Sometimes she cooks

More whole wheat bread. This time I upped the whole grain content by substituting whole wheat white for some of the white four. It isn’t nearly as pretty as the last batch, so I’m going back to white flour next time.

Corn bread. I adapted a corn muffin recipe from Jane Brody’s Good Food Book by baking the batter in a square pan rather than as muffins. Temperature was little too high because the crust was a little too crunchy, plus, still wet in the middle after 30 minutes. Next time, knock oven temperature down by 25 degrees, and increase baking time to 40 minutes.

By the way, this may be supremely boring to you, but it is helpful to me to write down all my test-kitchen adventures so I can remember what I did last time and see what works ad what didn’t.

Vegetarian chili: I adapted a recipe from one of Martin Katahn’s books. His recipe is fat free, but I don’t see how a tablespoon of olive oil in a giant vat of chili is going to hurt anyone. This is basically a tomato, bean, and spice stew. Sometimes I put TVP in, but there wasn’t any in the pantry. I used to buy TVP and a great many other things from the bulk bins at the Fresh Fields, but they’ve pretty much done away with them in this area in favor clamshell plastic packages of pre-measured amounts. In our two-person household, we don’t have much use for a pound of, say, kamut, although we might have occasionally bought a half-cup or so from the bulk foods bins. Bulk spices are also gone, so I’m stuck buying large bottles of stuff that goes stale instead of small amounts I can use fresh. Most of the more exotic ingredients are gone. I used to be able to choose from 20 or so varieties of dried beans, most of them organic. Now we’re down to about ten. The chain is using more and more if its square footage on prepared foods, at the expense of those who actually cook, not that I don’t zap stuff from time to time. It’s a real loss, as far as I’m concerned.