Round Two - Day Seven

Today I ate the spoils of yesterday's labors. For breakfast I had the yogurt I made. I mixed it with wheat germ and baked apple peels. (The peels from the apple pie - I covered them in cinnamon and sugar and baked them at 200º for about an hour. I think they would have benefited from cooking longer, but this was after the pie finished baking and I wanted to go to bed.) Anyway, they were tasty, but would be better a little crispier. The yogurt was really runny and thin. It was only slightly thicker than milk, even runnier than the last time I made it. I let it sit for 9 hours this time, rather than just the recommended 7 hours. I thought this was supposed to make it thicker, but that is not the case. Or I am doing something else wrong that I haven't figured out. I found a site that sells cultures so that you can make yogurt at room temperature. I think I'm going to try it. It says to culture your yogurt in glass, not metal, so maybe leaving it in the metal pan has been part of my problem...

For lunch I had some of the left over Tabouleh. About an hour later I had a cup of Bean Soup that I had been making. I used the recipe on the back of the Bob's Red Mill 13 Bean Combo. In place of the hamhock I used the Salted Pork I bought in a moment of weakness at Whole Foods a couple days ago. I think the main difference between the salted pork and bacon is that it hasn't been smoked... so it is one step closer to legal... Anyway, I sliced off three strips, fried them up and cut them into pieces and added them to the soup.

Also, I used fresh diced tomatoes, instead of canned. Unfortunately tomato season is nearly over, and these were some anemic, dry Roma tomatoes. I don't think they added as much flavor as canned tomatoes would have. And the last problem was the chili powder. We used the last of it last night in the chili. I added the last little bit of oregano I had left, and some cumin, but I don't have any powdered chilies laying around. So the sample cup of soup I had in the afternoon was pretty bland. I planned to have this for dinner so I let it simmer down for a few more hours, added some crushed red peppers, more salt and pepper, and I added the remainder of the salted pork - another four slices. By dinner time the soup was thicker and definitely tastier. In fact it was quite good with a hunk of wheat bread with butter. (The Organic Pastures Raw Butter is $9 for a pound, which is obscene, but this butter is SO GOOD! It reminds me of reading books set in the depression when kids rave about eating bread with butter as though it is a great luxury... it is.) We also had a salad of Romaine lettuce, tomatoes from the CSA (which did have a lot of flavor) avocado and red onion with the balsamic dressing DR made last week. And we finished off the bottle of Christopher Creek Zinfandel we opened last night. This is a wine we have had laying around for a long while.

For Dessert we had the Apple Pie I made last night. This was intended for my book club, but we ended up rescheduling for next week, so the book ladies loss was my husband's gain. As I mentioned, I struggled mightily with the crust for this pie. When I was complaining last night about the crust being impossible to work with as a result of the shortening, DR asked me why I used it. I replied that it was supposed to make for a flakier crust. "Flaky and Impossible to work with, like an actress." (DR is a theatre director) "Well the flaky ones have to be worth it or they wouldn't work."
He was right. Usually with an apple pie I eat around the crust, if it isn't covered in fruity goo I leave it on the plate. In this case I would have been happy with a plate of just crust. In fact I had to cover it up so that I wouldn't go in there and pick all the crust off the top of the pie. Even if it demands it's own dressing room, shows up late and never learns it's lines, I will cast the shortening crust again because when it counts she delivers.