a baseline apple and a speciality cider

Seattle Cider dropped a cosmic-crisp single variety cider, so I had a sample this weekend at their booth at the Lake Forest Park Farmer’s Market.

My expectations were pretty low, honestly, because the cosmic crisp is what I think of as an adequate apple, but no better. It functions as an apple, it fulfills the role of apple, the texture is reliable and the flavour is acceptable, but there are many which are better at being what it tries to be. Fuji and honeycrisp both come immediately to mind as similar but better cultivars, but which are not as durable in shipping.

(This isn’t to condemn the cosmic crisp; the last apple to occupy its particular market slot was the loathsome red delicious, a mealy, tasteless apple-shaped object which fulfilled the function of looking like an apple, but not that of being an apple. The cosmic crisp is far superior, something I will eat intentionally and – in the case of a better example – actually enjoy.)

So after saying more or less all the above to the Seattle Cider rep, and adding that making a cider from it seemed fairly unlikely, I gave it a try.

It’s the pilsner of the apple cider world – but it’s a pretty decent pilsner.

I don’t mean to say that it tastes like a pilsner; it doesn’t. I don’t even like beer, and pilsners are not exceptions. But I know some of the roles of different beers, and this cider lands right in the same spot. It’s light, but in defiance of my expectations, it’s not empty. It has a presence. It’s the sort of cider you’d actively enjoy in the shade during a very hot day, probably after you’ve been doing something athletic.

In that way, it reminds me a bit of Growers, made up in BC, which lands in roughly the same weight location.

Like the cosmic crisp isn’t a great apple, this isn’t a great cider. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a pleasant or enjoyable cider. Kind of like – and yet moreso than – the cosmic crisp, I think it’s a cider that has an actual role, one other than doing a good job at surviving shipping.

It’s supposed to be hot this week. If not this week, we’re heading into August.

I bought a bottle. We’ll see.

#cookingAndFood #HomeEc

Cakebread Cellars Debuts “Vine & Dine” Virtual Cooking Series with Home Ec, Bringing Napa’s Culinary Spirit to Kitchens Nationwide

From California to Your Kitchen: Live Classes With Long-Time Winery Chef Brian Streeter Blend…
#dining #cooking #diet #food #Cooking #CakebreadCellars #california #HomeEc #KobrandCorporation #Vine&Dine
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the most fucked up thing you’ve ever seen SO FAR

Blue Cross/Blue Shield want to stop covering anesthesiology drugs beyond a fixed amount of time

during

surgeries?

So if a surgery goes longer than their time allotment, coverage stops on

anaesthesia?!

I mean

I mean

I mean

there’s also the whole “nothing says quality medicine like rushing a surgery team” but

HOLY SHIT YOU MONSTERS

#HomeEc #lolscience #medicine #science

It may sound odd but

Today Anna and I upgraded all the servers in the servercore with MST3K in the background and had some pizza made by Paul and some pie made by a grocery store.

And it was a really nice day.

I am so pleased that (with the help of the Mastodon discord on that server) we got all the server OSes upgraded and back up and running and cleaned up some stuff while we were at it.

Just being able to… get some stuff done without it being a goddamn nightmare or a huge fight or anything. Just mostly sitting around and chatting some while upgrading stuff and getting things that broke working again without too much of a fuss.

could use days like this more often, not gonna lie

how was your day?

#HomeEc #murknet #sys

oh yeah, november 16th went by

November 16th, 2023, was the day I started logging biking miles per hundred on Mastodon. I didn’t check the odometer on the date this year, but it would’ve been around 2940, which means totalling 1,440 miles (2,317 km) in the previous 12 months.

That works out to about 28 miles/45 km a week or 120 miles/193 km per month.

That’s more than Anna and I put on our car combined, which exists pretty much entirely for certain cargo-carrying purposes. Not too bad.

The weather’s pretty good today. Cold, but clear and dry. I should run by the hardware store, pick up some copper and steel wool.

If you don’t know this already, copper is incredibly good for scrubbing oven racks, because it’s softer than the rack metal but harder than food, so it really cuts through whatever might’ve got baked on without scarring the metal underneath.

It is absolutely the best way to clean an oven or toaster rack is what I’m saying. I suspect that’ll be an important tip for some of you today, or tomorrow, depending upon how prompt you are about scrubbing up. 😀

Anyway, like I said, it’s a nice day. Let’s go bike.

