December, 2019

Here is my antique waffle iron, trying to bake its last waffle. But it turns out its top heating element is broken and so the waffle came out half-baked. I opened it up and the wiring inside is asbestos-insulated, so I don’t want to attempt a repair.

The Staub 4-qt enameled cast iron dutch oven is on ridiculous sale right now — about 1/3 of normal retail. I suspect it’s either overstocked or about to be replaced with a newer design since it’s about the same price everywhere. But there’s nothing wrong with the old model so I could not resist picking one up to complement our larger Le Creuset. Here I’m breaking it in, making a pot of long-simmering beef/lamb ragù.

At Michael’s 50th birthday party, here’s the birthday boy playing the piano.

I received this game in my office’s Yankee Swap this year, and we played it last night. It was better than I expected!

Whole duck was super cheap at the store today, so I bought one. This is the fattiest duck I have ever cut up — it yielded 2.5 lbs of cuts for the freezer, 1.5 lbs of carcass for the stock pot, and over 2 lbs of fat and extra skin. Rendered, the fat produced over 3 cups of clarified duck fat and about half a cup of cracklings.

Christmas cactus, this year as billed.

We have a trivet — originally from a pre-electric clothes iron, no doubt — that reminds me of the Hydra logo from Agents of Shield.

Tacos tonight. Cutting the semi-frozen ground beef into pieces promotes better browning. Arranging them in the pan as pictured promotes amusement for the cook.

I was playing around with the new camera today, making sure certain things work as I expect. This was a throwaway shot of Ferrous, but he’s just so darn adorable I had to post it.

This was a test of my 3rd-party 1.4x teleconverter, on my 300mm lens (f/6.3, 1/320th/sec, ISO 4500). Works fine, nothing objectionable in the image quality.

Inspired by my friend Chris, I made a cocktail out of the dregs of the Thanksgiving cranberry sauce. I went in a different direction than he did: a few Tbsp of cranberry sauce, shaken with mezcal, Cointreau, and a generous amount of Peychaud’s bitters. Pretty good.