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  • Hudson Ice Floes

    After picking Charlie up from school yesterday, we went on a drive to photograph the ice floes on the Hudson River. One of my favorite things when we lived on the Yonkers Waterfront was seeing the ice floes in the middle of winter. We haven’t had much ice the last couple years, so I was glad to see some form during this cold snap.

    Looking across at West Point from Cold Spring.

    Storm King.

    This brought to mind the scene in Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale where Virginia Gamely skates down the frozen-over Hudson from Lake of the Coheeries to New York City with her infant on her back. She paused for a rest at the bend near Constitution Island, right behind me when I took this photo.

    I should reread Winter’s Tale next winter.

    Looking north to the Bear Mountain Bridge as the sun dips low in the sky.

    We enjoyed hearing the ice chunks smash together as they floated down the river.

    We couldn’t get the view we really wanted from up on Bear Mountain Bridge. We parked and tried to walk across, but the walkway on the north side still had a foot and a half of snow on it. Charlie suggested we could just walk on top of the snow, but that would have put dangerously high relative to the guard rails, which didn’t feel safe. We settled for this obstructed view instead, and vowed to return during the next cold snap.

    A view from the scenic turnout on the goat path coming down from Bear Mountain Bridge.

    We had a great view of Iona Island.

    The Peekskill waterfront from Charles Point. All of Peekskill Bay is solid ice. Only the navigation channel on the west side of the river by Jones point is open.

    Charlie brought his camera, too.

    He was mad I wouldn’t let him walk down the railroad tracks around the bend. It is an active freight route, and a mile-long train rolled through about 15 minutes later!

    It feels good to be taking photos again, and it was neat to see these parts of the river covered in ice. I’ll try to remember how cold we were today when I’m out there sweating in the guideboat this summer.

  • How NYC handles snow

    It is common knowledge that NYC puts blades on garbage trucks to plow snow:

    One thing I didn’t consider is that switching to electric garbage trucks impacted their effectiveness as snow plows.

    My friend Trevor, who designs and installs efficient energy systems in buildings in NYC, told me a few other things this weekend about how the city handles snow that I didn’t know.

    The Department of Sanitation melts snow using huge snow melting machines because there is nowhere else to put it. Trevor needed a 10ft high pile of snow moved this weekend in order to place a crane over structural supports in the subway system, so the sanitation department brought in loaders, scooped the snow into dump trucks, and hauled it a few blocks away to be melted in giant hot tubs. Here’s an article from the NYPost.

    The hot tubs – which can melt roughly 60 to 120 tons of snow per hour – are stationed at sites like Broad and Water streets in lower Manhattan, where football field-sized mountains of snow are dumped into the melting tubs at 38 degrees Fahrenheit.

    A video:

    Trevor also mentioned that the MTA uses old jet engines mounted to old work cars to blow snow out of yards and to help melt ice on the third rail. Untapped New York has a good article about it:

    How NYC Subway, LIRR, and Metro-North Responds to Snowstorms – Untapped New York
    Winter Storm Gail is starting today, dumping a foot or more of snowfall. Here’s how the NYC subway, Long Island Railroad and Metro-North prepare for storms.
    www.untappedcities.com

  • 2001 was a great year for albums

    I started noticing the last couple years that many albums I remember fondly were released in 2001, so I got curious: What other albums did I listen to at one time that came out in 2001?

    The list was longer than I thought! It might have been because these albums were popular during formative time for me, but I still listen to a lot of these today.

    In the order they came to mind:

    • The Strokes – Is This It
    • Sum 41 – All Killer, No Filler
    • System of a Down – Toxicity
    • Gorillaz – Gorillaz
    • Daft Punk – Discovery
    • Jimmy Eat World – Bleed American
    • Freezepop – Freezepop Forever
    • Converge – Jane Doe
    • Blink-182 – Take Off Your Pants and Jacket
    • Weezer – Green Album
    • Andrew W.K. – I Get Wet
    • The White Stripes – White Blood Cells
    • Staind – Break the Cycle
    • Britney Spears – Britney
    • Jay-Z – The Blueprint
    • Busta Rhymes – Genesis
    • Ludacris – Word of Mouf
    • Destiny’s Child – Survivor
    • Dave Matthews Band – Everyday
    • Jennifer Lopez – J.Lo
    • Green Day – International Superhits! (I know this is a compilation album, but I had the CD and it was the first Green Day album I had.)
    • Tomahawk – Tomahawk
    • Incubus – Morning View
    • No Doubt – Rock Steady
    • Alien Ant Farm – Anthology
    • Nickelback – Silver Side Up (Nickelback gets made fun of a lot now, but this album was huge.)
    • Puddle of Mudd – Come Clean
    • Saliva – Every Six Seconds
    • Static-X – Machine
    • P.O.D. – Satellite

