The Cooking Thread
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@Gribnit said in The Cooking Thread:
Don't worry, it's normal. Even I do this.
I am now reconsidering some of my life choices and pondering whether I need to get another blood lead test.
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@homoBalkanus said in The Cooking Thread:
@Polygeekery I don't, but 2 shots per cartridge sounds low. Aren't these things supposed to make a wide spread?
Yes, and "2 shot" refers to the size of the shot. There are also (at least) two different shot sizing designations, regular shot and buckshot. We always hunted waterfowl with #8-#6 shot. But I was never much of a hunter and never used steel shot (which is less dense so for the same diameter shot would have less energy at distance than lead shot) so it may be entirely normal. It just seemed odd to me.
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@Polygeekery they're lucky they get to measure velocity at the muzzle. The buckshot series somehow lacks a 2, but that's the series I was thinking of.
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@Polygeekery ah, OK. I thought it was the number of shots inside
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I like to start my holidays with some spiked coffee. This year I spotted this at the store:
Wow! That's good stuff. However, we're going to some friends' house this year, so we're just bringing side dishes (he'll be deep frying the bird).
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@boomzilla a few years ago I woke up really late and very hungover on Thanksgiving day and missed my time to get the turkey in the oven by a couple of hours. I called an audible and spatchcocked the turkey to reduce the cooking time. Ever since then it has been tradition as it makes for a better bird. More evenly cooked and juicier, if non-traditional looking.
I'm not sure what that says about me when some of our traditions come about from me getting shitfaced the night before a holiday and almost ruining the dinner. I'm like an Army Ranger of alcoholism and cooking.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
I called an audible and spatchcocked the turkey
Places you can get arrested for that. But most places, the neighbors'll get you first. Sicko.
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@Gribnit how I stuff the turkey is my own business.
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The turkey turned out amazing. I also learned an important lesson. My ham recipe involves spritzing said ham with bourbon as it cooks. This has always been fine. We now have a gas oven and one session of heavy spritzing aggressively reminded me that alcohol is flammable.
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I'm exhausted, and I'm not even 1/4 done with dinner. Making, that is, not eating; that won't be for another 2–3 hours, most likely.
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@HardwareGeek 19:30 local, and everything is finally in the oven, except the apple pie, because it needs a higher temperature than anything else.
Bacon-wrapped turkey breast, same as last year, except that the "breast roast" I bought this year turned out to be multiple chunks of meat held together only by netting. This was discovered when the netting was removed to wrap it with the bacon. So, toothpicks not only holding the strips of bacon around the turkey, but also holding the turkey together. From previous experience, the bacon will be cooked but not crisp when the turkey is fully cooked, and about 10° before the turkey is done, I'm going to crank the temperature up and see if I can get the bacon a little crispier.
Stuffed acorn squash. Sausage-apple-cranberry stuffing. More stuffing than will fit in the squash, so the rest in a baking dish.
2 acorn squash, halved
1 lb. (454 g) reduced-fat pork sausage. — I didn't necessarily want reduced fat sausage, but it's what the supermarket substituted for the Italian sausage they were out of. It did have the advantage of hardly needing to be drained.
7 (?) slices of gluten-free bread, cut into cubes and dried on a baking sheet at 200°F (93°C) until crunchy.
1 cup (236 ml) vegetable broth
2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and diced
onion, minced — By this time, I was too tired to bother chopping fresh onion, so I dumped a bunch of dried minced onion.
garlic — Also tired; dumped in some garlic powder
saltI figured the sausage was probably salty enough it didn't need more. We'll see if I was right.
pepper \
oregano > unmeasured
thyme /
Dash of human blood — On the very last apple, the peeler decided it didn't like me any more.Gluten-free, no-added-sugar apple pie, from scratch. I didn't intend to make the crust from scratch, but the supermarket did not actually have the frozen gluten-free crusts in stock that their web site said they had when I ordered them. I was out of rice flour, so I had to grind some. Not a big deal. The recipe also called for tapioca flour. I tried to grind some ordinary granulated tapioca, such as you'd use for pudding, into flour. It immediately gummed up my flour mill, to the point the motor stalled. I tried pulverizing it in a food processor. It didn't gum up, but it didn't really do a good job of pulverizing it. But, "It's what I've got." No sooner did I add it to the dough, than I find a bag of tapioca flour in the cabinet. Also, my pastry blender broke while I was making the crust. Anyway, the pie will go into the oven when I turn up the temperature to finish the turkey and crisp the bacon.
