Published by

🌶🍅🥑🥭🍋

Cooked a big meal for friends this past weekend, will definitely make a bunch of these things again. Particularly polvorones! I hadn’t had those in years, since I was a kid. The asterisked items are things I hadn’t made before, I mostly referred to Saveur recipes for guidance on those. We had this with flour + corn tortillas from the shop and rice.

  • Mango salsa – frozen, thawed mango; minced red onion; minced jalapeño; lime juice; chopped coriander; salt
  • Chiltomate* – roasted, peeled roma tomatoes; roasted garlic; roasted habanero; salt
  • Pico de gallo – diced roma tomatoes; diced yellow onion; minced jalapeño; lime juice; chopped coriander; salt
  • Guacamole – mashed avocados; minced jalapeño; lemon juice; salt
  • Quick pickled red onions – finely sliced red onion; white wine vinegar; salt
  • Carnitas* – pork shoulder; bouillon; ground cumin; ground coriander; bay leaf; salt; ground black pepper
  • Black beans – dried black beans; chiles in adobo; bouillon; sliced onion; whole orange, cut in to chunks; bay leaves; toasted, ground cumin seed; toasted, ground coriander seed; salt
  • Polvorones* – pecans; white flour; cinnamon; butter; vanilla extract

Published by

Webmentions up and running

Finally sorted out how comments and webmentions are displayed on this site. It was kind of a hefty task since it involved sorting out WordPress comments as well. If everything works as intended (big if), webmentions should be displayed in a discussion thread below the post contents on permalink pages regardless of whether or not WordPress comments are enabled on that post. We’ll see how that goes!

As an experiment, I’ve turned on comments here, here, and on this note. Overall though, I’ll probably leave them disabled for the majority of my notes. This 2013 article by Kartik Prabhu sums up my feelings on the subject pretty well.

Published by

New site for a Barcelona-based architecture practice

We launched a new site for architecture practice Barozzi Veiga about a month ago. It was a pleasure to work with Adrien Vasquez at John Morgan studio during the development process and to work with the Barozzi Veiga folks as we fine-tuned things. The site launch coincided with the announcement that Barozzi Veiga had been selected to take on a major renovation of the Art Institute of Chicago (read more).

barozziveiga.com

Published by

“Fans of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell are very polite. They are charming and highly intelligent. They have excellent dress-sense, and are kind to animals and small children.”

Just read the news that Susanna Clarke is due to publish her second book Piranesi in a year’s time. I’m pretty excited about this, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is one of my favourites. And I hope she’s feeling better, I didn’t realise that the long time between books was related to ill health (read interview) at least in part. Delightful news, particularly in contrast with the slimy state of current affairs.

Published by

Configuring and troubleshooting Netlify Large Media

Sam and I were working together to debug some issues encountered while configuring Netlify Large Media for a particular repository. It’s a *very* cool option when it comes to media for static site generators, particularly since it allows you to transform images. This is a run-down of the process, including a few specific snags we hit along the way.

Read more

Published by

Tasks for a Sunday mood

Tasks* for a Sunday mood, restlessness, feeling like I need to Get Something Done. When I feel like that, I default to doing more work or work-adjacent hobbies on a laptop / tablet / phone. I need to stop that, I spend enough of my waking hours in the digital aether.

Prep some food

Maybe the most helpful thing for the week ahead, Wednesday-night-me will be thankful for Sunday-me’s foresight. Boil some eggs, roast vegetables, wash the veg you bought last week, bake cookies, parboil potatoes, make a bean salad, cook a big batch of chickpeas, collect some wild rocket or blackberries.

Fix / alter some clothes

Needle-felt holes in sweaters, dye the shirt you like but feel iffy about the colour, shorten trousers w/ thread or nifty iron-on hem tape, embroider over stains.

Sort through old / unused stuff

Donate or give away books that aren’t worth keeping, recycle tights w/ holes or trousers that can no longer feasibly be repaired (and get a discount while doing it!), cut up threadbare t-shirts for rags, sort through makeup and donate gently- and unused (unexpired) items to a local women’s shelter (UK, USA).

Give your plants some love

Dust off the leaves, do some repotting, pick the dried-up stipules off the pothos. Propogate the sage that grows in the park.

Cleaning / tidying

Do the weird, rarely-done cleaning tasks. Hoover the places behind bookshelves, clean your laptop, wipe off the tops of the kitchen cabinets, tidy up the chaos beneath the sinks, get the cobwebs out of the corners, take down the coats / bags that have accumulated on the hooks behind the doors and put them away properly.

Other stuff

Go for a swim. Finally finish those drawings.

 

* These are chores, really. But we need a better word than “chore” for these sorts of things, that word’s got baggage.

Published by

✓ Swim cap ✓ Goggles ✓ Towel ✓ Pool slides

I’ve started swimming again, it’s so nice to be back in the pool. It also took me forever to finally go since I felt like I didn’t know what to expect and didn’t really know what to bring. Seems silly, but it was a bit of a barrier. I had a look online for what to expect but didn’t find much, so here’s a checklist and some info about swimming in a public pool in the UK.

Read more

Published by

Bleeding Tooth Fungus

When we were walking in the heath yesterday, we came across this creepy looking fungus with deep red shiny droplets oozing from it. Gave me the heebie-jeebies. I looked it up when we got back, looks like its scientific name is Hydnellum peckii. It has a few common names. “Strawberries and Cream” is one of the cuter names, “Bleeding Tooth Fungus” is probably a more accurate one. Unless you suffer from trypophobia, it’s worth looking up online. It’s not edible, supposedly it tastes pretty bad, but apparently it contains an effective anticoagulant.