    What is the stand-out year for albums that have stuck with you?

  • Month of January 2026

    January was a cold, snowy month. We had three snowstorms this month and average temperatures well below freezing, sometimes dipping into the negatives overnight. This is the coldest, snowiest January we’ve had since moving to Peekskill in 2019.

    Beginning of January:

    Winter gift for the birds

    Mid-January:

    Snowy Weekend

    End of January:

    Digging out from Fern

    We’ve spent a lot of evenings snuggled on the couch watching movies. Some of Charlie’s current favorites are the Despicable Me series, various Curious George movies, Brave, and Monsters, Inc.

    I blogged every day this month! I didn’t start the month planning to do so, but after I had blogged for 5 days straight, I wanted to keep it going. After about a week, it got easier and I noticed things throughout the day I could blog about. I had a week-long stretch where I had posts scheduled a day or two ahead of time, then the rest of the month I wrote and posted the same day.

    Will I keep this going? Maybe. We’ll see. Even if I don’t do every day in February, I expect it to be more frequent than autumn 2025. I’m getting back in the habit of just hitting publish.

    Let’s take a look at how I’m doing on the things I want to do this year.

    What’s going well:

    I’m keeping my camera out on my desk, batteries charged, and taking more photos again. It is nice.

    I’m cooking beans each week! Here’s the collection of posts: https://cagrimmett.com/tag/beans/

    I’m making little sketches for Charlie’s lunchbox, and I’ve been doodling with him at the table occasionally. Here’s a few:

    I started work on a dough bowl:

    I also started two small house projects: putting in a new utility sink (which required me to do some plumbing) and replacing florescent bulbs in the basement with warmer type-B LEDs that bypass the ballast to eliminate the hum. I’m counting these under the “learn more mechanical things” category, as I’m a plumbing novice and I had to do research to learn about why florescent bulbs hum, and why the LED type-A bulbs hum (they don’t, it is the ballast!).

    What I haven’t done:

    I haven’t been baking, doing math (though I bough a book on eBay that caught my eye), or stretching consistently. I have been reading some non-fiction and fiction, but I haven’t been reading that much overall this month, and because I’m jumping between books I haven’t actually finished one yet. I’ll remedy that soon.

    The baking will have to wait until it is a tad warmer out, as nothing is rising. We tried twice with mediocre results. I also need to replace the light in my oven, which might help something proof overnight. I think I’ll do go that after I hit publish here.

    I’ve already blogged about everything else I’ve been doing. Making hot sauce, going to a museum, taking photos in the snow, and tying flies.

    We’ve had a couple playdates with Charlie and his friends this month, one on a warmer day at the park and one the night before the big storm at someone’s house, but we had to cancel two because of snow and the general illnesses going around. Our whole house has colds right now, and so does half of our friend group. Winter is tough on socializing.

    Here’s to a slightly warmer, healthier February!

  • Breaking the ICE

    The ICE protests and strikes today inspired me to write out some of my thoughts on those frozen-hearted bastards.

    In the last decade, I’ve strayed away from politics, having burnt myself out pouring so much of my time and attention on it from ~2006-2014. Now, I’m more pragmatic and less idealistic now than 15 years ago, and lean more into the socially liberal side than the fiscally conservative side. Despite those shifts, my core beliefs haven’t changed. I’m still very anti-State (there is a difference between government, governance, and the State, the latter being a group with the control of force over a given land area) and anti-authoritarian.

    I’ve made a few comments on social feeds and asides in posts here, but I haven’t been clear about my position on ICE, so let me be clear:

    Fuck ICE.

