What I learned today

[Jenise]

Hey, yesterday I bought and used a pasta product--wide flat noodles of varied short lengths--two to five inches, say, called Mrs. Miller's Homemade. They're from Ohio and come in a clear, stand-up kind of bag. Each noodle, when cooked, is about 3/4" wide and thicker than conventional Italian pastas. These are the best soup noodles I've ever bought, bar none. Even after the soup has cooled down, they remain whole and toothsome. I'll never want anything else in my chicken soup.

Hey, yesterday I bought and used a pasta product--wide flat noodles of varied short lengths--two to five inches, say, called Mrs. Miller's Homemade. They're from Ohio and come in a clear, stand-up kind of bag. Each noodle, when cooked, is about 3/4" wide and thicker than conventional Italian pastas. These are the best soup noodles I've ever bought, bar none. Even after the soup has cooled down, they remain whole and toothsome. I'll never want anything else in my chicken soup.

https://mmhn.com/

Is this the company?

I've never seen the product but they are carried by some stores local to me.

[Jenise]

Dan, great detective work! Those are the ones. Our store offered two types, and I bought the wide:

https://mmhn.com/product/old-fashioned- ... odles-6pk/

What a sweet website Mrs Millers Homemade has. I love those meatloaf cupcakes with the mashed potatoes on top. My kids would love those, even now. Looking forward to exploring even more. After looking a bit more, I found that the noodles are sold in packages of 6 Way too much for me...already have an overloaded pasta supply. Will research if they are sold here in my area.

[Jenise]

What a sweet website Mrs Millers Homemade has. I love those meatloaf cupcakes with the mashed potatoes on top. My kids would love those, even now. Looking forward to exploring even more. After looking a bit more, I found that the noodles are sold in packages of 6 Way too much for me...already have an overloaded pasta supply. Will research if they are sold here in my area.

Well, packages of six from the website, but sold individually in stores. I found mine at Winco.

Dan, great detective work! Those are the ones. Our store offered two types, and I bought the wide:

https://mmhn.com/product/old-fashioned- ... odles-6pk/

On a related note, I found a package of Rana Pappardelle (https://www.giovanniranausa.com/product ... delle.html) in the freezer so I took it out to cook for dinner. I guess fresh pasta like that doesn't like to be frozen because I wound up with a pot full of random length pieces.

My weekend dinner was a bust! I found out I hate roasted mushrooms, nothing wrong with the flavor but I prefer a thinner cut and the sauteed texture, look and taste. Also, I wanted golden sweet potatoes, not white. I do not care for the white unless they are the Japanese sweet potatoes, which these were not. Market had the purple skin with a yellow interior labeled as yams. I should have taken them, they are not yams, but this store seems to make mistakes in the produce area. My chicken came out great, moist, and full of flavor. I am tossing out all the other stuff this afternoon when I get back home and going to a butternut squash roasted with butter, maple syrup, and cinnamon. Then making tomato and bread salad which is always a winner.

Ouch. I'm still buying and roasting delicata squash here. (The markets and groceries are filled with squashes at the moment, every size and shape of them!)

My weekend dinner was a bust! I found out I hate roasted mushrooms, nothing wrong with the flavor but I prefer a thinner cut and the sauteed texture, look and taste.

What kind of mushrooms?

I usually roast oyster mushrooms, they are thin, so they roast nice and crispy, like salty umami chips.

[Jenise]

Love that on oyster mushrooms, too, Rahsaan; in fact I think it's the best version of them.

Prices on local chanterelles came down yesterday to $19, so I feel a risotto coming on. Maybe with butternut squash.

So apparently (based on web searches) this is widely known, but I never knew that sweet potatoes should be cured. We're in a CSA and our farmer said they are starchy when first dug, to give them six weeks. We stored in basement. So last night was 6 weeks for first batch, we roasted 5 smaller potatoes (Covingtons). Wow, incredibly sweet (but with tasty other flavors). We also have some Murasaki sweet potatoes with another 2 weeks to go. So my question- are supermarket sweet potatoes cured? How would you know? If I'm in supermarket I have no idea if produce was picked this week or in Sept. Anyone know about this?

My weekend dinner was a bust! I found out I hate roasted mushrooms, nothing wrong with the flavor but I prefer a thinner cut and the sauteed texture, look and taste.

What kind of mushrooms?

I usually roast oyster mushrooms, they are thin, so they roast nice and crispy, like salty umami chips.

Yes, the recipe suggested oyster mushrooms, but I tweaked it and went with large white mushrooms, my bad.

I never heard of this, either. Reading around, it appears that cured sweet potatoes become quite firm. Also, as the commercial process is a real nuisance to do at home (2 weeks at moderate temp and 90% humidity), I'm going to guess the growers take care of it.

So apparently (based on web searches) this is widely known, but I never knew that sweet potatoes should be cured...

And you call yourself a North Carolinian!! I actually didn't learn about it until a few years into my time there, when one of the farmers at the market mentioned that they were selling an early batch that hadn't been cured.

So my question- are supermarket sweet potatoes cured? How would you know? If I'm in supermarket I have no idea if produce was picked this week or in Sept. Anyone know about this?

Yet another reason not to buy produce at the supermarket!

But of course I know not everyone has endless farmers market options... So, my guess would be that the supermarket sweet potatoes are the equivalent of cured, in the sense that they are ready to eat. Depending on the store, I would imagine that there is more or less attention to 'quality'. But, all the supermarket food comes from a long supply chain and is a very different (less nuanced/less alive) product than the markets. I'm not sure what their processes are, but I think they are designed to eat right away!