#BikeTooter #biking #HomeEc

making the bagel dough balls for the second rise

Okay, so I didn’t describe making the bagel dough rounds so they’re smooth and easy to make into nice even bagels in my very detailed bagel recipe. In fact, I’ve basically never shown it before at all, and people want to know. So let’s do that.

This happens after the first rise, when the dough has been allowed to sit for an hour and have a nice long nap, growing rapidly under a towel. You’ll want to have already divided the dough into eight equal-weight lumps, as per the written recipe above, and then you’re ready to make those lumps nice and smooth.

First, grab one of your dough lumps, and find the smoothest part of it. Put that side down into your palm.

Put your thumb in the middle on the rough side, and pull all the edges around your thumb up. The smooth end will stretch, and get even smoother, when you do this. It’ll look kind of like an opening xenomorph egg but will not – I stress will NOT – eat your face, or implant any eggs in your body.

Then press all those high bits together and then down into the centre of the ball, pinching all the seams together. You’re closing the xenomorph egg back up, which is why it will not eat you. And also how it’ll get smooth all over.

You’ll want to repeat this a couple of times. Each time the smooth side will stretch more and get smoother, and the rough side will improve as well. Make sure that you’re pulling all the side bits together in the centre; don’t leave any sticking out, and pinch closed all the seams.

After a couple of goes at this, you’ll end up with a nice fairly-smooth rough side, and a very smooth smooth side. Here’s a good “rough” side; you can see that really, it’s fairly smooth, other than one tab towards the bottom that still needs to be pulled in:

Once you’re satisfied, you can smoosh the entire ball down a little on your kneading surface – whatever that happens to be – rough side down. Roll it a little, to help the dough bind to itself. Then put it on your parchment paper baking sheet, again with the rough side down to let it proof. As it rises for the second time, it’ll smooth the bottom out even more.

If it’s not perfectly smooth after all this, it’s still fine. When you go to boil, boil with the rough side up first, then flip over to boil with smooth side up. Then put it back on the baking tray, keeping the smooth side up for baking.

I know this sounds a little like keeping good side/bad side straight when sewing, but… it should make sense when you do it, and it’s easier than sewing, since there’s no “oops, I forgot this turns inside out” to get wrong.

After the proofing is done, then with a little bagel fingering to put in holes, we’re ready to go into the water!

To get the bagels into the water, use a hurricane or a well-perforated giant spoon or whatever you have. Believe me, this is way easier than doing it by hand, and also helps preserve the shape.

The bagel in the hurricane in this photo is rough-side up; the bagel still on the sheet is smooth-side up. You can still see a difference but it’s really negligible.

All of the bagels in the next photo are just into the water with rough sides up, set to boil for two minutes. As you can see, this side is still less smooth than the smooth sides! But these are well into “no one will notice or care” territory, and again: it’s fine. Boil them for two minutes, flip with the hurricane, boil for two minutes more.

(Or boil for less time for a less chewy bagel, just make sure the boiling time is the same on boths ides.)

Boiling is a good time to oil the empty side of your baking tray, so take care of that at the same time.

After the second boil, just lift out with your hurricane and place the bagels back on your now-oiled baking tray. They’ll shrink and wrinkle some before going into the oven, that’s fine; they’ll expand back out in the oven. This is, as per the recipe, when you do any toppings.

See? This bagel got wrinkly. I don’t know why. They all do it to some degree, but despite all having the same amount of dough (within one gram) they’ll shrink differently. But it doesn’t matter, they’ll come out fine:

Also, while this is a bit out of scope for this how-to on smoothing your bagels, you’ll want to apply the egg wash to as much of the bagel as possible. For me, that means making sure the sides and the walls of the hole are coated, down to the parchment paper. But don’t let egg pool up and form puddles – or if that happens, make sure you tear it off before serving or putting the bagels away. Again, they’ll be fine.

Like so! All baked, out of the oven, and onto cooling racks, expanded nicely back out with no wrinkles.

Here’s what a random bagel bottom looks like, this one still very hot ow ow ow ow ow ow ow

They’re a bit soft, still, at this point, so it really is best to let them cool at least a bit before eating.

Enjoy your #bagels !

#bagels #baking #HomeEc