    I searched through my old posts here, and my first reference to my unequivocal support of open borders was in 2009. My disdain for ICE follows directly from that belief, bolstered strongly by how those masked thugs are terrorizing communities, executing people in the streets, and abducting children.

    I think ICE’s actions are less about immigration and more about provoking people into reactions that can be spun in the media, with the goal of flipping states in the midterms. In the coming months, I suspect we’ll see more ICE executions in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Nevada, and Georgia. All swing states with major population centers. In Georgia we already saw more of the ballot office raids in Fulton County, GA, this week. Shocks to provoke a reaction.

    Going into Trump’s first term in 2017, I wasn’t worried. I was certain that checks and balances would prevent things from getting out of hand, and that elected officials would have a bit of backbone and provide accountability. I was wrong about that. We’ve seen remarkably little backbone from elected officials, no one willing to challenge the Trump administration in a principled way. What a disappointment.

    What do we do about it?

    I’m still of the mind that normal activism is strategically worthless, as are standard political routes. They make people feel good but accomplish little. But I don’t want that to let me fall into apathy. Grassroots orgs that help neighbors affected by ICE are great, and we support them, but they are bandaids that help fix harm but do little to prevent it. Still important to help neighbors who are hurting and need help. On-the-ground reporting of ICE sightings help communities mobilize, which is also important. But all of these things merely hack at the branches instead of striking at the root.

    What’s probably most effective? Only three options come to mind right now.

    1. Political insiders.
      • There are maybe 50 people in politics who have the leverage and skills to make a real change right now, so not a route open to most of the 340 million Americans.
    2. Physical sabotage, a la The Monkey Wrench Gang.
      • Effective, but extremely dangerous in this age of surveillance. We don’t live in Edward Abbey’s America anymore.
    3. Digital sabotage.
      • There are weak points in every digital system. The apps ICE uses to coordinate probably have vulnerabilities. All digital footprints can be tracked, so you can track the trackers. Data can be polluted. Surveillance can be thwarted.
      • Also effective, yet dangerous with behemoths like Palantir surveilling people’s every move. One needs to be a ghost to operate unlogged in the digital realm.

    The other thing that comes to mind is how much my personal risk tolerance has changed since getting married and starting a family. My first priority is being here for Amanda and Charlie, so I’m pretty unwilling to do things now that have a chance of landing me in prison. I cared less about that when I was 18-21.

    I refused to sign my draft cards for the first couple years, throwing them in the trash. That changed when I knew I wanted to marry Amanda and we wanted to start a family. Then I decided to sign my draft card and send it in so I didn’t limit future possibilities and background checks. My risk tolerance shifted that day, and has continued to shift ever since.

    Perhaps your risk tolerance is different at whatever stage of life you are in. Perhaps mine will change again in the future. For now, at this stage of life, I share information, support community groups and food pantries, be as kind as I can to neighbors, be a supportive partner for Amanda, and try to raise an empathetic, helpful, kind little boy.

    Some anti-ICE things I’ve found worth sharing recently:

  • Thinking of Spring

    With temperatures in the single digits and sixteen inches of snow blanketing the world outside, my thoughts turn to spring.

    In my mind, I’m wandering alongside a stream, looking for telltale signs of a rising trout, or at least a place one might be hiding.

    Here are a few places I’m drawing inspiration as I sit down to tie some patterns:

    I may still get out and wet my line this winter, weather permitting. We have a long weekend trip planned to the central Catskills next month, and I’ll probably have my rod in-hand and try to entice a few brook trout as I hike along some small mountain streams.

    For now, I sit under a blanket, blog, read, and dream.

  • Three tiny snowballs

    I thought about making these monotone, but I love the subtle blues that come out in photos of snow.

  • In Praise of Mink Oil

    I’ve spent hours this winter shoveling snow, making snowballs, packing snowmen, and pulling a sled. My hands have stayed dry thanks to Fiebing’s Golden Mink Oil.

    Men’s Buckskin Chopper Mitts
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    I bought these buckskin gloves a few years ago, but when they are brand new they aren’t waterproof. I needed a solution.

    After just one coat of Fiebing’s Golden Mink Oil, these gloves became waterproof, and have held up very well so far this winter. My hands have stayed dry and warm.

