You do occasionally visit Boston Public Library, yes?
If not, get on it! You were raised in and on libraries. They are in your blood!

You called me out rightly on that one! I’ve never actually been inside the BPL
- it’s on the Green line, the cantankerous part of the subway - and I just
haven’t been out there. Somerville’s is pretty limited - ( Read more... )

 "I had never been in a room of people who were going to say 'yes' to me before."

My friend and I crammed into a rush hour crowded train out of Kendall station and rode together the entire way home, to my surprise realization, it was the first time we'd actually made the entire trip together.

We talked about how we'd started in theater -- he'd been ( Read more... )

Recipe: Storm in the Garden

Ingredients

• 10 ml lavender vodka
• 10 ml orange vodka
• 10 ml hibiscus vodka
• 200 ml ginger ale
• ice

500 ml rosé wine, or even white zinfandel.
300 ml red wine, not too dry -- Fiore Strada's tempranillo is awesome.
50 g sugar or 10 g splenda
5 chopped strawberries, as ripe as you can get them, or 2 small or 1 large nectarines or peaches.
80 ml of orange flavored vodka or 40 ml of triple sec
5 ml orange flower water.

Put it all together and shake in a ( Read more... )

When vacant Blitz-bombed lots were still a thing: tiny wildflowers. - @GreatDismal

I was thinking this morning about how many great moments slip through the cracks, cracks in horrors and tragedies like the London Blitz, cracks in our own attention, moments that go unnoticed, the little changes leading up to a change in season.

@GreatDismal ( Read more... )

If there’s one thing that has always made me annoyed running a web hosting and services business it was the low level details of configuring virtual hosts in Apache and every other web server on the planet.

It’s all scriptable, but it’s error prone and completely graceless.

Users want to be able to define their own rules.

Apache configuration ( Read more... )

This is a red velvet cake made in a WW2 era way, using beets for moisture and color. The trick to getting good color rather than mud is to keep the batter acidic: lemon and buttermilk and a complete lack of alkaline leavening are what make this recipe unusual.

Boil two medium beets and puree. (You need one cup)

Cream two sticks of butter with a cup ( Read more... )

Cayenne and Sweet Onion Hot Sauce
8 large (15 cm, 8 in) ripe red cayenne peppers, roasted over a flame (or in an oven)
3 medium onions, baked in their skins at 120 °C (250 °F) for 1 hour.
40 g brown sugar (5 tsp)
25 ml apple cider vinegar
a splash of orange juice or a little zest
a little salt

Scrape the blackened skin from the cayennes, though be careful ( Read more... )

For kyroraz


( Read more... )

Chop four slices of bacon and start cooking them over medium heat.

Chop one small onion, three small carrots, two sticks of celery.

Add them to the cooking bacon, with the fat.

Let them cook until the onions start to go transparent.

Add a cup or two of beer.

Add 3 or 4 fingerling potatoes, cut into small bite sized pieces.

Add water to cover and let this ( Read more... )