Adventures in Wine Opening

Before getting to the wine part, I need to share my excitement about buying a lamb roast.  While the cost was comparable to other decent cuts of meat at Costco, it was still a huge splurge for our grocery budget, but totally worth it in my mind.  I cut the thing in half to make two roasts.  Then each roast fed us several times,  so I really stretched out that lamb.  Sadly I took no pictures of the meals that followed.

The second half of the lamb roast does bring me to the wine adventure though.  I decided that the leftovers from the roast should be made into Shepherd's Pie.  The recipe calls for dry red wine.  I chose a bottle of Pinot Noir.  It had a cork.  I couldn't find my corkscrew.  Up until now, all wine bought to use at my house has had a screw top.  This was a problem.

I thought the problem would be solved by a quick stop at a cheap store. Turns out you shouldn't buy corkscrews at discount stores.  The one I bought was nothing like any corkscrew I've ever used before, but the directions looked easy enough.  I removed the packaging and the first thing that happened was the handle fell off.  No big deal, I could hold it in place to get the job done.

Then the glue holding the whole thing together gave out.  Ahh, now I know why this was marked down half price, in the discount store.  Now the screw is not attached to anything, and I'm holding some rather useless plastic.  Enter the Husband.

He managed to get the screw part into the cork.  Then put a bunch of effort into pulling it out.  But a screw without leverage won't budge.  I know: A hammer!!

 Trying to get the hammer lined up on the screw and bottle.

 I'm actually really nervous about wine going EVERYWHERE.

 Ta Da! Cork out of bottle.

Only one other time have I opened a bottle of wine without a proper cork removal device. It involved shoving the cork into the bottle with a wooden spoon.  It resulted in wine all over the kitchen, including the ceiling.

 Doug snapped a picture of his food.  He mixed the potatoes into the gravy.  To be fair, much of the gravy bubbled up over the potatoes while cooking.  I will be making this recipe again, and looking for a proper corkscrew in the meantime.

Onion Bacon Bread

So really, there was no bacon.  But I have a nearly full jar of bacon grease in the fridge just begging to being used.  And I figured, if the recipe called for butter or margarine, bacon fat would work just fine.  Turns out I was almost right.  The bread ball was a little on the dry side, and I ended up adding a bit more water to help pull it all together.  Here is what came out of the machine when it gave the "all done" beep:

This was actually the first loaf that didn't over rise.

Nice even texture on the inside, and the loaf didn't try to collapse from the sides when I cut it up.

Mmmm, bread.  Here is my recipe:

Onion bread:
1 cup water (plus a bit on the side to add in if necessary)
2 T bacon grease (room temperature)
1 T onion flakes
1 t sugar
1 T paprika (next time I will leave this out)
1 1/2 t salt
3 cups of all-purpose flour
2 1/4 t yeast

Throw it all in the bread machine, put on white, 1 1/2 lb loaf, medium crust, and let it go.  I checked after it had been running for 5 minutes to see if it needed more water or flour, and it needed about 1 t more water.  I think using dried onion flakes and the paprika made for a drier dough.  Next time I'll skip the paprika though, it didn't add a noticeable flavor.  Neither did the bacon grease, but it did smell nice.  Garlic powder on the other hand might be an improvement.

Stoneware and Coffee

Really, these two have little to do with each other.  Except for maybe they make me reminisce my kitchen in Colorado and the availability of dark coffee.

I was very excited about shipping my belongings from Seattle to Hawaii.  Even more so for the kitchen stuff.  In college when I'd get money for gifts or manage to save a bit, I splurged on kitchen things.  Some of my favorites were my stoneware pans.

Yesterday I found out that the two bigger pieces don't fit.  My oven is too small.  I wondered about the bar pan a few weeks ago when I got it unpacked.  Last night I thought oven fries would make an excellent side dish.  Good thing I checked on the size situation before I started cutting potatoes.  Sure, I have a regular cookie sheet, but oven fries are just better off of stone.  So is bread and pizza.