    Golden Mink Oil

    The worst they’ve gotten so far this winter was a little damp on the surface after three hours of making a snowman and sledding in wet snow. The inside stayed dry.

    I expect these to last a decade with a yearly coat of mink oil. I typically use Sno Seal on my boots, but I’m going to try switching to mink oil for my boots and see how that works for the rest of the season.

  • Digging out from Fern

    Winter Storm Fern ended up dumping 16″ of snow on us in 24 hours. I’m spending much of today digging us and a neighbor out with the fourth round of shoveling. Thankfully we still have power and we didn’t get ice here.

    This is the most snow we’ve had at one time in our six years in Peekskill. We’ve had 12″ twice before.

    Sorry, Charlie’s Mud Kitchen is closed today due to the snow.

    I’m lifting with my legs when shoveling and the snow is powdery, but I’m still tired and sore. It doesn’t help that we all have colds in the house. I’m planning on making some chicken noodle soup this afternoon.

    Charlie and I got out yesterday and started on an igloo. If he feels up to it, we might work on it again this afternoon. The temperatures are forecasted to stay below freezing here through at least the next 10 days, so we have plenty of time.

    A friend who drives a snow plow sent a great photo of whiteout conditions on the Bear Mountain Bridge yesterday afternoon:

    Update a couple hours later:

    Little boys can’t resist a huge snow mound.

    Some backyard play:

    Charlie is a helper:

  • Christmas Lima bean, fennel, and sausage stew

    This week I planned on making some green lentils in mujadara for my weekly bean dish, but with the blizzard, we needed some hearty stew. I found this recipe in the Rancho Gordo Heirloom Bean Guide.

    On the blizzard: Just before eating this, I measured 11 inches of snow. We have at least 3 more inches forecast. Charlie and I shoveled three times today and we’ll need to shovel again tomorrow.

    The Christmas Lima beans are beautiful. I’m glad the recipe only takes half a bag so I can make it again!

    I can’t find the recipe online to link to, so here it is:

    I decided to pre-soak the beans even though this recipe didn’t call for it. It made the cooking a bit quicker.

    I’m a fan of fennel. Nice to use it in this dish. For the carrots and celery, Amanda and Charlie chopped and froze and a bunch of packs from the CSA over the summer, so I used one that had leek in it, too.

    Don’t skip the Parmesan rind. It was an excellent addition. Don’t toss them, save your rinds for soup!

    Serve with some crusty bread and hot sauce.

    I liked this recipe. It was easy to make and delicious. It only makes 4 servings, so to feed more or have leftovers you’ll have to double it. The beans held their shape in the finished dish.

    We’ll definitely make this one again!

  • Tehching Hsieh Exhibition

    This week in Slack, Matt encouraged us to visit a museum for a couple hours during the work day.

    We live ~30 minutes from Dia:Beacon, which I visited twice even before we moved here.

    I messaged a couple coworkers who live in the area to see if they were free and wanted to join me. Automattic is a remote company, so I haven’t met the majority of my coworkers in person, only virtually. Ben Janes joined me and had heard great things about the new Tehching Hsieh exhibit.

    It didn’t disappoint.

    Tehching Hsieh is a performance artist, best known for his year-long performances of locking himself in a cell, punching a time clock hourly, living completely outside, being tethered to someone but unable to touch, and eschewing all art.

    I’m not usually into performance art, but the way the projects were displayed at this exhibition made me reconsider.

    In the prison cell gallery, I was drawn in by seeing the actual wooden cell, bed, and bucket, and imagining what daily life must have been like.

    In the time clock gallery, I was delighted that you could see the pattern of missed hours by looking at the bottom of the rows. It might have been even more striking if they placed the empty spaced where the missed hours were, seeing blanks at random spaces around the room. Did he have an uberman sleep schedule or just a good alarm?

    I was also captured by the timelapse video of the snapshots and seeing the timestamps work their way up the cards behind him. The pile of ~5280 chads was neat, too.

    In the outdoor gallery, I couldn’t stop thinking about how difficult it must have been to take care of private things outdoors. I loved the maps he recorded daily, a forebearer to Foursquare and Strava.

