Louisa 🍽 @Louisa@toomanycooks.social

I just have to post my favorite author's words about my favorite subject, all quotes by Terry Pratchett:

📖 Sham Harga had run a successful eatery for many years by always smiling, never extending credit, and realising that most of his customers want meals properly balanced between the four food groups: sugar, starch, grease, and burnt crunchy bits. —Men at Arms

📖 A good cook is always the first one into the kitchen every morning and the last one to go home at night. —Witches Abroad

📖 A woman always has half an onion left over, no matter what the size of the onion, the dish, or the woman.  —Monstrous Regiment

📖 I wouldnae argue wi’ a cheese. —Wintersmith

#introductions

It's Louisa! I've been around the fediverse for a couple of years now, if you know me you know I love to cook and eat and talk about food

My parents are English but I grew up in the northeastern US, so my strengths are in those regions' foods, but I love to experiment and try new things

Here's some things I've made

Well we had fun here, huh? Get ready for a million more food posts on @Louisa from me

It's done! I blended it up to a half smooth half chunky consistency I like, and it tastes very strongly of both raspberries and mustard

There's also a strong sharpness that is tolerable but not really to my taste, BUT I believe that will mellow over time, so I'm happy with it

It took FOREVER

This is one string but I also made another, and I kept a pound as loose sausage meat so I can make sausage rolls

I've tested the pig intestines for leaks by pouring water through them and snipping off the parts with holes, now they're soaking before I FINALLY make the sausages

Done and done, NOW it just has to chill overnight— I've mixed in the chicken stock, breadcrumbs, ginger, nutmeg, salt, pepper, and fresh sage

The coarse grind— it only took about 15 minutes but I did have to take the grinder apart and clean out the sinew that was clogging up the insides at the halfway point

Now I freeze it again and grind it fine, then I can season it

It's on

I gotta let this freeze a bit before grinding it

Setback: I thought the grinder attachment for the KitchenAid came with sausage tubes but it does not

Nevertheless, I will make the sausage mix and I ordered the tubes to arrive tomorrow

It's sausage making day

Ok, now I know some things for next time:

• I need to chill the dough because it's spreading too much

• I need to break the toffee bits up smaller so they don't puddle

• I need to add vanilla to the toffee as well as the dough, I thought in the dough would be enough but it's not

• I need to sprinkle them with sea salt before baking

It's a high stress situation to cook so many things at once that when a timer goes off you don't remember which thing it was timing

I'm going to make cookies with toffee bits, so today I made the toffee bits

I'm fermenting peppers again 🌶

My mustard seeds arrived, it's happening 🎉

I used @Pixley 's recipe https://toomanycooks.social/@Pixley/104252953414859849

The only change was homemade raspberry cordial (fresh raspberries, sugar, vinegar) that I made back in September in place of the wine/beer/water liquid

I'll see how it's doing in a couple of days

I can't decide if red wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar would be better in my raspberry mustard, I'll have to do a taste test when I make it

I got a tamagoyaki pan for my birthday from a friend, it just arrived

I didn't do a great job, but now I know I need more layers, just thinner

And probably less soy sauce because I don't have the light-colored kind and BOY does it make the eggs brown, it tastes great though!

Don't talk to me or my son ever again

Nooooooo they changed the America's Test Kitchen app

Mostly I just don't like having to get used to something being done a new way, they actually did fix how recipes (copied directly from the magazine) would say "see diagram" and there was no diagram in the app, but now there is, so that's good

But I look at My Favorites a lot and they added some extra steps to get to the favorites 😔