Stress Baking

[tiger_spot]

I've been baking a lot, as a coping mechanism. Just now I have a batch of these peanut butter chocolate chip cookies in the oven. I got requests for the insanely chocolatey new cookies I baked recently, but those would use up almost all our cocoa powder and I wish to retain my strategic mug cake capabilities. Perhaps after our resupply run, if we decide to go to the big grocery store.

While I was clearing out space in the freezer I made this wonderful gluten free persimmon bread, which vastly exceeded my expectations. I need to figure out what bizarre factor to multiply the recipe by to use exactly at much persimmon pulp as we have left, and what to bake that amount in -- maybe do it as muffins -- if I want to free up any more space for frozen soups, which I have also been making a lot of.

In other news, we cooked from dry beans (rather than canned) for the first time last night. It went... okay. They boiled dry at one point but were rescued quickly. I'm glad I started them very early because they took ages to cook. Dry beans: good emergency food, not the way I am going to switch to doing beans generally.

Comments

[pameladean]

I did a stint of using dry beans and then went back to canned ones, partly because it often wasn't even that much cheaper, if at all.

But I've got a bag of black beans, two bags of black-eyed peas, and I think one of navy beans awaiting me. I do like not having to rinse out the cans and put them in the recycling, I have to admit.

I wanted to mention that I have been puzzling over a remark of Tori's you challenged me to decipher, but I have had to give up. It's too much for me.

P.

[tiger_spot]

The key to interpreting the Tori remark is that she has yet to figure out how to pronounce S -- so when she insistently demanded that I "spell cool butt" spelling "cool butt" was entirely wrong and loudly decried. What was wanted was school bus. We were both very relieved when I figured it out. :)

[pameladean]

I am laughing so hard here. But yow, how frustrating all around. I well recall being a little kid and knowing exactly what I wanted to say and just not getting it across. SO MADDENING. And I've sure been on the other side too.

So if she loudly decried the wrong spelling, she must have a good idea of what the right one is, but just couldn't quite get all of it?

P.

[tiger_spot]

It went a bit like:
V: 'pell cool butt!
me: You want me to spell "cool butt"?
V: No! Cool butt!
me: ... Okay, I know it's not what you mean, but what I'm hearing is "cool butt".
V: NO! COOL BUTT!!

So I had figured it out by the time we got to the actual spelling.

[pameladean]

Right, of course.

Still laughing over here. P.

[snippy]

I've been cooking with dry beans for so long I don't even think of canned. New experiments all around!

[tiger_spot]

Any dry-bean expert tips?

[snippy]

After trying some different methods, I settled on "cover with 6 times as much water as beans, bring to a boil, cover & turn off heat, let sit for an hour" as my pre-cooking prep. You can then pour off whatever liquid you won't be using (I was assured by several articles that you don't lose a substantial amount of nutrients that way) and begin cooking proper. I love the flavor of calico beans but they're impossible to find locally except from people who grow their own; I settle for small white beans most of the time. Any cook or book will tell you not to add tomato or other acid ingredients until the beans are fully cooked to whatever tenderness you want. I really like a bit of nutmeg in beans, it seems to bring out the flavor better than bay leaves (which have to be fished out before serving).

Lentils don't need to be soaked, which is why my favorite lentil soup is what gets made most (lentils, water, bring to a boil, cook for 20 minutes covered on medium; add chopped onion, chopped kale, replace lid, cook for another 20 minutes; add garlic, broth mix-we use chicken bouillon paste-to taste, simmer for 5 minutes, serve).

[tiger_spot]

Ooh, lentils *and* kale -- that sounds like a winner!

Our last-minute run to the plant nursery got us lettuce and kale and cucumbers and tomatoes and basil and various seeds, and was very reassuring in a sort of atavistic way.

[cjsmith]

Ooooo stress baking!! Cheesecake yesterday, here, but I’m otherwise rather overstocked on desserty items. Am mulling over whether one can do lasagna or anything like it in an instant pot. (On the front porch, to keep food odors out of the house.)

[tiger_spot]

Ooh, cheesecake. Good choice!

I don't have a tested recipe for instant pot lasagna, but Google shows me several so it seems worth a shot! Let me know how it turns out.

[cjsmith]

Will do! It looks like it wants a pot-within-a-pot, so I may eventually have to obtain something like that, but there are some doing the springform pan, which I have (YAY!).

[mrissa]

We actually had the opposite experience: we liked the chili with dried black beans better than with canned and will probably make the switch most times. Not all times, because the way I did the black beans was with overnight soaking, and sometimes it's convenient (when there are cans of beans to be had) to be able to decide on chili at the last minute. But when I've thought of it in advance.

[tiger_spot]

With a different method of preparation we might like the dried beans better -- I think maybe they didn't have enough water for the soaking part. We do plan dinner in advance these days, so the overnight part shouldn't be a problem.