    In the tether gallery, I was less interested in the daily recordings and more deep in thought about the psychological consequences of the lack of physical contact, despite the proximity.

    In the no art gallery, the emptiness made sense, but the artist statement sheet having the colors inverted was a nice touch.

    The 13 years of private art gallery being the long empty gallery was nice as well.

    At the end, I loved the visualization of the timeline, to scale by the day, of Hsieh’s performance art between 1978 and 1999. It put the galleries in perspective.

    In all, a really well done exhibition that will stick in my mind for a long time, alongside the Sol LeWitt retrospective at MASSMoCA, the Matisse paper cuts exhibition a MoMA, and the Picasso museum in Malaga.

    While at Dia:Beacon, I couldn’t help but walk though the Richard Serra pieces again. My favorite.

    While I walked through them, there was a mother, grandfather, and a 3 year old in the space, too. The 3 year old was joyfully listening to her shouts echo, which reminded me of when I took Charlie there in 2022, when he was 9 months old, and he enjoyed listening to his little “ah!”s echos, too.

    I also liked some aspects of the Renée Green exhibition, primarily around color assignments.

  • Hand drawn maps

    I love hand drawn maps.

    I’ve been digging through old guidebooks looking for trout fishing spots, and two of them have hand drawn stream maps, complete with names of specific pools, runs, eddies, and points of interest. Newer digital maps, often based on state GIS data or Google Maps, are great for easy mobile access, but I haven’t come across any with the local knowledge marked on them. I’m thinking about photocopying and laminating some of these to keep in my bag.

    A good legend is always a plus.

    Another good one from a used bookstore here in Peekskill:

    While on the topic of books, I remembered that early editions of The Hobbit included Tolkien’s map of Wilderland inside the cover:

    Simple line drawings are my favorite style, but colorful ones are nice, too. Here is one my friend Erin made of her garden.

    These have inspired me to sketch a map of our local woods with our specific points of interest: Charlie’s bridge, the big bridge, the tree where the raccoon family lives, where we usually find crawfish and frogs, the top of Blue Mountain, the sledding hill, One Dead Tree (where we think at least one Pileated woodpecker lives), the old rock walls, etc.

  • Cozy places photo walk

    As part of my goal for this year to get back into photography, I charged my SLR’s batteries and went on a photo walk in the woods after a big snow.

    I gave myself the theme of “cozy places” that small woodland creatures might hole up during the storm.

    I couldn’t help but take a photo of the bridge that Charlie and I love:

    And the creek:

    Along the way I ran into a few mountain bikers and their well-trained pup:

    And then a neighbor’s pup:

    The goal was to help train my eye for noticing and framing again. I’m definitely rusty, but I like how some of these turned out. I need to make taking my camera out with me a habit again. As the deep freeze continues this week and next, I’m hoping to get some photos of river ice.

  • Snow day dessert

    One of the things going around on Instagram right now is people making ice cream out in the snow. It sounded fun, so I pitched the idea to Charlie. I didn’t have to ask him twice!

    To speed up the process, I opted for a recipe that didn’t involve adding eggs and heating everything up on the stove. Simple is the key, as things like this are more about the activity than the outcome.

    I tossed the ingredients (heavy cream, powered sugar, vanilla) in a quart container and grabbed one of the metal mixing bowls while Amanda helped Charlie get his snow gear on, then we headed outside.

    It took a lot of whisking and longer to freeze and thicken up than I expected, and certainly longer than the standard four year old has in them, so we took breaks to play in the fort and taste the icicles.

    Eventually Charlie got cold and we went back inside. I moved the bowl up to the porch to keep freezing while I made dinner. I went out and whisked every 15 minutes or so.

    By the time we ate dinner, it had set up nicely.

    Admittedly, it tasted more like frozen whipped cream than ice cream, but Charlie was jazzed to share a dessert that we made together out in the snow. He put rainbow sprinkles on his, Amanda put peanut butter and chocolate on hers, and I put chocolate on mine.

    Perhaps in a couple years we’ll try it again with a frozen custard recipe.

    Still, it was fun, novel, and a good way to do something together. If you have a young one at home and snow on the ground, give it a try.

