The day after my office sent us all home due to the pandemic, our baby was born. About twelve hours after I finished packing up my desk, we were on the phone with triage at the hospital. We were sure that the baby was coming. Nearly two weeks early and at a truly unpleasant hour of the morning, but on her way.
I don’t lightly say that things are “the best” anything. But we’ve been on this peanut butter for a few weeks now and it’s so cheap, so easy to make, and so delicious that I don’t think we’re ever going back to the store-bought kind.
If you’re counting calories, you may want to become temporarily innumerate. Believe me, it’ll be worth it. These cheddar buttermilk biscuits are comfort food at its best. Flaky, soft, salty, rich, and absolutely the kind of thing where you’ll finish one and immediately reach for another.
This has been the go-to hummus recipe in our house for some months now, dialed in to everyone’s taste. The goal was something a step above a grocery store hummus, and something that could be made in large, family-sized batches. This one starts with the step of creaming together tahini and lots of lemon juice, which makes it smoother, brighter, lighter, and more acidic.
Take your condiment game to the next level with this flavour-bomb. The recipe Obligatory Recipe Story Following a trip, my sister and her fiancé gifted me a jar of mustard from Butterfly Bakery in Vermont. It claimed to be of the maple sriracha variety. It was delicious and changed many meals for the better. But as I was washing the empty jar to recycle it, I noticed something. The ingredients. The mustard come [sic] in an 8 oz jar and is made with organic Canadian yellow and brown mustard seed, organic…
One year ago, I made a video called Maker Resolutions for 2019, which said this: I’ve come up with 10 maker resolutions for 2019 that I think will help me be more productive, do more of the things I like, get away from some of the stuff that hasn’t been working for me, and generally make me less crazy about my various projects and makes. A growth mindset by itself is an important thing if you want to get better at anything, but equally important is doing a little self-reflection…
With 2020 fast approaching, I wonder a bit where the time went. In order to track that, I give you my maker year in review – a selection of projects I’ve started and finished in 2019! January Silicone moldmaking I started the year learning how to make molds with silicone and cast things in resin! This wouldn’t go anywhere huge in 2019, but I really enjoyed the learning process. February Bruno Valentine’s Day meant another project. NJ found herself enjoying having something to hold at night so I found a…
Originally written October 18, 2019 As I write this I am deeply fatigued. But I am very, very happy. Mostly. See, when NJ returns from her latest round of work travel, I will have been solo with the kids for about half the month. And in that time, I’ve made an effort to keep the wheels on the household. That’s just being a parent. But I’ve also tried to make NJ’s travel more enjoyable, make Thanksgiving really special for the kids, host my sister and her fiancé, keep ahead of…
Last year, I had a fairly stale, flat, uninspiring NaNoWriMo flop. And despite the fact that I think talking about failure in the context of creative endeavours is dumb and bad, falling so far short of my planned word count stung. But this year, I rocked it. I’m a NaNoWriMo 2019 winner, and it feels pretty good. I had an experience this year that I wasn’t really expecting. Other than a couple of days of weak output in the final week (thanks to a cold), I killed it. It was…
“Write what you know” is advice as old as time, and for National Novel Writing Month 2019 I’m going to follow it.
Why do we even talk about failure in maker circles, anyway? I love it when an idea comes together. You picture something in your head, hunker down with your tools, put time and effort into the project, and create exactly the thing that you imagined. And sometimes, exactly the thing you imagined just does not work at all. It’s long past time to address how we talk about this kind of thing in the maker community. I had a project go sideways recently that I think showcases how silly it is to…
A failed 3D print. Some scrap plywood. Leftover plaster. Dollar-store acrylic paints. Put them together and you get something special – a runabout crash diorama! The key to this, I found, was simply patience and layering. There’s nothing more to getting a good, satisfying paint job that tells a story than setting a goal, an idea you want to express, and adding layers until you get to where you want to be. A runabout crash diorama is only as interesting as the place it crashes! That makes this another great…