Yes, the recipe suggested oyster mushrooms, but I tweaked it and went with large white mushrooms, my bad.

Yes, that's a whole different thing. If you kept them whole, I guess it was like intense softer mushrooms, which you sometimes see. But, not as much of a radical transformation as the roasted mushroom chip direction. You might be able to approximate that with slicing white mushrooms, but I suspect they are too fibrous and won't roast up crisp as oysters.

I do like roasted chanterelles, because I like everything chanterelle. But they don't get crisp the same way as oysters, and are probably closer to roasted white mushrooms, although more flavorful and delicious!

As I was preparing to toss out all the mushrooms and sweet potatoes yesterday, I gave your suggestions more thought and decided to try one more thing. I don't particularly appreciate wasting food, so I put them all into a foil-lined pie plate, in a single layer, and into the 425° oven for about 30 minutes. It was much better this time, the mushrooms had charred a bit more and had more flavor as did the sweet potatoes. Still, I will not be doing that again.

[Jenise]

So what would be the difference between a cured sweet potato and an uncured one? Different flavor, different texture? Something systemically harmful? How would you suspect that a sweet potato you bought hadn't been cured properly?

Various sources:
-- Alabama A&M https://www.aces.edu/blog/topics/lawn-g ... -potatoes/
-- Cornell U https://rvpadmin.cce.cornell.edu/uploads/doc_826.pdf
-- Micro-Farmer https://www.tenthacrefarm.com/harvestin ... -potatoes/

The main benefits of curing are that the skin toughens up a bit (apparently, it tears easily when freshly dug) and it starts the conversion of starches to sugars (apparently, sweet potatoes are not all that sweet when freshly dug).

There are other benefits mentioned by some growers, e.g., they keep better (less-susceptible to fungus), they keep longer (up to 7 months), and they have fewer defects when cooked (no hard core, fewer strings).

My farmer was emphasizing the starch to sugar change (opposite of corn!)

[Jenise]

On Tuesday I had dental surgery--pretty invasive, my nose is still numb!. The affected area is upper right-front, exactly where I bite down on anything I put in my mouth, so I haven't been able to eat normally. Even salad hurts.

So last night, in search of soft food, I took a chunk of boneless pork loin out of the freezer, sliced it and added it to a tomato-onion broth with some well-rinsed Carolina Gold rice a friend brought me a few months back. I'd kept it refrigerated this whole time as per the directions. It took FOREVER to cook, even after 45 minutes it was still underdone and I added extra boiling water to it over and over. I wasn't measuring but that would have added up to close to 4 cups liquid for 1.5 c rice and in the end I didn't care for the texture.

After dinner, I decided that I'd learned that I don't like Carolina Gold rice, and I tossed the rest of the bag.

So last night, in search of soft food, I took a chunk of boneless pork loin out of the freezer, sliced it and added it to a tomato-onion broth with some well-rinsed Carolina Gold rice a friend brought me a few months back. I'd kept it refrigerated this whole time as per the directions. It took FOREVER to cook, even after 45 minutes it was still underdone and I added extra boiling water to it over and over. I wasn't measuring but that would have added up to close to 4 cups liquid for 1.5 c rice and in the end I didn't care for the texture.

After dinner, I decided that I'd learned that I don't like Carolina Gold rice, and I tossed the rest of the bag.

I'm surprised. I've been using the Carolina Gold rice for a number of years. I generally keep a couple of pounds in the freezer but I've usually got some in the pantry that sits for ages (more than a few months). It always cooks up much quicker than I expect. I made some chicken and rice soup the other night and it was done in about 1/2 hour (rotisserie chicken, veggies, and rice).

What was the brand of rice?

ETA: This is the brand I use: https://www.carolinaplantationrice.com/

Jurassic Petrified, a local but very old brand.

[Jenise]

Hilarious, Jeff.

Dan, dunno. I've already tossed it and didn't have any prior familiarity. As a standard, I use several different rices: paella rice, jasmine, brown jasmine, basmati and a Japanese short grain are my favorites. I adore rice and make it often; never had rice that cooked like this Carolina rice before though I did have/use a Carolina rice once long ago that I loved. No idea why this was a problem.

[Jenise]

Today I learned that avocados are high in fiber. Just to look at them, and knowing that they're fairly unique in the fruit world for owning a lot of fat, who'd guess? Good news to someone who eats a lot of them, like I do. In fact I buy a 5 lb bag of small ones at the Chef store every couple of weeks. It's a frequent breakfast item for me. I put them in salads too but as someone who isn't interested in most breakfast food and generally only eats in the morning to get rid of hunger and move on, one small avocado is a perfect meal.

So it was strange to see them on a relatively short list (20 items, I believe) along with usual fibrous suspects like apples, kale and collard greens a few days ago. I thought it was likely an error, or at the very least stretching the truth in order to name something more attractive to most people than, say, kale. After all, who doesn't like guacamole? Don't remember where I saw that list so I went hunting just now for corroboration, and found it immediately on the Metamucil website. Moreover, by their calculations avocados are very high in fiber. Only three medium sized ones, they claim, will meet one's daily requirement* whereas it takes a daunting 15 cups of broccoli to do the same! Most people don't even eat a total of 15 cups of food in a day combined.

*Per Metamucil, around 30 grams per day. Another site says 25 for females and 35 for males, so an average of 30 makes sense.

Not that I'm worried. I eat more produce than most people. But the avocado thing nagged at me so I needed to look it up.