#homeec — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #homeec, aggregated by home.social.
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RE: https://saturation.social/@debcha/116876004663657092
THE OG LOLs: the team of embroiderers, seamstress, weavers and knitters that worked with the Apollo teams and were called the Little Old Ladies (they weren’t, most were in their 30s) and were acronymed the LOLs.
those who’ve read my rants over the decades, know am a huge advocate of using HOME ECONOMICS, including CONSTRUCTION & CARPENTRY as the gateway to STEAM education and not the de-skilling shit that exists now.
🗣 BRING BACK THE LOLs!
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RE: https://friendhole.social/@beandreams/116870691137244274
This.
I'm an old, and I attended a #school for #blind and #lowVision students. One class we were required to take was #homeEc. My class was half boys and half girls.
Yes, we learned cooking and sewing, but we also learned how to iron and fold clothes, towels, and bedding, how to set the table (including for multiple courses), ettiquette (pullihg out a chair for someone, choosing from the menu when someone else is paying, etc.).
As a grown-ass adult, I can choose to do all the things however I want. Grouping my bedding into handy grab-and-go works for me.
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a baseline apple and a speciality cider
Seattle Cider dropped a cosmic-crisp single variety cider, so I had a sample this weekend at their booth at the Lake Forest Park Farmer’s Market.
My expectations were pretty low, honestly, because the cosmic crisp is what I think of as an adequate apple, but no better. It functions as an apple, it fulfills the role of apple, the texture is reliable and the flavour is acceptable, but there are many which are better at being what it tries to be. Fuji and honeycrisp both come immediately to mind as similar but better cultivars, but which are not as durable in shipping.
(This isn’t to condemn the cosmic crisp; the last apple to occupy its particular market slot was the loathsome red delicious, a mealy, tasteless apple-shaped object which fulfilled the function of looking like an apple, but not that of being an apple. The cosmic crisp is far superior, something I will eat intentionally and – in the case of a better example – actually enjoy.)
So after saying more or less all the above to the Seattle Cider rep, and adding that making a cider from it seemed fairly unlikely, I gave it a try.
It’s the pilsner of the apple cider world – but it’s a pretty decent pilsner.
I don’t mean to say that it tastes like a pilsner; it doesn’t. I don’t even like beer, and pilsners are not exceptions. But I know some of the roles of different beers, and this cider lands right in the same spot. It’s light, but in defiance of my expectations, it’s not empty. It has a presence. It’s the sort of cider you’d actively enjoy in the shade during a very hot day, probably after you’ve been doing something athletic.
In that way, it reminds me a bit of Growers, made up in BC, which lands in roughly the same weight location.
Like the cosmic crisp isn’t a great apple, this isn’t a great cider. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a pleasant or enjoyable cider. Kind of like – and yet moreso than – the cosmic crisp, I think it’s a cider that has an actual role, one other than doing a good job at surviving shipping.
It’s supposed to be hot this week. If not this week, we’re heading into August.
I bought a bottle. We’ll see.
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"New" kitchen curtain, made by my late mother, Barbie, over 45 years ago for the bathroom of my first home. #homeec #homeeconomics #sewing #homesewing #curtain #curtains #vintage #heirloom #kitchen #decor #kitchendecor #mother #mom
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the most fucked up thing you’ve ever seen SO FAR
Blue Cross/Blue Shield want to stop covering anesthesiology drugs beyond a fixed amount of time
during
surgeries?
So if a surgery goes longer than their time allotment, coverage stops on
anaesthesia?!
I mean
I mean
I mean
there’s also the whole “nothing says quality medicine like rushing a surgery team” but
HOLY SHIT YOU MONSTERS
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It may sound odd but
Today Anna and I upgraded all the servers in the servercore with MST3K in the background and had some pizza made by Paul and some pie made by a grocery store.
And it was a really nice day.
I am so pleased that (with the help of the Mastodon discord on that server) we got all the server OSes upgraded and back up and running and cleaned up some stuff while we were at it.
