Valentine's dinner: many dishes! Highlights were the beef tartar and pickled shrimp. I also made a cheesecake but forgot to take a picture.

As a byproduct of making sake, I have a lot of lees, so experimenting with some ways to use it. Kasujiru: a soup of lees, stock, pork, and root veggies. Kasuzuke: essentially using salted lees as a brine to pickle vegetables. The next stage of fermentation seems to be going well too!

My partner requested tortilla soup and we're not taking any shortcuts. Poached a whole chicken, picked the meat, bones back the pot to simmer for the broth, cooked a pot of beans, blended some chilis, made fresh tortillas. And why not put pickled red cabbage on top? Goes with literally everything.

Completed the next steps in this batch of sake. Strained it through a fine filter, pressed, and transferred it to smaller fermentation jugs for the next stage. As is, it's pretty tasty! A little strong and dry — not surprising — but we can make some adjustments. Now time to make kasuzuke.

Been trying out some new dishes while putting together my valentine's day menu. Beef tartar's a winner. Then taking it easy making some basic ass spaghetti with red sauce. Can't be beat. (I mean, I made the noodles and sauce from scratch, but you know)

Interesting accident in the pottery studio. This pot buckled perfectly symmetrically. I wonder if this could be replicated and controlled to do something interesting. The folds were interesting from the outside too. Also finished a little urn I'm very happy with!

The little tiny bit of grim crushing despair I feel every time I search for something and the first suggestion is, without fail, "__ recipe easy" really starts adding up.

Simple breakfast, leftover dumpling filling fried up in a patty with pickled cabbage. Decided I liked the size proportions of the bowl so spent some of my time in the studio trying to make some improvements on it. It could work better with chop sticks.

Sometimes it's fun to zoom out on my whole cooking photo library and appreciate almost a decade of stuff that I've cooked. Cakes, steaks, lots of stir fries, those couple times I tried to learn to make rolled omelettes, noods, dumps, soups, and lately a lot of pickles.

"Almost graupel" has been my favorite thing on the internet for at least a decade. It always hits. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graupel

The sake project continues! After a series of additions we're entering the main ferment. My big fancy new jar makes all my other fermenting jars look tiny. Cups are trimmed. Consistency's not perfect but I'm learning things.

Woke up with a serious bout of graphomania this morning. Am I writing a cookbook? Or maybe a book on food philosophy!? Who knows! Check back in on me in like 2 or 3 years.

The beginnings of a big project. First attempt at making sake, and cups to go with it. Also a flower pot, cause I was exhausted of doing tiny things. Disregard the flower pot.

How am I ever going to learn everything before I die?

I'm a little embarrassed when I break down a chicken the wings usually end up in the stock bag. What am I going to do with four random wings? Apparently fry them up in the wok with a little salt and corn starch for a little appetizer while prepping the rest of dinner.

I made a new little MTG App. My simplest but probably most useful. Ever quickly type out a deck or trade list, but you can't upload it somewhere cause card names aren't exactly right? Run it through the spellchecker to validate and auto correct every card name! luckypaper.co/resources/sp...

Had a craving for dandan noodles and they came out particularly great. I improved my noodle workflow too. Turns out it's easier and takes less counter space to cut the noodles to length first and then run them through the cutting roller.

Back in the pottery studio! Session one results:

New year, time to get serous. BIG JAR acquired.

5 months later, tried this fermented tofu and despite my initial skepticism it was a hit! Funky and salty with the texture of soft feta cheese. I will definitely be making more of this and experimenting with the recipe.

Just got this piece made by @nervousjessica.bsky.social and @nervousjesse.bsky.social and it's delightful, as their work always is.

I've added a new feature to the List Formatter. You can now fetch nested attributes. It's a bit fiddly and you need to use the exact fields names from the Scryfall API, but makes it much more powerful. Making little improvements as the app has proven useful to folks! luckypaper.co/resources/li...

Another day, another bowl of ramen. Some fermentation projects are starting to pay off. Chicken garum was a great addition to Dashi and miso broth. Turnip pickles are my new favorite topping. Fermented hot sauce worked better than expected. (not home made noodles cause I was lazy)

Three new jars joining the ranks of the fermentation station! Attempting to make mirin and experimenting with a few variations with home made rice wine and purple sweet potatoes. I doubt the color will hold, but looks pretty for now. Should be ready in the ballpark of 2 months to 2 years.

