So, it is Saturday morning and I haven’t written a thing for this week’s update. I usually collect notes in a draft throughout the week, but not this week. Thankfully Charlie’s naps have been longer and I should have time to knock something out.
Fingers crossed that this past week was the last 20F cold snap of the season. This week I did maintenance on the elevated beds—leveled them, added brackets to support the bottom, loosened the soil, and added compost, soil, and fertilizer. I think I’m going to sow radishes, dill, and peas this week.
Forsythias are starting to bloom! I’d love to take the guideboat out on the Hudson and try to catch some striped bass (they start to run when the forsythias bloom), but I don’t think that is going to happen this year. Maybe next year.
After a 5 year hiatus, I’m getting back into curing meat. I cured and smoked some pastrami and tasso ham this week. Both turned out pretty good! Next I’m planning on getting a pork belly and curing pancetta. I’m using the Ruhlman/Polcyn Charcuterie book for the base techniques, but usually modifying the spices.
Cooked some latkes this week with butternut squash instead of potatoes because a friend with Crohn’s disease came over for dinner. I used almond flour and egg as the binder, and shredded the butternut squash and the onion with the shedder attachment in the food processor. Instead of frying them on the stove, I baked them on sheet pans in the oven. They turned out better than expected!
We made more food for Charlie this week: Mango and strawberry puree to mix with his morning yogurt (the little guy almost refuses to drink milk in the mornings now, preferring yogurt for breakfast), and pear/spinach for lunch/dinner.
We’ve also been feeding him what we eat for dinner: Some chunky tomato sauce when we had spaghetti and meatballs, mashed up beans and polenta, and butternut squash latkes. We’ve also been taking some of the veggies we cook with and steaming them for him (asparagus, carrots, yellow squash.)
I heard about a new Sol LeWitt exhibition at Williams College in MA. It shows ~200 of his prints, which I’ve not seen many of. Most exhibitions focus on his sculptures or wall drawings. We are going to take a drive up there in a couple weeks!
I’m currently reading Neal Stephenson’s Termination Shock and listening to both The Valley of Horses by Jean M. Auel and Whole Earth, The Many Lives of Stewart Brand by John Markoff.
From around the web
An area of personal interest: How do we get more people blogging? Tom Critchlow offers some ideas:
The idea is to make a blogging accelerator. Only you don’t call it anything to do with blogging. Instead you just make it an interesting project that people engage in, with a by-product being writing up the project online.
The thesis is this: don’t tell people they should be blogging or explain to them why to blog but instead trick them into writing online and show them how the magic works. Get them to feel it for themselves.
What are your learning questions?
Similarly, a Learning Question is designed to encourage a full and meaningful enquiry. It’s more about provoking a process of learning than about finding an answer, but if you do seek an answer it must be one that incorporates your growing knowledge and personal perspective.
Rich Tabor published his Gutenberg blocks on GitHub. I’ve found them helpful as a learning tool, especially since he made a block that does the same thing that I made a block for: Modified dates on posts. Except that his works in FSE and mine does not. I’m rewriting mine soon using his approach to making the block dynamic as inspiration.
I’ve been impressed with Marcus Burnette‘s ability to spin up useful Chrome extensions for various online tasks. We are both moderators for the WordPress Photo directory, for which he’s already made a couple extensions to add some extra functionality and add favorites.
Speaking of Chrome extensions, I’ve been using Quotebacks to save and embed quotes from articles I read. Check them out above!
What can I build into a Chrome extension to make my life better?
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