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@HardwareGeek It all worked pretty well. The bacon got crispy; at least the topmost pieces did. A couple of loose ends got a little too crispy, but eh, it's bacon.
The squash needed more time at a lower temperature. I left it in the oven while I was crisping the bacon, and that wasn't a good idea. Some of the bread cubes got a bit too toasted. The squash was generally pretty well cooked, but there were a few areas that weren't quite tender.
I baked the pie for the minimum time specified by the recipe, and the crust was almost too browned. That's surprising, because in my experience gluten-free pastry tends not to brown as much as normal wheat-based baked goods. The texture was, well, mixed. Overall, it was very buttery, like shortbread, but also crunchy; I'm pretty sure that was from the granules of tapioca that didn't get ground into flour. Had I used proper tapioca flour, it would have been a resounding success; even so, it was still very good. The filling was a little different, but good. The recipe called for lemon zest, and with the lemon juice I used to keep the apples from browning, there was a noticeable lemon tang — not enough to overpower the apple flavor, but definitely there. Not what I'm accustomed to in an apple pie, but not bad.
The pie crust trimmings became a cinnamon rugelach — sort of. It was very crumbly, and I couldn't really roll it. It also got over-baked by the time the pie was done. It still tasted good, though. And it's entirely sugar-free (sweetened with stevia), so it doesn't violate at least that part of my diet. (Too much butter, though, but we won't tell my doctor about that.)
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@HardwareGeek said in The Cooking Thread:
gluten-free bread
Pro-tip: You can save money by substituting kitchen sponges for the gluten-free bread.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
My ham recipe involves spritzing said ham with bourbon as it cooks.
Let me guess:
Well, I'm finished with the spritzing. Now what do I do with the rest of the bottle? Ah well, since it's already open...
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@HardwareGeek said in The Cooking Thread:
The bacon got crispy; at least the topmost pieces did. A couple of loose ends got a little too crispy, but eh, it's bacon.
The bacon is there mainly to make the turkey inside it nice, stopping it from drying out and so on. If it has to get a bit over-crispy to do its main purpose, that's fine: it's sacrificial bacon.
(Too much butter, though, but we won't tell my doctor about that.)
I'm betting your doctor also had too much butter yesterday.
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@Zecc said in The Cooking Thread:
Well, I'm finished with the spritzing. Now what do I do with the rest of the bottle? Ah well, since it's already open...
I was going to say that I hoped he wasn't using anything better than Maker's Mark for the spritzing, but if he's going to pour some for himself afterward, that's fine.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
@HardwareGeek said in The Cooking Thread:
gluten-free bread
Pro-tip: You can save money by substituting kitchen sponges for the gluten-free bread.
There are some decent gluten-free breads out there. Not great, but edible. There are only one or two brands that qualify. They're hideously expensive (relative to ordinary bread). Slices are approximately the size of postage stamps. And they disintegrate under stress (like trying to eat a sandwich). But they taste good and have a texture that is somewhat bread-like.
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@dkf said in The Cooking Thread:
it's sacrificial bacon.
Even sacrificial bacon must be eaten, because it's bacon.
Sadly, bacon is one of the things I must generally avoid now, so the bacon-wrapped turkey is a rare treat.
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@HardwareGeek said in The Cooking Thread:
the bacon-wrapped turkey is a
rarewell done treat.FTFHopefully.
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@dkf Indeed. Rare in the "uncommon" sense, not the "cook beef this way, not poultry" sense.
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Status: Made some spicy apple chutney with some of the apples from our tree (picked a couple of months ago). Tastes pretty good now, but is supposed to mature for three months, by which time it should be really nice indeed.
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@HardwareGeek said in The Cooking Thread:
There are some decent gluten-free breads out there.
I know my mom sometimes has schär, but generally prefers baking her own. I'm just glad I can eat the regular stuff - I haven't tried gluten-free and don't intend to.
