Doug's Project 365

In the bottom of a jug of maple syrup there are often a few maple sugar crystals. This jug was particularly impressive.

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.