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Peach Mousse
A peach mousse is s a fairly easy dessert that is awesome to make because it can be made way in advance and you have quite a bit of variety in how you garnish it.
The ‘2024 Menu’ Recap
The 2024 menu was headlined by duck confit: I wanted to make something 'common' (poultry) but at the same time, 'uncommon' (going with duck as opposed to chicken).
Toasted Wonton Cups
A super low-stress appetizer that is so easy to make, you can start it after the guests have arrived. There’s a contrast of colors, texture and a burst of flavor this appetizer is super scalable — you can make them 6, 8 (or more!) at a time — you’re only limited by your muffin tray
Lemon Posset
This dessert is so much win: it’s super easy to make, can be done way in advance and almost certainly guaranteed to be a winner.
Duck Confit
With a 30-40 hour cook time, duck confit is definitely my longest “in advance” dish I’ve made. And it’s 100% worth it.
Thankfully, I have a vaccuum-sealer and sous-vide setup so this is actually a very low-effort dish to make.
Shiitake Risotto
This is a fun accompaniment to make but unlike most things I make, there’s not a whole lot you can do in advance. While not hard by any means, the biggest takeaway here is to give this dish your full attention.
Fondant Potatoes
This side is super low-stress to make and most of the prep can be done well in advance. Nominally, you leave this in the oven for 1-hour but you could very comfortably leave it in there for 2-hours — you only really have to check the oven every so often to make sure the stock hasn’t boiled off.
Cauliflower Chowder
Cauliflower chower is a nice soup that takes heat/spice well, is super easy to make, doesn’t require any fancy ingredients and can largely be made in advance.
And as much as I like a clam-chowder, I really enjoy that this is something different.
Build Log: Bed Enhancements
I built a custom king bedframe a few years ago and overall, it’s been great. Recently, we got a robovac specifically dedicated for the upstairs and I wanted to do some work to try and ‘get stuff off the ground’ so that I could blindly schedule the robovac without doing any tidy up beforehand. This was a good opportunity to tackle a few small improvements to the bed.
Build Log: Pressure washer cart rebuild
I've had a cheap pressure washer for a long time and the thing that bothers me the most about it is the chassis/cart. I finally got around to rebuilding the cart to be something much less frustrating to use.
Build Log: Coffee (and Tea!) Bar
We have a ‘drink station’ in our kitchen which is a repurposed DIY tool chest that I built a long time ago. It works - but it’s far from great. The biggest shortcoming is that the top surface sags because I didn’t better when I built it originally. We keep a toaster oven and a water boiler with 5L of water on the top: this isn’t enough sag to be dangerous but more so an annoyance. I’ve been wanting to rebuild this station for a little while now and finally decided to just do it.
Stream Deck - USB-C connectivity
The Corsair/Elgato Stream Deck Mk 2 has some peculiar behavior when you try and connect to it using USB-C. Initially I thought that I had wired up my keystones incorrectly, or my USB-C ports were on acting up. Nope — it’s the Stream Deck.
Build Log: Wall-Desk Mk II
I built my original wall-desk almost five years ago and after using it for that time, there are a small handful of things I’d like to fix and improve upon. This is more of a retrofit that builds upon the existing setup — no need to ‘reinvent the wall’ so to speak.
Build Log: Skype Desk
After wrapping up the LED slat wall project last week, I had switched Skype Station to using a temporary plastic desk. Building a permanent desk replacement was an urgent priority though since I could see the monitor arm clamps deform the desk more every day.
Build Log: LED Slat Wall
I wanted to give the backdrop for Skype Station a bit of a refresh to both add a bit of cool factor but also, to expand it’s coverage so that I would have a bit more flexibility in where I could place the camera and thus, define the [camera] framing. This was supposed to a be quick ‘weekend project’…
Build Log: Dust Collection Cart Mk III
I recently bought a ‘quiet’ wet-dry vac so this was a great opportunity for a quick weekend project to revisit my bulky dust collection cart.
Build Log: DIY Leveled-floor
Our office floor has a pretty substantial slope — on two axes — right where I sit. This is something that’s been bugging be since I got set up here, and I’m finally getting around to doing something about it.
Upgrading my Networking Gear (2024.1)
As the network stuff inches towards being the finish line, the updates (hopefully!) get smaller. In this update, I’ve made some small but meaningful upgrades to my network
Synology NAS Blinking? I found an undocumented cause for it
We recently had a longer power outage. Thankfully, I’ve got a pair of UPS units ready to rock and roll but I ran into a bit of an odd case where my NAS units were in a blinking state after the power was restored…
Build Log: Mini Network Rack Mk III
My ‘mini’ network rack isn’t so mini anymore. Since living with the rack in its previous configuration for about a year, there are a few things that bother me about it. Here, I set out to tackle them in what was a quicker-than-expected rebuild of the network rack.