Just being able to… get some stuff done without it being a goddamn nightmare or a huge fight or anything. Just mostly sitting around and chatting some while upgrading stuff and getting things that broke working again without too much of a fuss.
could use days like this more often, not gonna lie
how was your day?
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oh yeah, november 16th went by
November 16th, 2023, was the day I started logging biking miles per hundred on Mastodon. I didn’t check the odometer on the date this year, but it would’ve been around 2940, which means totalling 1,440 miles (2,317 km) in the previous 12 months.
That works out to about 28 miles/45 km a week or 120 miles/193 km per month.
That’s more than Anna and I put on our car combined, which exists pretty much entirely for certain cargo-carrying purposes. Not too bad.
The weather’s pretty good today. Cold, but clear and dry. I should run by the hardware store, pick up some copper and steel wool.
If you don’t know this already, copper is incredibly good for scrubbing oven racks, because it’s softer than the rack metal but harder than food, so it really cuts through whatever might’ve got baked on without scarring the metal underneath.
It is absolutely the best way to clean an oven or toaster rack is what I’m saying. I suspect that’ll be an important tip for some of you today, or tomorrow, depending upon how prompt you are about scrubbing up. 😀
Anyway, like I said, it’s a nice day. Let’s go bike.
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started a #wikipedia article on the first chief of the US Bureau of Home Economics (1923-1943), chemist Louise Stanley (1883-1954): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Stanley_(home_economist) @wikiwomeninred @wikimediadc @usda @YaleUniversity #UMissouri #Nashville #UChicago #HomeEc #FoodScience #womeninstem #Smithsonian
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making the bagel dough balls for the second rise
Okay, so I didn’t describe making the bagel dough rounds so they’re smooth and easy to make into nice even bagels in my very detailed bagel recipe. In fact, I’ve basically never shown it before at all, and people want to know. So let’s do that.
This happens after the first rise, when the dough has been allowed to sit for an hour and have a nice long nap, growing rapidly under a towel. You’ll want to have already divided the dough into eight equal-weight lumps, as per the written recipe above, and then you’re ready to make those lumps nice and smooth.
First, grab one of your dough lumps, and find the smoothest part of it. Put that side down into your palm.
Put your thumb in the middle on the rough side, and pull all the edges around your thumb up. The smooth end will stretch, and get even smoother, when you do this. It’ll look kind of like an opening xenomorph egg but will not – I stress will NOT – eat your face, or implant any eggs in your body.
Then press all those high bits together and then down into the centre of the ball, pinching all the seams together. You’re closing the xenomorph egg back up, which is why it will not eat you. And also how it’ll get smooth all over.
You’ll want to repeat this a couple of times. Each time the smooth side will stretch more and get smoother, and the rough side will improve as well. Make sure that you’re pulling all the side bits together in the centre; don’t leave any sticking out, and pinch closed all the seams.
After a couple of goes at this, you’ll end up with a nice fairly-smooth rough side, and a very smooth smooth side. Here’s a good “rough” side; you can see that really, it’s fairly smooth, other than one tab towards the bottom that still needs to be pulled in:
Once you’re satisfied, you can smoosh the entire ball down a little on your kneading surface – whatever that happens to be – rough side down. Roll it a little, to help the dough bind to itself. Then put it on your parchment paper baking sheet, again with the rough side down to let it proof. As it rises for the second time, it’ll smooth the bottom out even more.
If it’s not perfectly smooth after all this, it’s still fine. When you go to boil, boil with the rough side up first, then flip over to boil with smooth side up. Then put it back on the baking tray, keeping the smooth side up for baking.
I know this sounds a little like keeping good side/bad side straight when sewing, but… it should make sense when you do it, and it’s easier than sewing, since there’s no “oops, I forgot this turns inside out” to get wrong.
After the proofing is done, then with a little bagel fingering to put in holes, we’re ready to go into the water!
To get the bagels into the water, use a hurricane or a well-perforated giant spoon or whatever you have. Believe me, this is way easier than doing it by hand, and also helps preserve the shape.
