A benefit of not having anyone over for Christmas dinner is we can do wild, special food experiments. So we’re making Sous Vide Smoked Brisket for Christmas dinner. Method 1 with liquid smoke.
The front yard California fuchsias (Epilobium canum) are still flowering and providing forage to the hummingbirds. I really need to cut these back but…. the hummingbirds! And other small pollinators!
And here’s the final caramel. They’re perfect. 🤗
Annual caramel making. These seem 👌and perfectly plastic. Here’s a series of photos showing sugar mixture color at ~300°F, 320°F, near 340°F, after cream & butter added, and cooling to finish. Stressful making these as one errant crystal can cause it all to crystallize.
Black Phoebe! These flycatchers are elusive in our backyard.
Unidentified hummingbird enjoying rosemary flowers today. Maybe a Black Chin. Doesn’t seem to have the colorations of an Anna’s.
Split Pea Soup made with a ham hock! Love the cold season 🥰
Just watched the latest Star Trek: Discovery. Did not expect these twists! 😲Helps I don’t watch the “Next Time…” scenes. 🖖
House Sparrows frenetically bathing under the mandarin this morning.
Front yard: today and April 19. I cleaned up a lot of it today. This yard of cultivated native plants is so much more rewarding than a lawn.
Pulling out grass from the cultivated native sage is exhausting. At least I’m perfumed with sage now.
Currently reading: Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman 📚
The Annie Cat maximizing sunlight.
Last year this was not our view into the backyard from the house. Now we regularly see White Crowns, House Sparrows, European Collared Doves, Scrub Jays, and less often Lesser Gold Finches. Thanks, bird feeder! What this means for spring/summer tree fruit harvest… 😬
New bird in our backyard! Yellow-rumped Warbler. A pair was feasting on our cultivated California Grapes that now have raisins.
Finished reading: Peculiar Peril by Jeff VanderMeer ★★★★☆📚
December 2nd, 2013: at the Dresden Christmas Market.
Partner made Naan today (along with Turkey Tikka Masala).
macOS Big Sur TimeMachine and Bootable External Drives
If you have any bootable APFS containers on an external drive, macOS Big Sur will not allow you to assign any of the containers on that drive to TimeMachine. I had to delete my SuperDuper! volumes, but SuperDuper! doesn’t work yet on Big Sur anyway. Here goes another reorg of my external drives! Hope I don’t need to buy another. But dang TimeMachine on an SSD is incredibly fast.