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@PleegWat said in The Cooking Thread:
I know my mom sometimes has schär
That's my second choice (and what I used yesterday). I prefer Canyon Bakehouse; IIRC, they're located somewhere in Colorado.
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@Zecc said in The Cooking Thread:
@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
My ham recipe involves spritzing said ham with bourbon as it cooks.
Let me guess:
Well, I'm finished with the spritzing. Now what do I do with the rest of the bottle? Ah well, since it's already open...
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This morning I walked into the kitchen. My wife is in there, and she was the one who put away food yesterday so I asked her where the ham was at. Since she was bent over in front of the fridge I smacked her on the ass. She starts glaring at me, which is not normally the case.
I thought about what went awry.
And thought some more.
"No no no, let me explain, asking where the ham is at and smacking you on the ass were entirely unrelated. Nothing was implied. Just coincidence."
"Mmmmhhhmmmmm. You better not be making that joke."
"For future reference, what about jokes about breast meat?"I didn't get an answer about that so I am going to assume they are okay.
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
I didn't get an answer about that so I am going to assume they are okay.
Keep us posted
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@Polygeekery said in The Cooking Thread:
This morning I walked into the kitchen. My wife is in there, and she was the one who put away food yesterday so I asked her where the ham was at. Since she was bent over in front of the fridge I smacked her on the ass. She starts glaring at me, which is not normally the case.
I thought about what went awry.
And thought some more.
"No no no, let me explain, asking where the ham is at and smacking you on the ass were entirely unrelated. Nothing was implied. Just coincidence."
"Mmmmhhhmmmmm. You better not be making that joke."
"For future reference, what about jokes about breast meat?"I didn't get an answer about that so I am going to assume they are okay.
You eat all the breast meat in your family, so you're the biggest boob?
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Almost ready for Christmas
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@homoBalkanus said in The Cooking Thread:
Almost ready for Christmas
Just need some insulin and you'll be good to go.
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@homoBalkanus final one before Christmas
From left: cocoa, hazelnut and walnut filing
Success graph:
From right: cocoa, hazelnut and walnut filing
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@homoBalkanus Success, or inverse success?
I assume the shorter, the more successful it was.
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@homoBalkanus said in The Cooking Thread:
cocoa, hazelnut and walnut filing
Where's poppy seed, the only correct one?
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@homoBalkanus said in The Cooking Thread:
From right: cocoa, hazelnut and walnut filing
Um, that's 3. And there's 4 in the picture! (YES! WTF rules with off-by-one!)
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@MrL said in The Cooking Thread:
@homoBalkanus said in The Cooking Thread:
cocoa, hazelnut and walnut filing
Where's poppy seed, the only correct one?
Nobody in the family likes poppy very much so we don't make it
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@dcon said in The Cooking Thread:
@homoBalkanus said in The Cooking Thread:
From right: cocoa, hazelnut and walnut filing
Um, that's 3. And there's 4 in the picture! (YES! WTF rules with off-by-one!)
That's the axis
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@boomzilla said in The Cooking Thread:
@Applied-Mediocrity said in The Cooking Thread:
Ah, a Christmas ham kind of guy?
If you buy a small pig and feed it well. You'll have a big ham next year.
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@homoBalkanus said in The Cooking Thread:
@MrL said in The Cooking Thread:
@homoBalkanus said in The Cooking Thread:
cocoa, hazelnut and walnut filing
Where's poppy seed, the only correct one?
Nobody in the family likes poppy very much so we don't make it
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@Zecc said in The Cooking Thread:
I assume the shorter, the more successful it was.
Something, something, your sexual partners are unfulfilled.
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@boomzilla related:
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I have come to the conclusion that a special holiday meal cannot be completed without a blood sacrifice. Thanksgiving day it was the ring finger of my right hand. Today it was my thumb. Barely more than a scratch, but it's still bleeding slightly.
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@ObjectMike said in The Cooking Thread:
Eew, they'd be room temperature.
He could've nuked the water bottle first...
Still, even tho I (very) occasionally eat those, I'd say that goes in the Nope thread, not the Cooking one!