The bagel in the hurricane in this photo is rough-side up; the bagel still on the sheet is smooth-side up. You can still see a difference but it’s really negligible.
All of the bagels in the next photo are just into the water with rough sides up, set to boil for two minutes. As you can see, this side is still less smooth than the smooth sides! But these are well into “no one will notice or care” territory, and again: it’s fine. Boil them for two minutes, flip with the hurricane, boil for two minutes more.
(Or boil for less time for a less chewy bagel, just make sure the boiling time is the same on boths ides.)
Boiling is a good time to oil the empty side of your baking tray, so take care of that at the same time.
After the second boil, just lift out with your hurricane and place the bagels back on your now-oiled baking tray. They’ll shrink and wrinkle some before going into the oven, that’s fine; they’ll expand back out in the oven. This is, as per the recipe, when you do any toppings.
See? This bagel got wrinkly. I don’t know why. They all do it to some degree, but despite all having the same amount of dough (within one gram) they’ll shrink differently. But it doesn’t matter, they’ll come out fine:
Also, while this is a bit out of scope for this how-to on smoothing your bagels, you’ll want to apply the egg wash to as much of the bagel as possible. For me, that means making sure the sides and the walls of the hole are coated, down to the parchment paper. But don’t let egg pool up and form puddles – or if that happens, make sure you tear it off before serving or putting the bagels away. Again, they’ll be fine.
Like so! All baked, out of the oven, and onto cooling racks, expanded nicely back out with no wrinkles.
Here’s what a random bagel bottom looks like, this one still very hot ow ow ow ow ow ow ow
They’re a bit soft, still, at this point, so it really is best to let them cool at least a bit before eating.
Enjoy your #bagels !
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An updated recipe for delicious bagels
I like to post progress notes and photos to Mastodon while doing my Sunday baking. It mostly ends up being about bagels, but not always – sometimes I’ll make baguettes or sweetbreads or something else entirely.
But mostly, it’s all about the #bagels. I post about bagels so regularly that people have started using my bagel posts as a warning that Monsterdon – the weekly monster-movie watch with live commentary – is incoming.
(#monsterdon is in fact a monster, trending Federation-wide each Sunday evening, starting shortly after my baking posts wrap up. It’s great. Follow #MonsterdonAlert for news and voting on which films to watch.)
Anyway, in response to my latest baking thread, MHowell asked me if I’d blogged about baking bagels, particularly for people who bake only occasionally. And the answer was… sort of? So I threw them a short post that linked my recipe.
But since it’s been a while – and I’ve learned some things – here’s a new, more comprehensive version of the bagel recipe! This version adds more dough variations, includes a couple of important process discoveries, and explains a bunch of steps left unexplained in the original.
It is a bit wordier, I’m afraid, but it is very complete, which should make it good for beginners and occasional bakers.
Unfortunately, that also keeps it from fitting onto a single page, so it’s RTF only this time. If you want a single-page version like last time, you’ll have to put together your own. (ETA: And even so, I didn’t have room to describe how to make your bagels nice and smooth and regular. So have a second post just for that.)
Of course, the more you do this, the less you’ll need the recipe – I barely reference it these days, and then only for ingredient weights. But if that’s you, you probably don’t need a recipe! At least, not more than once.
Anyway. Enjoy DELICIOUS BAGELS! ^_^
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patreon doesn’t always tell you
Someone upped their Patreon donation this month by a dollar! The odd thing about that is that Patreon doesn’t tell you who does that when they do it, apparently – I got the notification but I have no way to see who did that. So thank you, whoever you are – I appreciate every little bit, because every little bit helps, particularly with Anna still out of work since her last contract.
(We’re mostly treading water on just my income? But really, we’re sinking a little every month. It’s slow, but, well, it’s real. If you like my writing, or my bike maps, or my whole “run a Mastodon instance” hobby and want to support it, thank you, and here’s the link.)
