Charlie

Charlie has been very sweet this week. Some things that come to mind from this week:

• He has preferred to eat breakfast while snuggling on one of our laps.
• He learned how to use a straw and he loves it. This opens up a new world of possibilities like smoothies.
• He loves to dip whatever he is eating in sauces/dips.
• He learned how to brush his teeth. He has an adorable giraffe toothbrush and we all brush our teeth together before bedtime.
• He has been more and more interested in flipping through his books by himself. He also started to read books to us. We read books to him every night before going to bed as a way to wind down, and also whenever he brings us a book during the day. Once we finish, sometimes he takes it and talks while flipping through the pages like he is reading it to us.
• He says words very close to “Buddy” (the neighbor’s dog) and “that” and “dog” while pointing to things. He has also started to mimic things we say, which is adorable.
• He is transitioning to a 1-nap-a-day toddler.
• He has been showing affection to stuffed animals, picking them up and hugging them.

Food & Drink

A couple things worth sharing from this week in cooking:

• I made some pretty good pizza on Tuesday. We used dough from Trader Joe’s instead of making it ourselves this time. Their regular dough is pretty decent, but the stand out is their herb dough, which we used to make cheesy garlic bread.
• I made some pizza sauce from garden tomatoes, garden basil and oregano, and garlic, onion, and salt.
  • Blanched the tomatoes and removed the peel
  • Tossed all of the ingredients in a pot and let it cook down for 30 minutes while occasionally smashing it with a potato masher
  • Put it in a quart container and blended it with the stick blender
• A friend and I experimented with cooking a whole spatchcocked chicken in the pizza oven in a cast iron pan. It worked pretty well!
  • We let the Ooni get really hot after making pizza before we put the chicken in, then turned the flame way down when we did put the chicken in.
  • We turned the pan regularly.
  • Total time was probably 25 minutes, though we didn’t keep a close eye on the clock and went by the chicken’s temperature instead, which we checked with an instant read thermometer.
  • What I’d do different next time is covering the chicken with foil for the first 10-15 minutes to keep the skin from charring.

Sean Nelson reminded me it was Negroni Week this week, so I made a Kingston Negroni, which essentially swaps the gin out for Smith & Cross Jamaican rum. The funky, fruit-forward rum holds up well to the spice in the sweet vermouth and the bitterness of the Campari.

We’ve made a couple Jungle Bird cocktails this week since we have some pineapple juice we need to use up. The classic recipe is good, but so is swapping the simple syrup for passionfruit syrup like Pagan Idol does.

Miscellany

We are having Great Plains weather this week 40-60F at night, 75-85F during the day. This is the weather I like. Good for sleeping.

I took the guideboat out on the Hudson River for the second time this year. It was great to get out and row a bit. I’m going to try to get out a few more times before it gets too cold to do so.

Knowing when go weigh in and when not go weigh in is a key skill you have to learn by doing, not one that can be taught.

Digging in to the motivations behind your actions and other people’s actions is one of the most helpful things in gaining empathy and resolving conflict.

I am a heavy user of search on my own websites, so I made it easy on myself. On any page on this site or my digital garden, if you his Command+Shift+F, it will bring up the search modal.

Reading

• Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig, second in the Montana trilogy
• The Juncto by Neal Stephenson, fifth in the Baroque Cycle series

Cool stuff from around the internet this week

“Life Goes On” With Stewart Brand

www.palladiummag.com

WordCamp US 2022 – Nick Diego

nickdiego.com

This is Nick Diego’s talk on building blocks from WordCamp US, a big WordPress conference. Very clever use of FSE, cover blocks, and anchor links to make a public presentation directly in WordPress. Great content on block development, too.

Running WordPress in the Browser

Nowadays, you can run WordPress entirely in your browser thanks to WebAssembly, an exciting and growing technology that allows you to compile different languages into binaries. Read how we implemented it and try our demo.

wasmlabs.dev

Cool JSON web API for Project Gutenberg books. h/t Ilya Radchenko

Mental Models for Better Thinking – Farnam Street

How do you make sense of the world around you? How do you navigate through it? When problems arise, how do you confront them?Mental models shape how you see the world, how you approach problems, and even unconsciously surface the information you think is important.

fs.blog

Cool course on mental models. The mental models books that Farnam Street put out are good, too!

Caspar Babypants, fun rock music for kids, h/t Jeremy Felt

Spicy, Seared, Smothered, Stacked: An Introduction to Mexican Sandwiches

The Mexican sandwich takes the same taco flavors and turns them up to eleven, offering a world of fluffy buns and spicy meats that no food lover should leave uneaten. Here are a few of our favorite types.

www.seriouseats.com

That’s it for this week! Time to mow the grass, clean the house, and figure out what to make for dinner. Maybe we’ll have a fire in the chiminea tonight, too.