MMM BAKING. Basic cooking questions.

[cjsmith]

I came home last night to discover that Rob, when tidying up to leave for the weekend, had tossed three perfectly good squishy brown bananas into the trash. Those are now in a big loaf of banana bread. (It turns out they weren't quite squishy enough yet, but they were fine after sufficient violence from me.)

Then I pulled out the Northern beans I was soaking for soup [original typo: soap] and tried to figure out what to do with them given that the local grocery store didn't have a ham bone. Seriously. They had ham hocks... SMOKED ones. Last time I substituted meat-that-had-had-something-done-to-it for meat in a recipe I was very sorry. So I turned that into a sort of Tuscan white bean and sausage soup. Do you have any idea how hard it is to concentrate on chopping up stuff for soup when the aroma of banana bread is taking over your brain?

Now I could start a yeast bread dough rising, and I should, soon, if I want fondue tonight, but I'm restin' my feet for a bit.

Time for a poll:

[Poll #1143214]

Comments

[just-cyd.livejournal.com]

you're supposed to pitch spices? whoops. i grew up using the exact same can of paprika ... it was so old, i suspect what was coming out was actually rust, not spice. Dad and Diane have spices that date to the beginning of their marriage ... to their original spouses!! (40ish yrs ago each)

i think it's high time i visited my little spice/bulk foods shop. :)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Never throw anything away! Just use more and more of it! :-)

(well, okay. Until your fondue turns out brown and crunchy from the nutmeg, or your rosemary bread turns out green and very crumbly!)

That's what I've been doing, anyway, and I suspect it'll be easier on me to get some fresh stuff.