Category Archives: Writing

Extra Learning

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With having or, more importantly, making time during the pandemic, I decided to use my time to take some classes and learn more. It helped getting rid of my cable TV in the fall of 2019.

Many Different Classes

I attended a few Creative Mornings Field Trips. They were about drawing and art, along with two different ones on making tortillas (corn and wheat). Another one had to do with creative writing.

Other classes were Marcy’s Sutton’s “Front-End Accessibility Masterclass.” It was a great class on how to make accessible HTML and CSS along with improving it with JavaScript when building websites and applications.

Food Related Classes and Books

Another event about the food I enjoyed in 2020 was the 2020 Fall Southern Foodways Symposium: Future of the South. That ran on Saturdays in October (3rd, 10th, 17th, and 24th) from 9:00 SM to noon central.

I have been learning about growing my own food, small scale farming, etc. I even purchased a fermenting class from a YouTube homesteaders channel I watch. It was a great class, and I’m looking forward to making more of my own ferments. I did a few ferments before I took the classes, but they didn’t turn out as well as I expected.

I’m looking forward to all the fresh veggies from the farmer’s market in the spring and during the summer too.

I read two books on fermenting too.

  • The Fermented Man – A year on the Front Lines of a Food Revolution by Derek Dellinger
  • The Noma Guide to Fermentation: Including Koji, Kombuchas, Shoyus, Misos, Vinegars, Garums, Lacto-ferments, and Black Fruits and Vegetables by Rene Redzepi and David Zilber
  • Do Preserve – Make Your own Jams, Chutneys, Pickles, and Cordials by Anja Dunk, Jen Goss, and Mimi Beaven

I even spent time learning about food, more specifically beans.

  • The Rancho Gordo Heirloom Bean Guide by Steve Sando and Julia Newberry
  • Cool Beans – The Ultimate Guide to Cooking with the World’s Most Versatile Plant-based Protein with 125 Recipes by Joe Yonan

Reading Creative and Comic Related Books

I have been reading many creative books, with many of them being graphic novels on making comics. Here are a few of those books.

  • Whatcha Mean, What’s a Zine? – The Art f Making Zines and Mini-comics by Mark Todd and Esther Pearl Watson
  • Elements of Fire – A Comic Anthology of Color! edited by Taneka Stotts
  • Cartooning – Philosophy, and Practice by Ivan Brunetti
  • Glenn Ganges in The River at Night by Kevin Huizenga
  • Drawing Book of Faces by Ed Emberley

One Odd Book

I even read a book on bee-keeping, which will help me when I get my own plot of land to grow food.

  • Do Bee-keeping – The Secret to Happy Honeybees by Orren Fox

Here’s to More Diverse Learning

So as you can see, since the beginning of 2020 and into 2021, I have been all over the place attempting to learn new things.

Enjoying the Extra Writing

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Since I started blogging again this year, I have noticed I’m enjoying the writing part. Keeping a daily schedule has been good and bad.

My Process

I have spent time first coming up with blog post ideas and then outlining them. Once I have done an outline or two, I start putting in a bit of the content as the first draft. Then on my walk’s I tend to work through ideas and figure out what I want to say. It’s been helpful getting the thoughts down in my head before typing them in blog posts.

Keeping the posts between a couple of hundred words and maybe 500 or 600 words has been helpful. My old style was to write long posts of a thousand to fifteen hundred words with code examples, etc. Doing these took many hours, a few days, or even weeks.

I still need to finish a few of the longer blog posts I started a year or more ago and get them out at some point. But right now, I’m working on writing every day and putting something new out.

Posting Every Day so Far this Year

It’s been interesting attempting to make sure to post everyday. The issue is more what else do I have or need to say at a given time.

Posting every day so far in January, it’s been nice to talk about what was happening on a given day. Or to recap what happened on a given day. Like the weekend lazy Saturday post a while ago or on Thursdays about Wednesday’s Inauguration.

So here’s to seeing how long I can keep writing/posting every day.

Might Slow Up on Posts

I’m not sure if I want to keep it up because of the time it has been taking. I think I could use the time to learn more modern CSS and JavaScript to help look for a front-end coding job.

Between outlining posts, thinking what I want to say, and writing the first draft of posts. Then coming back to posts to edit/finish them and then one last check before posting takes time. Even these shorter style posts are taking anywhere from an hour to three hours.

Or it might be a mix of code learning and blog posts, with some of them being about what I have learned.

Other Activities

I also need to keep time for my 100 Day Project wine bottle shape drawings or adding restaurants to Gotta Eat Here. Doing so helps for when it’s safe to travel. I want to have plenty of places to eat when I’m away.

I want to add some features like a map of all the places for a given location on a separate page. Doing it this way as not to slow up the downloading of the main list of restaurants. The maps feature needs more research for the best way to add them without cost to me.

I would like to make the website a progressive web application, too, at some point.

Doing All the Things

So here’s to making time to both write, learn to code, etc., while still getting time to relax too.

Veggie Stew

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Over the weekend (Saturday), I made a veggie stew. It might even be vegan, but I would have to check the ingredients on a few labels.

