davepolaschek

Ingredients

• 2 pounds rhubarb (5-6C), chopped
• 1 C sugar (or a little less)
• 1 pint (500ml) heavy cream
• 1 box yellow cake mix, made to directions

Directions

• Make cake mix and put it in cake pan
• Mix rhubarb and sugar well
• Pour rhubarb mix over cake
• Pour cream over top
• Bake 45-60 minutes at 350F (longer if the rhubarb is frozen)

Notes

• A 9x13 inch cake pan works. Smaller and you might have to make two cakes.
• The time is highly variable. I had two different ovens, both with accurate thermostats, one of which finished this cake in 45 minutes very reliably, the other of which always took longer (55-60 minutes). No idea why.

#recipes #dessert #rhubarb

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This is one of my “pre-mise en place” recipes. Earlier in life, I didn't generally prep ingredients ahead of time, but rather prepped each as it was needed. This will work with some recipes (like this one), but in general, leads to chaos in the kitchen.

Ingredients

• 1 Tbsp bacon grease
• ½ sweet onion, diced
• 1 large carrot, cut into coins (5-6mm, ¼ inch thick)
• 2 medium yellow or red potatoes, cubed
• 1 large Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored, and cubed
• 2 pork chops, 12-18mm, ½-¾ inch thick
• salt and pepper to taste
• ½ cup apple juice
• 1 tsp Chinese five-spice
• 1 tsp Wondra flour

Directions

• Begin heating a cast-iron skillet to sauté temperature with bacon grease in it.
• Dice the onion, and toss it in.
• Slice the carrot into coins, toss them into the skillet and stir.
• Cube a couple spuds. In they go. Stir.
• Peel, core, and cube a large Granny Smith apple. Into the pan. Stir.
• Unwrap and pat the pork-chops dry. Lightly season with salt and pepper.
• Move vegetables to the edges of the pan, and put in the pork chops.
• Put the veg on top of the chops.
• Add apple juice.
• Lid the skillet and lower the heat. Let simmer for 6 minutes.
• Flip the pork-chops, add five-spice
• Move veg back on top of chops, lid again. Simmer for 3-7 minutes, until meat is still just pink in the center.
• Pull meat and veg from the pan, and make a pan-gravy with the juice using 1 tsp of Wondra flour.
• Serve and enjoy!

Feeds: 2

Note that you can put the skillet on a grill if you want to cook this for tailgating. In that case, it's probably better to prep all the ingredients ahead of time.

#recipe #mains #pork

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Ingredients

• 1 pound pork shoulder (aka pork butt), ground coarsely
• 2 tsp minced garlic
• ½ Tbsp paprika
• ½ tsp fennel seeds, toasted and ground
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp black pepper, ground
• ¼ tsp cayenne pepper
• ⅛ tsp anise
• 2 tsp parsley flakes
• 1 Tbsp red wine

Directions

• Cube pork into 1 inch (25mm) cubes and grind coarsely
• Toast the fennel seeds in a cast-iron skillet until lightly browned, and then grind them in a mortar and pestle or a spice grinder.
• Place all ingredients in a medium mixing bowl and mix
• Stuff into casings if desired, or form into patties, and grill

Notes

• The ratio of lean and fat in most pork shoulder today is too lean for this sausage, so if you have a little extra fat to add, that will give a better flavor. I generally put in a tablespoon or so of chilled bacon fat.
• The coarser grinding plate on my KitchenAid stand mixer is just about perfect for grinding the pork for this sausage.
• I didn't think the small amount of red wine would make a huge difference in the taste, but it does. Prefer a lighter-bodied and less tannic wine. Chianti (aka Sangiovese) is good. Pinot noir is ok. Cabernet Sauvignon is way too tannic for this.

#recipe #mains #pork

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Charlie's Cafe Exceptionale was a fixture in Minneapolis for most of its nearly fifty years. It was a favorite of my mom's, and she remembered the potato salad most of her life. I found the recipe for their potato salad on the web some time in 2005 (which is about when that recipe page disappeared from the web) and made a copy of it for myself. Shortly thereafter I made a batch of the potato salad for tailgating at a St. Paul Saints game, and took some to my mom the next day. She proclaimed it, “pretty darned close!”

The menu at Charlie's listed the potato salad as an appetizer, rather than as a side. For many people, the potato salad was the reason for their visit, though mom said that it went well with their small roast-beef sandwiches, which were roasted beef tenderloin with onions cooked just short of caramelized on the grill, topped with a dollop of horseradish sauce and served on a soft roll.

Here's the story of the recipe from the original web-page:

The true story of this recipe is that it came to my mother, who got it from her friend Candy who once dated the chef at Charlie's restaurant. Now you have to know, Candy was a knock-out back in the day. She was a hat model and entertained with celebrities who came through Minneapolis. She was, and is a hell of a lot of fun. Charlie's Cafe potato salad recipe was a closely guarded secret and several recipes exist out there; but this one is the real thing. You can check with a local author, who has just published a book on minneapolis restaurants and you'll find her version of the recipe at the StarTribune site. But folks who have had Candy's recipe and the origional as served at Charlie's, say they recognize the taste as authentic. And who's recipe are you going to believe? As mother says, "That chef was going to give out the real recipe for a piece of ass."

