will be perfect for the warmer days that I assume will be more frequent two weekends from now.  

This week is National Agriculture Week.  Now, I'm not really sure who designates weeks or days as "national this-or-that", so I don't know exactly why it's National Agriculture Week.  But it is certainly worth noting because our food supply chain is so important and vital to us.  Many years ago, one would go into a grocery store and find vastly less produce and only that which was in season.  But in the modern age, all year long, we find bananas and kiwis and berries and apples, long after harvesting is done or coming from long-far-away places.  And we have an abundance of rice and wheat and corn and vegetables of all types.  

Our food supply chain is a modern miracle.  It makes our lives so much nicer because of the diversity of foods and flavors and nutritional content that we have available to us all year long.  It is a fragile thing that we must always work to ensure is in place and for which we must rely on inspectors and regulators to maintain safety and hygiene with respect to production and distribution.  

So for all the farmers and ranchers and harvesters out there who give us this abundant food supply, let's all say a warm "thank you."   And for those who are in places where this abundant food supply is not available, let's hope that governments and social services can find ways to improve access to this amazing food supply chain that we have built through decades of hard work.

Have a great week, everyone!

Just over the horizon

 

Spring is "just over the horizon".  Of course, it seems that's been the case for the last few weeks as warm weather shows up and then disappears into chilly days again.  And today we have another chilly day.  It's a perfect day for hot chocolate and a warm scone.  

This week we have allspice muffins and onion cauliflower soup available for order.  For the following weekend, we have a chocolate snack cake and dark chocolate pudding.  

I came across a nice quote this morning:  "All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast."  The key word here, perhaps, is "leisurely."  The world moves so quickly and is constantly pushing us from one task to another .... does that mean we don't eat leisurely?  Did we ever eat leisurely?  In our collective past, it seems (as evidenced in books and movies, etc.) that surely we ate more leisurely years ago. 

As much as I love food and cooking, it would probably be assumed that I eat leisurely, but I know that I often don't.  My wife often suggests that I slow down, and she herself leisurely enjoys her food.  So bit by bit, I've been learning to do the same.  It's not that I just race through eating because I've got too many other things to do.  It's simply that the world always seems to move at such a quick pace that I think I get caught up in that practice, too.  I have time to eat leisurely, but I rarely avail myself of that time.  I enjoy my food, certainly, but as I learn to eat more leisurely, I'm sure I will enjoy it even more.

Those are my thoughts for this chilly Monday morning.  Time now for that chocolate and a warm scone.

Longer days

 

March is here and spring starts in a couple weeks and the days are getting longer and the nights are getting shorter.  

But there is still a bit of chill in the air sometimes and that means it's a perfect time for some hot soup.

This coming weekend's menu offering includes dark chocolate pudding and oatmeal spice cookies.  But the next weekend has the aforementioned hot soup, specifically onion cauliflower soup.  I know that to many this may not seem that exciting. But trust me.  This soup is quite delicious, very savory, and wonderful with a few herbs tossed on top or even a dollop of sour cream.  Accompanying this item on the menu are allspice muffins.  I have not tried these in combination, but I promised to make another round of allspice muffins so here they are and they are paired with this wonderful soup.

I'm getting ready to add a new dessert to the menu, a dark chocolate tart.  Hopefully that will get done this week.

As always, I have so many new things I want to add and they will all get added over time, so patience is called for.

That's all for now.  Enjoy the hints of spring that seem to be in the air every day now.  

A new beverage

 

Happy Saturday!  Today we have a new item on the menu.  This is a wonderfully refreshing vanilla orange-ade.

This is something I worked on for a quite a while to get just right.  Orange juice, simple syrup, milk, vanilla and a few other important ingredients all go into this.

The flavor has both the brightness of orange plus the warmth of vanilla, and both are easily sensed when drinking this.

It is nothing fancy.  Just a simple ade with a wonderful texture and a smooth feel.

I hope you'll give it a try when it appears on the menu soon.

Have a great day, everyone!

The coming weekend

Good morning!  This upcoming weekend we have allspice muffins and cream scones for offer.  And for the next weekend I've just now finished updating the menu to include oatmeal spice chocolate chip cookies and a dark chocolate pudding.  Both of these have quite intense flavors.  Give them a try!