After a month incubating, I finished and pressed "chicken garum." It's funky and chicken-y and very reminiscent of soy sauce. I'm excited to experiment with it. Following the Noma guide barley koji and roasted chicken with water and salt were held at 140ºF for a month.

Why doesn't Arena let you look at the top cards of your library after you choose to mulligan? If I don't know if I made the right choice how am I ever going to get better?

I'd love to give the fancy new Powered Cube on Arena a try but cannot download Arena because I can't log into the Epic Games Store, and there's apparently zero way to get support. Isn't that funny! I love how broken all tech is and being constantly directed to talk to chatbots!

Exactly one year ago I started this jar of garlic misozuke from a recipe in Flavorama. Gonna blame Arielle Johnson for this fermentation rabbit hole I've fallen in.

After about three months fermenting I strained and pressed this rice wine. It's interesting. Boozy and funky. Reminds me most of Koream makgeolli. But I'll just call it "Baltimore home style rice wine." Can't be more than one weirdo in this city growing koji in their basement so probably accurate?

So I think I've committed to making "cicada garum" at the next opportunity. 2030 might be a weird year for me.

Checking in on my first batches of miso I started about six months ago. Calling this a success! I'm going to give them some more time but confident about starting some more, and bigger batches so I can share.

Starting my most intense fermentation project so far. I'm only a little bit nervous, but my DIY fermentation chamber is running smoothly and koji growing for "chicken garum" went great. Will check back in a month!

Ok, NOW I'm regretting a little bit not making it to CubeCon this year. Why am I such a magpie when it comes to trophy pins?

Honored to be on Lords of Limited this week, talking about how to approach drafting unfamiliar Cubes!

Queuing up my fourth unique performance of "In C." Feeling normal. Thank you @nhassenfeld.bsky.social ❤️

Been too long since I made a good bowl of ramen: home made noodles, pork, bamboo shoots, and a couple come made pickles - soy mushrooms, zucchini, and turnips. The pickles are a nice bright contrast to a rich dish.

Doing some big cooking projects this last week: carrot cake which came out looking pretty tidy, steamed buns with two fillings as a snack for the cube crew, and an enormous lasagna and snack situation.

Had such a blast at Capital Cube Championships this year, and I'm so excited to add this shiny Top 8 pin to my collection! This is how you bait me into playing three drafts in 1 day. My decks from The Depleted Lands, Tresserhorn Gardens, and Compost Cube.

Had a great time talking about Cube on Untapped Libraries. I feel like I can get in the weeds with fellow cube heads sometimes and it was refreshing to step back and talk about my favorite way to play Magic in a broader way. untappedlibraries.com/episode-009-... @untappedlibraries.bsky.social

Bo ssam, momofuku style. Finally getting some results from the fermentation station, making a pumpkin seed miso sauce and home made kimchi

The fermentation will continue until morale improves. Doing some tasting, mixing, and cleaning. Mostly things are coming along well! The misos started back in May are developing particularly well. I'm learning a lot.

Experimenting with trying to make a rice wine. First koji was cultured on rice, then mixed with more cooked rice and water, held in a hot water bath for a day to sweeten. Finally inoculated with yeast and airlocked At the least hopefully I'll make some rice vinegar and have lees for pickle projects

Started my second batch of shoyu, using yellow peas and oats as an experiment. It's interesting to see side by side with the batch started over a month ago which is well on its way.

Made some pretty good pork chops for dinner last night, along with some sourdough. Best part was the quick sauce from deglazing the garlic, herb, and butter baste with rice wine.

Highlights from INW Cube Fest 2025: stones and stone soup

Spent a long weekend in a cabin with 7 friends drafting 8 cubes. My cube highlight was drafting this brutal control deck, getting another 3-0 in 100 Ornithopters, and winning this sick trophy pin, hand-made by @andy.luckypaper.co

Getting ready for a four day Magic excursion. I'm bringing the magic of microbes. Also a Cube, that's kind of obligatory.

After 5 years of podcasting about Magic and Cube Andy and I are finally setting up a Patreon to hire an editor and keep the show sustainable. I'm so excited for the new show we're recoding for supporters "Magic Doesn't Exist" about anything but Magic. www.patreon.com/c/LuckyPaper...

Adding veggie spring rolls to my list of go-to's to bring to a party. They're easy to make and eat, tasty, fit most diets, and boy do I love just julienning a big pile of vegetables.

I have eaten the steak that was in the fermentation chamber and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me it was delicious so white and so mold