Every now and then, my vegetable gardening choices pay off aesthetically, too.

This afternoon we finished filling the raised bed, harvested strawberries and bolting greens, and sowed beans and summer herbs. No wonder I’m tired.

Startup Hell by @caitlinrozakis.bsky.social

Was just forcibly reminded why we don’t nickname the wildlife, even if they are nesting right above our downspout—predation is part of nature, but it can be a real bummer. Here’s to you, Mrs Robinson.

My New Year’s resolution continues to be a winner—the roasted strawberry pie (with added biscuit topping) from The Book on Pie turns out to be worth all the time and effort, after all!

From the “by the time I’m finished with this, I’ll know how to do it” files, I can now very strongly recommend against starting the roasted strawberry part of a roasted strawberry pie at 9 pm.

Espagnole, béchamel, velouté, tomate, hollandaise, and mayonnaise

I know that a plant isn’t truly dead until it’s warm and dead, but it feels bad to have probably lost a decade of growth on this fig tree! There are some leaves coming up near the roots, but I am losing hope about getting a crop this summer.

I am so excited for my preorder to arrive in August!

Today is your last chance to get in on the $48 labradorite pendants! wyrdingstudios.com/products/48-...

I just got trolled pretty hard by a mockingbird; not pictured are the Baltimore oriole and the white-breasted nuthatch that my Merlin app also briefly suggested.

John Sterling’s passing has hit me surprisingly hard. He was such a steady presence in my childhood (and young adulthood, and middle age) and a unique voice at a time when those were becoming rarer and rarer.

I’m still keeping up my New Year’s resolution to try a new recipe every month. April was the karpatka from Dobre Dobre, which is basically giant cream puff in the form of a cake. I was inspired by a King Arthur recipe to dollop some cherry jam in with the mousseline filling, and it was delicious!

Spending yesterday afternoon down the shore and postponing seed-starting and bread-baking until after work today was 100% the right call (even if my bread is a bit sad and over-proofed as a result).

Now that I’ve had the experience of removing a tick from behind my knee at 2 am, I have to give it 0 stars. Don’t procrastinate on your tick checks!

I am so grateful to @clairewillett.bsky.social for extolling the virtues of FreeTaxUSA! It was so much easier and more pleasant to use than TurboTax (plus, it saved my parents from having to buy a new computer on short notice just to install TurboTax).

I'm moonscrolling

I have been crying with relief since the splashdown.

My Human Barometer superpower probably just saved a bunch of our garden tools and other supplies from getting soaked/soggy/rusty in an unexpected storm, so I guess my central nervous system has earned its keep for once.

In honor of Opening Day, it’s a bun(d)t cake!

Went down to Sandy Hook this afternoon in hopes of seeing the seals before they head north again (there’s a spot in the bay where they like to haul out on the rocks at low tide) and also got to see my first osprey of the season! All this on top of last week’s (blurrily photographed) oystercatcher.

I did a bit of recipe testing for this book, and I hit that preorder button so fast—I am really looking forward to baking all the recipes in it when my copy arrives!

It was like a breath of fresh air to watch a team who was actually out there playing loose and having fun win the WBC.

Baseball is supposed to be fun. If you are not playing it in a manner that results in having fun, you just seem like a weirdo honestly. You just are out there with your little pants and your helmet and your comically large glove

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Happy Pi Day!

Yesterday, it was 85 degrees and we had thunderstorms overnight. Today, it’s snowing. Just a perfectly normal March.

Greetings, new friends! You may know me as an author, a prolific Bluesky poster and 4th place finisher on So You Call That Dancing? But you might not know that my partner Judith (@mzpress) and I have an online arts bookstore that's growing every day. Full inventory here: mzs.press/EVERYTHING-W...

Thinking about this again and how exhausting it is to have to constantly be vigilant about this kind of stuff on top of everything else that’s going on. The big funnel is REALLY big.

I looked at that Polish food blogger’s social posts at the right/wrong time. I really liked the recipes, but I just saw some video that looked like it might be at the start of a makaron z truskawkami to MAHA or perhaps a rosół to radicalization pipeline. I’m kind of bummed out about it.

Calls made (although I need to circle back with @kim.senate.gov on Monday because the voicemail wasn’t working). Now to figure out something to do that isn’t doomscrolling.

I really enjoyed this one!

Y'all have raised over $7k so far! Keep the donations coming!

Trying to beat out the blizzard and get some milkweed seeds in the ground. I’ll also be trying some winter sowing in cranberry juice jars to hedge my bets.

I’ve been considering getting a waffle maker for a bit and there doesn’t seem to be much consensus in the reviews. I’m trying to decide between a big splurge-y All-Clad, a flippy Cuisinart model that is on a good sale this weekend, or the Hamilton Beach one @smittenkitchen.bsky.social swears by.

Thinking about how many cast members were themselves refugees and knowing that the outcome of the war was not certain at the time wrecks me every time I watch this scene.

That was mind blowing on so many levels, including how they created a set that complex and evocative on a Super Bowl halftime time scale.

Continuing with my New Year’s resolution to make at least one recipe I have never tried before every month, here’s the mirepoix for the Cook’s Country pasta e fagioli for two. The finished soup is tasty but not at all photogenic (I subbed dried beans for canned and overcooked them in the IP).

IMPORTANT OLYMPIC NEWS: THE POLISH FIGURE SKATING TEAM HAS A PLUSH PIEROGI

What drives me even more bonkers about the hallucinated references is that there are lots of citation generators out there if you don’t want to do it by hand! PubMed even has a button that will do it for you right there in the sidebar! You don’t need the software that confidently lies to your face!

Trying to untangle a hallucinated reference sure is a waste of time and an exercise in frustration. Sure, I knew academically (ha!) how bad it is, but I can’t find a paper to check whether the citation is correctly styled if the authors, journal, and DOI are all wrong! #AmEditing

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I may pop out again, but the aurora conditions aren’t looking promising here tonight. There’s enough cloud cover to really capture and reflect all the light pollution from the city.

Yes, I totally did impulse-buy a Dolly Parton frozen cheesecake for dessert tonight in honor of her birthday.

I was already on Team The Gambling Apps Are a Scourge, but finding out that people were betting on (read: against) my Mystery Hunt team feels pretty gross, actually!

Even if I really, really want pound cake, 10 pm is probably too late to start baking one when it’s a school night and all the butter is in the freezer, isn’t it?

“Is this a dagger which I see before me?” No, it’s a superscripted letter “t.” I suppose I do have to admire the scrappy, can-do spirit behind it all. #amediting

I always enjoy the portion of the Sheep to Shawl broadcast when they visit all the sheep in their pens and introduce them to the TV audience.

I’ve been idly watching the PA Farm Show animal competitions while waiting for the Sheep to Shawl rebroadcast and marveling at how fluffy they get all the cattle for the show ring. The grooming on the market (meat) lambs (closely shaved, except for the legs) is also fascinating to me.