Talking of Anna, she’s looking for freelance jobs doing work like proofreading, web testing, and WordPress setup while still trying to get a new contract. It’s been hard with local tech in general and Microsoft in particular laying off people in the several thousands every month, so if you’ve got a project needing that kind of work, chat her up.
Anyway, thanks again to whoever upped their donation. It’s greatly appreciated. (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧ 💖
[link] #HomeEc #writing #awesomeBusinessCrap #boringBusinessCrap #HomeEc
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blinked out on me like a double-striped peppermint stick
Had a very surprising moment as I was going down the front stairs today to go out biking and two of the stairs disappeared out from underneath me, blinking out of existence like a double-striped peppermint stick
Of course they had not actually disappeared, it just turned out the fuckers who installed them used framing nails in an outdoor application and guess what they’ve been rotting out from the inside allllll along
(To be clear, the nails have been rotting out, the wood seems to be fine.)
Fortunately it was me and not any of the delivery people, my reflexes are pretty good and I just ended up sitting on the next surviving stair going “wha happen?!”
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don’t buy KIDDE anything
just had the joy of yet another false alarm on our interconnected KIDDE brand smoke detectors
a bit after midnight, it’s usually in the middle of the night, and since one goes off means they all go off you get to play the amazing FIND THE SCREAMING MONSTER CONTROLLING ALL THE OTHER SCREAMING MONSTERS game
this is number five to fail, three from one pack, two purchased replacements, one optical (which was the one to go up tonight), KIDDE refuses to honour the warranty on any of them so FUCK YOU KIDDE
since there’s literally fuck and all i can do about this other than scream FUCK YOU KIDDE i’m just gonna tell everybody DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM KIDDE EVER.
i really hoped going optical would help BUT NOPE
fucking shitheels
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experimental spinach feta baguette
We used to have a Great Harvest bakery in walking/biking distance of our house, and occasionally they’d make a spinach feta bread that I liked well enough – particularly toasted, which brought out the best parts of it.
For whatever reason, it stopped being a Great Harvest and started being an independent bakery, and we kept going to it, but then it closed for a while and now it’s reopening as mostly a cafe. So I thought I’d do some experimental baking and create a similar bread, probably in baguette form since I’m good at that and it’s a safe starting point.
I was pretty sure they were using dried spinach, so I bought some fresh from the closest grocery and dried it myself. I also skimmed a bunch of other recipes for spinach feta, most of which were extremely unlike the bread I wanted, but which at least gave me some ideas for baking.
And then this past Sunday I went ahead and tried what I’d come up with, and not gonna lie, I’m really, really happy with how it came out. It’s like what I remember, but honestly better. It’s about as good un-toasted as my memory of the toasted version, and toasting the slices makes it better still, turning the crust into its own entity in a really tasty way.
Here’s my attempt to throw what I did into recipe form. If anyone tries it, please let me know how it goes! And what I’m missing, because I’m probably missing something in these instructions, something I just kind of assume.
Spinach Feta Baguette recipe (version 1)
(makes one loaf; maybe doubled for two.)- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- Dried spinach flakes (one bundle fresh from grocery, dried at home, however much that is)
- 1T honey
- 1/2 cup warm water
- 2T olive oil
- 10g yeast
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp cumin
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
- 1/2 tsp dried onion flakes
- 1/4 cup feta cheese crumbles
Preheat water for 30 seconds in microwave. Add honey and yeast, then stir to combine. Let sit for 5-10 minutes, until you have a good bit of foam.
At the end of that time, add 1T olive oil and whisk. Mix the combined result into 1/2 cup flour, and set aside in a bowl to become spongy.
Separately, combine remaining flour (1.5 cups) with salt and spinach flakes in a bowl; mix together with a dry whisk.
Heat a small pan with 1T olive oil over medium low. Take 1/2 tsp cumin, 1/2 tsp garlic powder, and 1/2 tsp dried onion flakes, and toast on stovetop until well fragrant – about two minutes. Allow to cool slightly, then mix with 1/4 cup feta cheese crumbles and set aside for later.
