Week of January 15, 2024

The temperature has been bitter cold here all week. I don’t think it has gotten above freezing at all in the past seven days. I’m not complaining—I wanted a nice cold spell with some snow.

Charlie’s daycare closed on Tuesday due to the snow and ice. Amanda had to work in Manhattan that morning, so Charlie and I hung out and played until she got home around 2pm. I was chatting with one of the other daycare dads, and we might try to cowork at one of our houses during the next snow day so the kids can play together and the parents can get marginally more work done.

Charlie likes the snow. When I go out to clean off the car, he grabs the brush from his Melissa & Doug cleaning set and helps. Meg said that Miles did the same thing, but with the broom from that set. Perhaps M&D needs to make some snow removal equipment for toddlers.

Charlie and I decided to give the small hill in the woods a try for sledding. It is an old road that is no longer accessible to the general public and doesn’t get plowed. I was concerned that it might not be steep enough, but I was wrong! The sled glided over the hard-packed snow and we got some speed. I steered as best I could with my hands and feet and Charlie had a blast.

Speaking of Charlie, he’s been into having all three of us play little skits recently. The current set:

The couch is an ambulance. Someone is the driver, someone is the doctor, and someone is the person “with an ouch” who lays down on the “stretcher”. We rotate roles. A heart monitor (RC car controller), “checko-o-scope” (stethoscope, actually a bungee ball tie down), and fictional bandaids often pla a role. Sometimes Charlie also becomes a mechanic who fixes the broken down ambulance.

Dobie, his toy stick horse, is sad and crying because Cowboy Charlie lost his hat. Momma or Daddy comforts Dobie while Charlie goes to find his hat to make Dobie happy again.

This often morphs into Charlie “changing Dobie’s diaper” and wiping the very end of the stick with a wipe “wiping Dobie’s butt”. It is kind of strange, but sweet. Charlie is gentle and caring.

Charlie’s loader dump truck is stuck in the mud and we need to figure out how to get it out. Sometimes a tractor pulls it, sometimes an excavator digs it out, and sometimes a helicopter airlifts it out.

“Oh no! My brand new truck stuck in muck! What I do?”

We baked twice this week. Blueberry muffins on Wednesday and chocolate chip mini scones on Sunday. Amanda measures and orchestrates, Charlie dumps and mixes, and I narrate the recipe and fetch ingredients.

Looks like the temperature will rise again this week and we’ll get some rain. With the warmer temps, perhaps I’ll get back out in the workshop this week. A couple things I want to do:

Sharpen my lathe tools

Learn how to use the round nose scraper in the set I have

Some other things I want to do in the workshop over the next couple months:

Repurpose my shave horse into a bowl horse. I like David Fisher’s plans.

Hand carve some bowls. I ordered an old #8 bent gouge on eBay to use. The Pfeil ones are really nice, but too expensive for figuring out what I need when starting out. So old ones from eBay will work fine until I outgrow them and need something better. (I have the same philosophy with Harbor Freight, I’ll start with the HF tool first, and if I use it a ton and finally need a new one, then I’ll upgrade. But often I don’t need to and the HF one serves me well for light use.)

Make a couple spurtle sticks

Make a couple machacadoras

Learn the basics of bowl turning on the lathe. I’m planning on watching some of Kent Weakley’s stuff to learn.

I think I mentioned it in another post. but I’m a recipe tester for a forthcoming book on making hard seltzers, ciders, iced teas, and kombuchas by Emma Christiansen (I have and like one of her other books, True Brews.) It is fun and not too work intensive. I bottled my first batch, a Gin & Tonic flavored hard seltzer that includes neither gin nor tonic. It should be carbonated and ready to drink in a week or two.

Next I’m testing an Imperial Cider.

I made a big batch of pork carnitas in the Instant Pot and some Chipotle-style cilantro lime rice for dinner tonight, with the hope that it would make for some easy lunches this week. It was a hit with all three of us, so I’ll probably make it again in a month or so.

The pork: Chunk up a small boneless pork shoulder and small pork loin (the idea is to mix some lean and fatty meats for variety) and marinate it with mojo. (Making your own is great, but I usually don’t have time so I grab a bottle of the Goya mojo.) Marinate for as long as you can, then drain and put the pork in the instant pot with chili powder, Mexican oregano, cumin, garlic, onion, and cinnamon for 45 minutes on high. Quick release the pressure, pull the pork out of the pot, and shred. Put 1/2 cup of the juice over the shredded pork.

The rice: Cook 2 cups basmati rice, then after it is done and off the heat, add in a little olive oil, 1/4 cup chopped cilantro, the juice of one lime, and some salt.

Related: My friend Erin and I share recipes regularly. She asked if there is a platform where we can share our meal plans and rate them afterward and leave notes. Probably going to set up a simple private WordPress blog unless anyone has a better idea. I like the flexibility of text with the commenting and ability to search that a blog offers. Perhaps I’ll turn on autotagging, too.

Resolutions check: I’m doing pretty well with the stretching, which has made me pay closer attention to my hydration as well. I am not doing well with the drawing… when things get busy or stressful it is the very first thing to go. Next week I’ll try a new tactic and put dedicated time on my calendar to do it.

I shipped a blog redesign this week and excavated old versions of my site to lay out a rough history. Check it out.