And since I'm already in the mood for pouting over my oven's inability to use my stoneware, may as well continue on with my desire for decent coffee.  When I first arrived in Hawaii, I thought the Kona coffee was pretty cool.  Something different, something neat.  Then the novelty wore off.  And I noticed that for the most part, "Kona" coffee is typically a blend, with only 10% of the beans actually being Kona.  And it is mass produced.  So who knows how long ago it was actually made and ground before it made it to the shelf.  That, and the fact that I can never get it to brew as dark as I would like, make me miss the coffee roasters in my college town.  Too bad neither of the companies I shopped the most ship.

Ice Cream Success!

Last night there was finally enough ice cream gone from the first two batches, so I got to make a couple more. Turns out that even though the freezer was below freezing in temperature, minus another 20 degrees makes a huge difference. This time I got ice cream, instead of milk shakes.  The first I made was peanut butter ice cream with chopped peanut butter cups mixed in.

Notice how it mounds on the spoon.  And it was only in the ice cream maker for 15 minutes.

In the bowl, straight from the ice cream maker.  A bit softer than regular ice cream, but more firmness than soft serve.  Which led me to wonder, what if I leave it in there longer next time?

The second batch was cheesecake ice cream.  The mixture going in tasted like cream cheese frosting.  The ice cream that came out was even better.  For this batch, I only let the machine run for 10 minutes before turning it off.  It was pretty firm, and it was starting to sound like the machine was working harder than it has before.  The mixture was pretty thick going in though, so I expected it to go faster than the milk based ice cream.

Last time I made ice cream, the freezer container was completely liquid by the time I turned off the machine.  This time, it was still mostly frozen.  In fact, when I went to wash out the second freezer container, the water froze to the inside.  I had to wait a little bit to make it easer to wash out.

For the cheesecake ice cream I followed what was in the book.  For the peanut butter though I experimented.  For one, I didn't have any heavy cream.  Second, I didn't have enough dairy milk either.  So I made some changes, using up the rest of the whole milk I had on hand, and finishing off the recipe with soymilk.  Soymilk is good; it doesn't give Doug a bellyache.  The sugar was too much, and I would have enjoyed more peanut butter.  Changes for next time.  And now that I know the basic proportions, I'll take more liberties with "following" recipes.

The First... Milkshake?!

I had everything washed and ready.  Freezer tubs had been in the freezer over night.  The ice cream and frozen yogurt bases had been sitting in the fridge for over an hour to make sure they were cold to start with.  I got everything set up, poured in the chocolate ice cream mix and waited.  My directions said it would take less than 20 minutes.  They also said to put in the mix-ins 5 minutes prior to the recipe being done.  So at 15 minutes I added the chocolate and mint chips.

And at 20 minutes, I had something the consistency of a milkshake.  It wasn't even firm enough to call it soft-serve ice cream.  Hoping I had just done something wrong with the recipe, I poured it into a freezer safe container, got everything clean and ready to go again, and then poured in the mango frozen yogurt mix.  20 minutes of swirling around in the ice cream maker resulted in another milkshake concoction.

Which got me to thinking.  When we bring ice cream straight home, and eat a little before it ends up in the freezer, it is always firmer brought home from the store than the next day out of our freezer.  In fact, ice cream that has been stored in our freezer here is always easy to serve.  It is never rock hard like ice cream from other freezers I have used.  And the directions for the ice cream maker said the freezer needed to be at least as cold as 0 degrees.  So off to the store for a freezer thermometer.

Back home with the thermometer in the freezer revealed that the freezer was NOT cold enough.  So I turned it down.  All the way down.  And now this morning it is about 0 degrees in there, and my homemade frozen treats are finally frozen rock hard.

We still enjoyed some homemade ice cream last night though, even if it was still a little soft (after nearly 6 hours in the freezer, but before I turned it down):

Chocolate ice cream with chocolate and mint chips mixed in.

It sure was tasty!

Ice Cream!

Well, none to eat yet.  But tomorrow starts the ice cream adventures, because I got an ice cream maker today!  For Christmas I received a rather nice gift card for Williams-Sonoma, and today I finally put it to use.

I actually decided on the purchase yesterday, but since we had arrived at the mall on the motorcycle, I couldn't make it mine.  Today I made Doug take me back, with gift card in hand.  First order of business once we got home: wash all the pieces and make room in the freezer.  Now both freezer bowls (that's right, it came with two) are in the freezer, and I am waiting rather impatiently for them to hurry up and freeze.