  • Habanero harvest 2025 sauce

    Life was busy in late September/early October when the habaneros in our garden ripened, and I didn’t have the gumption to make a batch of hot sauce out of them. Charlie and I bagged them up and froze them instead.

    We ended up with ~60 orange and red habanero peppers, about twice as many as last year.

    Fast forward to January, when I was making the chili on Saturday, I decided to cook down the peppers into sauce while I had to keep an eye on the simmering beans and chili.

    This recipe from Rick Bayliss is my go-to. I change the proportions a bit, and this time around I made roughly a 5x batch.

    Habanero Hot Sauce

    I cooked the ingredients down, pureed it, then set the bowl out in the snow for a bit to cool.

    I ended up with almost 2 quarts, which is roughly 12 5oz bottles.

    After I bottled it, Amanda had a great idea. We’ve been saving the wax from the Babybel cheese that Charlie likes to eat for almost a year. The glass jar we store the wax in is now full, and she’s been interested in melting it down to use in some projects. She thought it would be cool to seal the bottles with wax, too. Great idea!

    I melted it down and gave it a test dip.

    It worked, and Charlie wanted to help, too. He dipped about half of the bottles.

    I poured the rest of the wax into silicone cube trays to save for future projects.

    Now, back to the hot sauce. It has a nice kick, a bit of fruitiness from the habaneros, and a noticeable but not overwhelming amount of garlic. It will be a good everyday house sauce, just like last year’s batch.

    Compared to last year’s batch, this year’s is a bit deeper reddish orange and thicker. Favor-wise they are very similar. I used the same recipe.

    The snow is still piled up on our deck railing, so I thought it would be fun to pull out the SLR and take a photo:

  • Snowy Weekend

    It snowed here all weekend. It is hard to tell exactly how much we got because Saturday the snow was fluffy and the wet, heavy snow on Sunday compressed it. There’s six inches on the porch railing as I write this, and it is still snowing.

    Charlie and I spent a few hours playing out in the snow. We built a snowman, packed snow on his slide to make a sled ramp, and went sledding in the woods.

    Oh, we shoveled four times. Charlie is getting pretty good at clearing the sidewalk.

    When we came in for a break, Amanda made us hot chocolate (Charlie’s favorite!). I’ve started mixing a tablespoon of instant espresso into mine.

  • 2016 trend

    You’ve probably seen the Instagram trend of posting selfies from 2016. Here are some of mine.

    Visiting the Sol LeWitt Retrospective at MASSMoCA. I spent hours in this building taking notes on the wall drawings. LeWitt is my favorite artist and this retrospective is well worth your time if you like his work, too.

    Taking photos at Point Reyes.

    Taking photos at Yosemite.

    Amanda on the Mist trail at Yosemite.

    Untermeyer Gardens in Yonkers.

    Taking photos of coffee beans, with the help of a lovely assistant.

    Amanda and I picnicking and watching a play at Boscobel, then a couple months later apple picking at Wilkins. Little did we know that four years later we’d move a few miles down the road from Wilkins. Ten years later we’d be driving past Boscobel every day taking our son to school.

    In the summer of 2016, I drove coast to coast with my parents. I took pano-selfies along the way.

    I can’t believe I thought that beard length looked good.

    Looking back at my blog posts from 2016, it was a year of creativity and learning. I hope 2026 holds more of the same.

    Three of my favorite photos I took that year, which are helping inspire me to dust off my SLR and start taking photos again:

    Nevada Falls at Yosemite.

    The national seashore at Point Reyes.

    Golden hour at Point Reyes.

  • Chili with Vaquero beans

    This week’s bean dish was chili with vaquero beans. My original plan for this week was a lentil dish, but after rummaging around in the basement freezer, I realized we had tomatoes, tomato paste, and beef, so a nice hearty bowl of chili came to mind. Perfect for today’s snowstorm, which dropped four inches of snow on us.

    I used a conglomeration of three recipes: This one from Rancho Gordo, my mom’s, and this one from Serious Eats.