This coming week, I'm hoping to make the time to add a few items to the menu, things which have been in my "to-do" pile for a couple weeks now.  And I have a stack of recipes I've been wanting to try for the first time or tweak for the final time.  Those that make the cut after tweaks, will be considered for inclusion on the menu.

Fortunately, I have some time free time coming up from my normal teaching routine, an entire week during which I hope to cook quite a few things.

That's all for today.  A short post, yes.  I'm off to the kitchen to work on a few things now.  Bon appetit!

Ice cream is on my mind

 

Happy Friday to all!

Here tonight we have a slight freezing drizzle.  As I sit here at the computer doing this post tonight, my wife is making ground beef with onions and peas.  She calls it beef keema matar.  Look it up and you'll see exactly what it is.  Tomorrow my brother and I will be eating it while playing baseball simulations.  We'll have some naan with it and follow it up with chocolate ice cream.

Ice cream has been on my mind.  As any of my readers know, ice cream holds a particularly strong spot in the heart of my appetite.  I've been thinking about making chocolate chocolate chip ice cream.  That's right -- chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips in it, slivers of chips really.  I've been wanting to add a very rich chocolate ice cream for a while and I was thinking that I should double down on the chocolate with the extra chips (slivers) as well.

There are other flavors I have wanted to add for a while, too, and I am going to make a concerted effort to do that as we approach summer.

One of my favorite things to eat as a quick sweet snack is ice cream sandwiches and so I have been tinkering with a good chocolate cake/cookie layer for this purpose.  I could fill it either with my French vanilla or this chocolate ice cream.

Whenever I eat ice cream sandwiches that I get from the store, I always let them sit out for a bit and soften up.  Does anyone else do that?  I always prefer that to hard sandwiches straight from the freezer.  Sometimes I will set one (or two or three) out on the counter and then I leave them longer than I planned to (alright, I forget about them and then suddenly remember 20 minutes later - LOL).  Then they are REALLY soft.  They ooze out everywhere when I bite into them.  They're still good.  But the best is when they are in between that freezer-hard quality and the oozing-melted quality.

I could probably opine on this topic for quite a while.  But I won't.  Instead I will close this post and spend some time updating my recipe database and thinking about making ice creams soon.

Enjoy your evening and stay warm.

Spring is coming

 

Spring is coming.  This week starts out with mild late winter weather which will make us feel like spring is already here.  Nothing is better on a warm early spring day than yummy breakfast foods so those will probably occupy spots in the weekend menu offerings in the upcoming weeks.

This coming weekend, gingerbread min-cakes and vanilla macarons are on the menu.  And for the following weekend, you can order allspice muffins and cream scones.

I spent this past week cooking many things, and among them was a wonderful chocolate mousse pie.  I have a little tweaking to do on it still, but you can rest assured it will be on the menu soon.

And this past weekend I revised the technique for a couple recipes that I use that had turned out not-as-expected that last time I made them.  This is always a good learning experience.  To paraphrase Thomas Edison, each such episode simply teaches me what NOT to do.  

In one case, it was a simple matter of whisking a muffin batter vigorously which should not have been whisked.  Something as seemingly innocuous as that can have a dramatic effect on a baked good, and that was certainly evident in this particular muffin which came out with a texture that was completely unwanted.  But ensuring that the batter is only mixed gently was the certain solution.

In another case, it was simply a matter of letting the batter sit longer before baking.  This was the case with my vanilla macarons.  The batter needs to sit for a while after piping it onto the baking sheet.   This ensures that the batter deflates as is needed so that cracks do not form on the shells as they bake.  And the prior time I had made these, I had rushed that waiting period.  It wasn't a good idea, and the results were clearly not-as-expected.  Since I expect to expand my macaron offerings, this learning episode was good to have.  

So I have revised my recipes for these two items to ensure that anyone that uses them now or in the future will have clear instructions on what to do and what not to do.  Each such tweak makes it easier for the next time I use that recipe.  And that kind of consistency is nice to rely on.

Enjoy the warm day, everyone!  And always, eat well.