Month: April 2025

Who’d have thought I could make a delicious, Vlasik rival bread and butter pickle?

No one.

I didn’t think so either. Until today. I got the recipes from my buddy Max, who sent me B&B, and dill pickle recipes.

I had 2 cucumbers that needed to be used, so I made the B&B first. (We ate the second cuke raw.)

I want a pickle that is sweet, and slightly tart, and the B&B fits that requirement. As I was pouring the brine into the sterilized pint jar, my last physical jar until next week, I tasted the brine. Outstanding. Delicious.

I can’t wait to try these. If I like the results, Max is going to send me the different ingredient measurements for larger batches of the pickles. He even sent me the water bath canning instructions to preserve them.

Take a look at the first jars’ contents.

Here is the recipe for 1 whole cucumber in a pint sized jar. You can thank my pal Max. I’ll post both recipes, B&B, and Dill. Take your pick.

Here are my first 2 jars after water bath canning for 20 minutes, and ready to go on the shelf in the pantry. Each has approximately 1 good sized cucumber in it, with onion, and brine. I hope you give these pickles a try. They’re fast, easy, and great tasting.

Until next time, stay happy, and healthy in the Lord.

I found my 1 pound bread loaf baker, that I purchased about 10 years ago in my hometown, hidden away in the pantry.

Here are the 2 “special” bread baking bowls I bought, and plan to put to very good use in the coming months.

I’ve only used it once before because the bread was so dense that it wasn’t a very nice loaf. So, I’ve tried it again, to see if anything has changed.

Nothing has changed. The bread is still too dense for my liking, so I’ll probably end up making the loaf into croutons, or crumbs. Here it is. It smells like a lovely loaf of bread. Period.

Until next time, stay happy, and healthy in the Lord.

Post script: here it is, and yes, it is still to dense.

I found a nice looking recipe for a 1lb. bread loaf on the back of a bag of dry milk powder from King Arthur Flour, and am going to try that in the next little while.

As I have indicated, I am baking a few loaves of bread these days.

As it turns out, I needed another kilo of AP flour, was going to order more, but remembered that I had (3) 1kilo bags in the pantry. Happy days.

So, there I went, into the pantry, took down a bag, opened it in the kitchen, and there they were; those little tiny beetles I told you about. The top 1” of the bag was dark with them. Ugh! Tiny holes all over the outside of the bags. Ugh!

Do I even need to tell you that all 3 bags went into the organic bucket? I put the paper bags in there as well. Yuck. I think I’ll put out about a tablespoon of flour on the counter tonight, and see if I can entice any weevil family, and friends to a banquet, then eliminate them.

I have several kilos of bread flour in the pantry, but they are in clear sealed plastic bags, unaffected by the weevils. I have ordered more pint mason jars but here until next week. Until then, everything that’s in a paper bag will go into a glass jar.

Next week I’m going to sprout, dehydrate, and vacuum seal several kilos of my Einkorn berries that I bought a couple of years ago. They are very shelf stable, but more so after that whole process.

Until next time, stay happy, and healthy in the Lord.

Please continue to pray for my family members, and me. Thanks.

Who’d have thought it would be a dinner request?

Last week, Ivan asked me if I’d make a tuna casserole “like you used to make”. Not really sure when, exactly, I used to make the said tuna casserole as I have no memory of ever making it, so I asked my AI friend Max, if he could make up a recipe for me, enough to feed the 2 of us.

And, he did. However, I had a partial bag of penne pasta, 250g, and a 220g can of tuna, so I asked him to redo the proportions, and this is what he sent me.

It turned out quite deliciously as a matter of fact. Here’s the recipe, enough for at least 4 people. I made a few tweaks but if you use the recipes, you decide what you want to do.

The reheating instructions were for 2 smallish portions for the 2 of us, for a late lunch, not for the entire amount leftover.

It’s not much to look at but the flavor was excellent. The mushrooms made all of the difference, for us anyway. Give it a try, and let me know what you think. Next time, though, I’m going to put it in the oven. The topping would have been crisper.

Until next time, stay happy, and healthy in the Lord.

Please continue to pray for my family members, and me. Thanks.