    It had:

    • 1lb cubed beef from Hemlock Hill Farm, down the road from us
    • 1lb Vaquero beans
    • 2 Red onions
    • Garlic
    • Dried chiles (ancho, mulato, pasilla, and guajillo)
    • Mexican oregano
    • Cumin
    • Coriander
    • Tomatoes from our garden
    • Homemade tomato paste
    • Beef broth
    • 1 can of lager
    • Fish sauce
    • Chocolate
    • Worcestershire sauce
    • Bourbon
    • Salt
    • Pepper
    • Turbinado sugar

    I liked the vaquero beans. They have great coloring, which they retain even after cooking. They also mostly retain their shape. They I soaked the beans for about 6 hours before cooking them, which sped up the cooking time.

    A few thoughts on the chili:

    • I think this was my first time making chili with a bean other than kidney. I think it is worth experimenting more in the future.
    • I prefer cubed beef to ground beef, as it gives a more beefy flavor. It does take longer to cook though.
    • I started using dried chiles instead of powder in 2017, and I’m probably never going back. They add more depth to the flavor. I toast them, soak them in boiling water for 10 minutes, take the seeds out, then blend them with some broth and tomato paste. The blended mixture goes into the pot.
    • The fish sauce, chocolate, Worcestershire sauce, and bourbon were tips from J. Kenji to build up the flavor complexity and umami. Mostly recommended. I might skip the bourbon and sugar next time, though I’m curious how the flavors will meld in the fridge overnight. I tasted it before and after adding the bourbon at the end, and I think it stood out a little too much for me.

    I prefer Fritos with my chili:

    I rarely make the same recipe twice. I can’t resist riffing on it and adapting to what we have on-hand. That said, there are elements of this I’d use in a future batch. I only make chili once a year or so. Perhaps I should make it more.

  • Discernment

    The hard part isn’t learning the finer points of prompt engineering, how to set up and use agents, or how to connect the right systems for necessary context.

    The hard part is choosing when using AI is appropriate and when it isn’t. Choosing which output is acceptable and which isn’t. Choosing what to work on with this new tool at your disposal. Choosing when you need to lean in to doing things the slow, hard, old fashioned way or the new, fast, easy way. Choosing, then owning your decision.

    In short, the hard part is discernment. It always has been. AI has only changed the calculus.

    We are all figuring this out while the boat sails across the open ocean, picking up speed.

  • Shopsmith is back under new ownership

    An email went out to the Shopsmith mailing list last night saying that they are under new ownership. Here is a link to the browser version of the email from Mailchimp.

    TL;dr:

    • They are back under new ownership.
    • They are working through the order backlog, hoping to ship all back orders by the end of February.
    • They plan to build up product inventory again.
    • The forums are back.
    • They are planning on putting out more content (demos, projects, classes).

    This is good news! Their website hasn’t been updated yet, but I bet that will happen soon.

    Here’s a video with the new CEO:

    I’m hoping for more access to discontinued parts and accessories, videos on how to maintain and upgrade old machines (mine is 50 years old!), and new tools/parts/accessories to upgrade old machines like mine to keep them going for another 50 years.

  • Two simple fly patterns for beginners

    Tonight I went out to one of our local Trout Unlimited chapter’s monthly fly tying nights. Always nice to get out and tie together with some folks for a couple hours!

    We had a couple new fly tyers come tonight, so I demo’d two simple patterns for beginners that fish well in the winter: Utah Killer Bugs and Eggs.

    Both are simple patterns that only take two materials (wire and yarn, or a bead and egg yarn) plus thread and allow you to practice the basics: Tying materials on with thread, keeping tension as you wrap both thread and yarn, and whip finishing.

    If you are just starting out and want to try these patterns, here are the two videos where I originally learned to tie them:

    The only differences with the egg are that I opted to use orange EZ Egg yarn because the wild trout in our watershed are primarily brown trout (their eggs are orange), and I decided not to tie a hotspot to keep things simple. Once you have the basics down, then you can add more to it.

    Here is tonight’s crew (minus me taking the photo) hard at work:

    After tying a few killer bugs, the two beginners were getting the hang of it. We only had time to tie one egg together, but their first attempt was decent enough to fish. They are quick learners. I sent them home with some extra yarn for both killer bugs and eggs so they can practice some more.

  • Cassoulet bean gratin

    This week’s bean dish was a gratin made with cassoulet beans, fennel bulb, onion, garlic, thyme, and breadcrumbs. Recipe from Rancho Gordo, which I’m sure you read about in the WSJ this weekend.

