Our local farmers market was busy this morning. I walked away with asparagus, baby kale, bread, and honey. It’s too early in Minnesota’s growing season for anything cruciferous, except a few types of leafy greens.
Category: Home Living
Rainy day comfort food
Rained all day, inducing a mild case of cabin fever. Made a mushroom sauce for leftover polenta, heavy on the mushrooms: finally, a task with a beginning, middle, and end that I accomplished today. Finished the sauce with heavy cream, shoyu, and Dijon. An immersion blender and some water revived the polenta.
Annual data snapshot
Today was the day to complete our annual data snapshot (around 500GB compressed) onto encrypted thumb drives. I keep these drives indefinitely, so if we ever need to recover an old file that we accidentally deleted at some time in the past, we can hopefully recover it from a snapshot.
Tech upgrade: new Dell tower
My tweaking project for the next few days involves setting up this Dell tower that arrived today. It’s replacing a 15-year-old Windows system, which will lose Microsoft support this fall and isn’t safely upgradable. Here, the new computer is tucked away behind a partition wall. The 19-year-old monitor and the 10-year-old Brother networked laser printer/scanner continue to meet our needs.
Signs of spring
It’s finally springtime in Minnesota. When I came home from an appointment, tulips had magically appeared on the kitchen island and this bathroom. Tonight we’re firing up the BBQ for the first time this year–Dwight’s roasting squash.
All shiny and new…
Rain today prompted us to clean our unit and run the laundry. The owners had remodeled this bathroom since we last stayed here; for some reason, a Madonna song from forty years ago (yikes) became my earworm as I cleaned the surfaces. I drew the line at removing some hard-water spots on the glass.
Making the most of stale bread
For a few days it’s tip-the-fridge time. Here, I’ve assembled ingredients for a strata egg bake. We collect stale bread in the freezer, then periodically incorporate it into bakes, Italian bread salads, stuffings, etc. For the strata, I cubed the bread then dried it in the microwave.
Checking on an economical plant watering system for a neighbor
Checked on a neighbor’s plant watering system. I set it up for them in December, and it’s been working perfectly for six weeks. The controller (with a built-in pump), tubing, and drippers cost around $35. The only drawback is the controller’s battery, which needs recharging about once a month. An $8 smart plug allows them to remotely initiate charging from Arizona.
Minimizing the risk of a hot glycol flood spoiling our day
An email came from our building’s management about an HVAC contractor flooding a unit with 200 gallons of hot diluted glycol. It seems most units have two shutoff valves for baseboard heating, but a few have four. The contractor was unaware of this and shut off two, leaving two open. I didn’t even know we have shutoff valves for heating, so I located them today. And there were four, which I’ve now labeled.
Sausage Saturday: Caribbean cabbage creation, with a bit of help from AI
It’s Sausage Saturday, Winter Edition, and today I’m braising sausage with cabbage. I typically use green cabbage, but I opted for red today and decided to give the dish a Caribbean twist. As planned, I incorporated cinnamon, allspice, and cloves. To enhance the flavor profile, I consulted Google AI (Gemini), which suggested balsamic vinegar and ginger (I had some fresh ginger in the freezer).