Let the Chopping Begin

I started out dicing up three medium-sized onions and got them cooking down in my cast iron skillet. I used two good olive oils to help soften them up. While the softening up was happening, I peeled and chopped up a head of garlic from the farmer’s market.

Ingredients

Once the garlic was in the pan, I added some salt, pepper, and spices. The spices were curry powder, cayenne, chipotle, smoked Spanish paprika, and Ancho chili powder. I then added dried basil, thyme, and oregano along with many turns of finely ground Szechuan peppercorns.

I let the spices cook a bit to intensify the flavor. Before adding the pound of Rancho Gordo heirloom Classic Cranberry Beans to my large stainless steel pot (16 quarts?).

Soaking Beans and Wild Rice

The dry Rancho Gordo beans started soaking three-hours before I started chopping my vegetables. I also soaked half a pound of Trader Joe’s wild rice separately.

Okay, it was probably between 14 and 15 ounces of bean because I put 50 of them in a small envelope in my wine cooler. The reason being I wanted to see at some point if I could grow my own beans.

Slow Cooking

I added the beans and then made sure they boiled for five minutes. Then turned them down to a simmer. I then went to read some more, lying on my sofa. About every twenty minutes or so got up to check on the beans and other vegetables and stir them. After about an hour, I added the soaked wild rice and it’s water to the pot.

Stirring While Reading and Writing Blog Posts

More reading, and I think outlining a blog post or two along with more stirring.  After another hour or so, I added in a 12-ounce package of Anson Mills Slow Roasted Farro. Before adding the farro, I made sure to presoak it for an hour or more.

Over the next hour or more, I let the beans, the wild rice, and the farro slowly cooking. I added the following a 4 ounce can of Trader Joe’s Fire Roasted Diced Green Chiles. Then I added a 13.75-ounce jar of Trader Joe’s Corm and Cile tomato-less Salsa. Followed later by a one 15.25 ounce can of Wegmans No Salt Added Whole Kernel Crisp’ N Sweet Corn.

At some point in all of this, I cooked up 10-ounces of Impossible Burger in my cast iron to then added to the pot too.

Oops, I forgot I chopped up a medium-sized head of fennel and cooked in my cast iron pan, and added it in at some point to my veggie stew.

All this needed time to meld together and get tasty.

Extra Notes

For the spices, I probably put in two tablespoons of each, give or take in a very large pot. I learned over time; I can add hot sauce for added flavor and heat later. Instead of putting n to many hot spices in, that got hotter as the water evaporated.

Leftovers

So now I’m eating it most days for one meal. I need to put some in the freer for later if there is any room.

Here’s to more large batch cooking on a slow Saturday to have good food and lots of leftovers.

Working at Making Better Use of My Time

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I need to start making better use of my time, which means not scheduling every minute. But when I’m out on a lunchtime walk, by starting to outline a blog post. Then on an evening walk working on what I want to say for the blog post. So when I get to writing the post, a lot of the work is done, and it will go faster.

By outlining or writing parts of my blog posts while walking or doing other things, I can get them done quicker. Or maybe even a few ahead when I have time. To make it easier for those times when I don’t make as much time and want to get something out there.

What to Use My Time Doing

I need to figure out what my next thing to learn is and spend time doing that. Be that cooking, farming, raising animals, tiny houses, new coding languages, etc. Or even how to relax or read more.

I have been watching many YouTube and other classes on how to raise my own food, be that plants or animals. Along with watching cooking videos for inspiration and different ways and things to cook.

My reading lately has been from beekeeping to comic books, creativity, to work/business-related. I’m attempting to get more diversified with my reading. Even read a few fiction books this last year or so, which I tend not to do much of before.

What I Have Noticed Taking Classes or Reading

I have noticed when taking training classes or reading an article. Taking handwritten notes has been great. Which tends to make it twice as long to watch or read something. A ten-minute video depending on the content could take 15 or 20 minutes to watch. With stopping and replaying parts to take notes from. I think I’m getting more out of them that way, but I wish it would go faster, is all.

Conclusion

My guess is this will be a work in progress as much of life is to make better use of my time with more to come over the year.

More Blogging this Year

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Over the last few weeks, I have been thinking I need to blog more to get things out of my head. While keeping track of things that happened in 2020. Along with things that will happen this year.

I used to write long blog posts that were way too long and needed code examples. But not too many posts at all in recent years. So it would take a day or even a week or a month to get it all done or sit in my drafts forever. Some are still there now.

To make it easier, I’m looking to write shorter pieces. About life, food, health, weight loss, walking, accessibility, learning, etc. And at the same time, attempting to keep them between five hundred and a thousand words.

I might even post a quick photo from my walking the neighborhood. Or what I’m eating or reading, etc., with a few words about what it is or why I’m posting it.

There might even be some posts with some of my drawings, but most likely not.

Or I could finish and post old drafts that I have lying around that need to get out into the world.

So look for more writing from me this year. I am looking to keep it going more often than once or twice a year.

So this post came in at 238 words, so it’s a good start to writing shorter posts.