Once the wet dough has become spongy, add it to the set-aside dries (remaining flour, salt, and dried spinach) and knead together for 10 minutes. Place into a bowl (oiled if necessary), cover with a damp towel, and leave to rise for 30 minutes.
Extract the dough from the bowl. Form a dish out of the dough and fill with the feta and toasted seasonings. Knead together until well mixed, roughly three minutes.
Once well mixed, form the combined dough into a rectangle and shape into a baguette using an envelope fold.
Place raw baguette onto your preferred baking tray and slice three slices into the top, each 10-15mm/roughly 1/2 inch deep.
Cover with parchment paper and allow to proof/rise for 30 more minutes. While bread is proofing, place a metal tray onto a rack at the very bottom of your oven, with another rack halfway or just below halfway in the oven. Preheat the oven to 425°F.
Once oven is ready and proofing is complete, place baking tray onto the top rack, throw a few cubes of ice onto the metal tray on the bottom rack, quickly remove the parchment cover, and immediately close the oven door.
Bake for 15 minutes.
Makes one baguette. Allowing to cool is good, but the bread may be eaten warm. It is particularly good sliced and toasted.
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started a #wikipedia article on Helen Kinne (1861-1917), home economist, textbook author, professor at #TeachersCollegeColumbiaU : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Kinne @wikiwomeninred #Connecticut #HomeEc
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bagels! out of the oven
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@lovelylovely
It's being stupid with leftovers.Bring back #HomeEc.
Bring back #ShopClass.
Teach our kids simple, 2023, survival skills #FFS.
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@spiegelmama Trivial!
STEP 1:
1 regular box graham crackers (roughly 4 cups once ground up)
3 tsp baking powdercrumb the graham crackers with a food processor or blender and mix together in a bowl
STEP 2:
2 eggs
1 regular (15oz) can of pumpkinblend in a second bowl
STEP 3:
Beat wet into dry, pour result into greased loaf pan (I used butter), bake 50-60 minutes in a preheated 350°F oven.50 minutes was correct for our oven.
Frost as you like, I used a cream cheese frosting.
Done!
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today’s baking is graham cracker pumpkin bread! smells amazing in the oven.
edit: wait this isn’t baguette I can open the door and take a good picture lol
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started a #wikipedia article on Maude Gilchrist (1861-1952), botanist, college dean, co-founder of Kappa Omicron Mu honor society: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maude_Gilchrist @wikiwomeninred #UNorthernIowa #MichiganState #KappaOmicronMu #HomeEc #WellesleyCollege
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started a #wikipedia article on Faith Lanman Gorrell (1881-1966), director of the School of Home Economics at Ohio State University from 1929 to 1947: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_Lanman_Gorrell @wikiwomeninred #OhioStateAlumni #HomeEc #Food #TeachersCollegeColumbiaU
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started a #wikipedia article on home economist, educator Edna Noble White (1879-1954), pres of the American Home Ec. Assn. 1918-1920: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edna_Noble_White @wikiwomeninred #OhioState #Michigan #WWI #preschool #earlychildhood #domesticscience #homeec #Detroit
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started a #wikipedia article on Wisconsin home economist, textbook author, Emma Conley (1869-1928): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Conley #UWMadison #UWOshkosh #UWStout #CornellUniversity #WWI #food #homeec
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started a #wikipedia article on #CornellUniversity design professor & artist, Dora Wetherbee Erway (1889-1976): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dora_Erway #dolls #Fitchburg #MassArt #Columbia #homeec
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started a #wikipedia article on #Cornell home ec professor, Beulah Blackmore (1886-1967), head of Fabrics & Clothing department: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beulah_Blackmore #homeec #textiles #millinery #LGBTQ
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Also found, didn’t know it was lost…
Mom found this on the way to getting her St Patrick's Day door decoration out. She figures it was something done for my home ec class which puts it into the - uh - old category. The cardboard used fo[…]
https://quiltr.com/?p=23396
