Month: May 2009

Potato Chip Review – Lay’s Wisconsin Cheddar

Posted on by AuSable

Two words sum up these chip: not impressed. At first they smelled like Nacho Cheese Bugles, then I tried them and they were boring and nothing like Bugles. They basically taste like every other cheese flavored chip from Lay’s. I wouldn’t be surprised if those lazy bastards at Lay’s didn’t just repackage their cheddar & sour cream flavor with a new label, to get you to buy more of a flavor they already make. I know that I fell for the trick. So if I had two more hands, I’d give it four thumbs down.

Recipe for ciabatta bread or Ciabatta my mind

Posted on by AuSable

Anyone hungry for hockey pucks? Who knew it was so easy to screw up making ciabatta bread. On my first attempt to make ciabatta, it looked and had the texture of a very crude biscuit. While all the while in the end all I had to do was nothing. Yeah nothing! With nothing being, just let the dough rise until it becomes a monster. Then bake it all up, for it to become the softest bread that I’ve ever made. So at the time of writing this post I’ve already made ciabatta three times, and here is what I’ve learned so far. Continue reading →

Off for Memorial Day

Posted on by AuSable

I was out of town for all of Memorial Day and didn’t get back into town until 11pm on Monday night. So here are some snacks until the next post in a couple of days.

It ended up raining on and off from Sunday to Wednesday, so it looks like the rain killed off more of the seedlings that I left outside over the holiday weekend (basically all the ones I just started two weeks ago). The big ones (over 6″) seem to be ok, but the ones under 2″ were basically killed off by the heavy rain. If I were running a subsistence farm, my goose would be cooked right now.

I also did some grilling this holiday weekend. Saturday I made rubbed pork tenderloin on the grill with mashed potatoes & cauliflower. Then on Sunday it was beer brats and onions. Monday was rained out so no boating. Just an afternoon at the Indian casino/family fun center arcade (you’ve got to teach the kids to work those one arm bandits while they are young.)

I do have a couple of posts in the bullpen, one for salad with chicken (not chicken salad) and another post about my experiments with making ciabatta bread.

Moving the rhubarb – pre-memorial day 2009

Posted on by AuSable

So I finally moved the patch of rhubarb from the front yard to the back yard. But I did end up leaving a little chunk in the front yard, just for fun. If it survives, great…..if not, no big lose.

I even planted a couple of chunks in the hop garden, since I had a bare spot from where the Willamette died. I was going to cut off a centennial runner and move it to the bare spot, but I think that I’ll give it to a friend here is town. Since he has been wanting a chunk of the rhizome for a while. So it should all work out perfectly.

Ghetto plastic sheet greenhouse

Posted on by AuSable

Once again an idea born of necessity. I’m getting tired of moving plants back and forth from the saw horses to the house. So with some left over plastic sheeting, a piece of scrap wood, a couple of saw horses and 2 chunks of broken cement edging I now have my own ghetto green house.

Moving the plants was annoying. But the more important purpose was to protect the plants from rain storms & drowning in a downpour.

One of these days I’ll have a nice and big professional green house with all the bells & whistles. But for now this plastic sheet green house will have to do.

Potato Chip Review – Sabritas – Chile Piquín

Posted on by AuSable

This is one of the chips from the care package, and it had a pretty good flavor. When you smell the chips, they don’t have a very strong smell. But what they lack in smell, they make up for in taste. Overall you get a combo of three different flavors with these chips, the chile, some cumin and lime.

The chips have some heat from the chile, but they really don’t have a lingering heat. So once you’re done eating the chips, the heat of the chilies goes away fairly quickly. At first I thought they would going to taste like a hot paprika chip, but they didn’t at all. What was really different was not so much the lime, as the cumin. It was almost like eating a spicy taco on a potato chip, but different.

I had these chips with a sandwich made of freshly baked ciabatta, and it was a good combo. These are chips that I wouldn’t mind having again at a later date. Thumbs up!

Weekly Potato Chip Feature

Posted on by AuSable

If there is one food in this world that I love, it would be “salty snacks” with the subcategory of potato chips being the focus. I kind of lump a lot of items under the “potato chip” banner. Things like pringles, tortilla chips, puffed vegetable chips, cheetos, fritos, etc. Basically most of the snacks in the “chip aisle”, even though they may not be made of potatoes.

I usually have tortilla chips & bagel chips always on hand. But I love to try out new chips flavors from Lay’s or one of the remaining indepenant producers. I just got a care package of about half a dozen different bags of mexican flavored Lay’s that I am excited to try out and post a review. I was also just at the grocery store and got 3 different bags of the 2009 Taste of America Lay’s, so those should be pretty good.

With so many different chips on hand right now (about 10). I’ll have plenty of material to write about for weeks.

As would be expected, chip flavors come and go. Here are some MIA flavors that I can’t find anymore, but would love to have again:
Ruffles – KC Masterpiece (much better the hickory BBQ ruffles)
Backer’s – german style chips (these were really good chips and they had celery salt as one of the seasoning ingredients. I got them at the Dutchman’s store one time, and they never carried them again.)

So enjoy the reviews. First up, Sabritas Chile Piquín.

Hops – mid-May 2009

Posted on by AuSable

As predicted, the centennial is growing like crazy. In fact the centennial has sent out a running, so now I’ve got two centennial vines trying to grow. I’m tempted to cut the running and move it to another spot in the hop garden, but I haven’t decided.

The golding is finally starting to grow, though not as vigorously as the centennial. Right now the golding has one vine that is about mid-chest in height. I’ve got a feeling that most of the cone production this year will be from the centennial. But who knows.