    Amanda and I both loved it. Charlie wouldn’t try it, but he was very curious about what fennel bulb is, how beans grow, and whether or not they are seeds. I’ll take it.

    The dish came together quickly since I had cooked beans in the fridge already from the weekend. I cooked a full pound of cassoulets for the cauliflower dish, which was essentially a double batch. Cooking dried beans is the most time consuming part.

    When I went to cook this, I discovered that we didn’t have any breadcrumbs on-hand. I thought we had a bag of panko, but I was wrong. What we did have was a large open bag of plain pita chips, so I turned those into crumbs in the food processor.

    I served this with Italian sausage links, a simple side salad, and a white wine from Côtes de Provence.

    Both the fennel bulb and thyme gave it a great flavor. Even though this had the same base bean as the cauliflower dish, Amanda strongly preferred this one.

    I’ll certainly make this again. It is a great way to use extra cooked beans. I think it would also make a nice side at Thanksgiving. I’ll keep it in mind for this November.

    What’s next? I’m thinking something with lentils. I have some French-style green lentils on-hand. Maybe Mujadara if I have the time to be adventurous, or lentil soup with sausage and kale if not.

  • Featured images are friction

    Henrique commented on my “Just hit publish” post with:

    As a designer, I feel that the Post Featured Image blocks me from writing much more than ‘normal’ people would think. I need time to conceive and prepare it—which makes quick daily posts impossible. Maybe I should review my blog template and get rid of them as a test to blog more.

    I agree! I think I dropped my post template’s reliance on a featured image in 2021, when I noticed that coming up with an image was getting in the way of just hitting publish.

    I still have featured images in some posts, but my post template works with or without them. Archive templates, too. The Site Editor makes this easy…if there is a featured image it populates, but if not no placeholder or markup gets loaded. I often have featured image on project-type posts like my woodworking, but the majority of my posts do not have one. This is a big difference from 10 years ago when every post had a featured image.

    While we are on the topic of optional features of posts, I also think titles are optional. You don’t need titles on Twitter, Bluesky, or Mastodon, so why do you need them on your blog?

    My standard post type does use titles, but my Micro and Likes post types do not. I like separating my streams of content that way, but that is personal preference.

    It is worth noting that ma.tt and scripting.com both treat titles as optional. Featured images, too.

  • Cauliflower with cassoulet beans and capers

    This week’s bean dish was cauliflower with cassoulet beans and capers.

    I really enjoyed the smoky tanginess that the sherry vinegar + smoked paprika added to the dish. I served this as our main side with a pork tenderloin.

    This was tasty enough to make again, but probably not going into the standard rotation. I’ll keep it in my back pocket for that late summer period where we get cauliflower every week in the veggie share and need to change it up.

    The recipe made enough that we have leftovers, so it will be an easy side for tomorrow’s dinner. I cooked a whole pound of cassoulet beans, but only needed half of that for this dish, so I’m thinking of using the other half in a gratin on Monday.

    Cheers! 🫘

  • What I’m Reading, January 2026

    Non-fiction

    • The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas by Jerry Dennis
      • Received this for Christmas, continuing my reading about the Great Lakes after really enjoying the Dan Egan book recently.
    • An Immense World by Ed Yong
      • Recommendation from my friend Colin Russell. A lot of fascinating info about how different creatures sense the world in very different ways than we do.
    • Permission to Feel by Marc Brackett
      • Charlie’s school uses the Mood Meter to check in with moods and emotions every day, so we’ve started using it at home, too. This book is where it comes from, so I thought I’d read it to learn more about navigating my own emotional well-being and help Charlie learn how to navigate his.

    Fiction

    • Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
      • I’m 1/4 of the way through this and enjoying it. I think I need to explore more from Barbara Kingsolver. Send me your recommendations!
    • Critical Mass (Expeditionary Force, Book 10) by Craig Alanson
      • For the past two years I’ve had one of these going on audio regularly. Mostly while cooking solo, doing dishes, or mowing the lawn.
    • Where the Axe is Buried by Ray Nayler
      • I started this back in November and set it aside to read There Is No Anti-Memetics Division, so picking it back up now.

    What are you reading this month?