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For more on Charlie's, see More on Charlie's.

Originally posted at http://home.covad.net/~robtschlem/HOWITGOES/C719764249/E654488000/ but that's been gone from the net for over two decades.

Makes: a LOT. If you don't have a 5 quart (or larger) mixing bowl, you want to see if you can borrow one.

Ingredients

• 12 medium eggs, boiled, chilled, peeled and chopped
• 5 pounds red potatoes, peeled, cubed, boiled and chilled
• 2 bunches of green onions, chopped
• 16 oz sour cream
• 16+ oz of mayonnaise
• 4 oz jar pimentos, drained
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp white pepper

Notes

• Mix it all up and let it chill. It's best if chilled overnight.
• Without the pimentos, this is not Charlie's Potato Salad
• The mayonnaise measurement is approximate, but starting with the same amount as the sour cream and then adding about ¼ cup more should get you pretty close.
• Potato salad is best if chilled overnight. It will set-up some, so the next day you may need to add a bit more mayo to thin it. It's better to make it thinner the night before, as it will dry out while chilling overnight. Almost nobody gets it exactly right on the first try.

Directions

Eggs:

• If not using medium eggs, use 10 large eggs, or 6-8 extra-large eggs.
• Use the oldest eggs you have on hand. Older eggs boil better and peel easier.
• Boil the eggs separately from the potatoes. Both need to be chilled, so starting with the eggs means you can cut up the potatoes while the eggs are cooking
• Get a big pan of water at a rolling boil.
• Add the eggs by lowering them gently into the boiling water with a slotted spoon.
• When the water is back at a boil, you can reduce the heat.
• Room temperature eggs take about 10 minutes. If they're cold from the fridge, expect 15-20 minutes. Slightly overcooked is better than undercooked.
• Drain the eggs and put them into a different pan or bowl. Put the coldest water you have over the eggs in the bowl to cool them. I typically add an amount of ice about the same volume as the eggs, then top up with water. When all the ice is melted (30 minutes to an hour, depending on room temperature), drain the eggs and put them into the fridge to chill for at least an hour.

Potatoes

• Cut them into the same size chunks. First quarter lengthwise, then cut crosswise into roughly cubic chunks. End pieces, where the potato is narrower, should be slightly longer than the pieces nearer the center, so they all mass roughly the same.
• You will need a huge pot with a lot of water to boil this many potatoes. I think I used a 3 gallon pot, but perhaps a 5 gallon one. Do not overcook them. Test with a fork to get them cooked, but still too hard for mashing.
• Drain and rinse the potatoes in a strainer with cold water to stop them cooking, and chill immediately. If the potatoes are not completely cold when you add mayonnaise to them, the mayo will separate. Also, salad dressing, such as Miracle Whip, is not a valid substitution.
• After chilling, if the potatoes are underdone, you can microwave them to cook them a little more, but you will need to chill them again.

Mixing:

• Put all the ingredients into a huge bowl all at once. This makes a very large batch, about 5 quarts. Mix with large strokes, sweeping from the bottom to the top; try not to break the potatoes. Mix well, and adjust the seasonings or add more mayo.

#recipe #Minneapolis #history

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Earlier in 2025, I read an article about the MomBoard and thought that was a pretty damned good idea. So I started putting pieces together.

The hardware

I grabbed an old Raspberry Pi 3b, which I had originally gotten as a Pi-Hole back when I was living in Minnesota. I built a wooden box to hold it, plus an eInk display I picked up and a cheap USB-powered fan which turns out to be unneeded.

The software

Software-wise, I installed vdirsyncer and khal and configured them so I could fetch my calendar events from iCloud (you need to make an application-specific password to get that to work). Note that I would not do this again, as vdirsyncer is no longer supported and pimsync isn't quite ready for primetime. Also, both that and khal are python applications, which leads rapidly to dependency hell.

I wrote some PHP code to massage the text around to make it look like I wanted, and then I modified WaveShare's sample code to put those massaged lines of text on the screen (I scaled up their 20-point courier font to a 36/40 point font so I could read the text from a little farther away, too).

Note that the khal configuration got tweaked, adding agenda_day_format = [newline] in order to disable the day headers, and then I tweaked the event_format (or was it agenda_event_format?) so it would display the date on each event. I wish there was an easier way to go back to the default configuration so I could diff the configs.

I also needed to make a shell script to call everything. As it's going to be called by systemd (unless it's not), the script needs to make sure it's got the correct working directory. I also did set -e to make sure that the script exits if some command within it errors.

Finally, after running things for a while, the epd code that displays things started crashing. Turns out the problem was curly-quotes in both my Todo.txt as well as in some calendar entries. So I run everything through iconv(1) before handing it off to the epd app to display.

Systemd?

After fiddling with systemd for a few days, and determining that vdirsyncer and khal both need to be run as me (as I installed them within my user, rather than system-wide, because python dependencies suck). It's possible to do that with systemd, but it's a lot more pain than I'm after, so I dumped that approach.

rc.local

Simpler is better. I put a call to my do-cal.sh script in rc.local. Initially that had problems due to running as root, rather than me, so vdirsyncer wasn't picking up where my calendar lives. So I added the following line to rc.local: /bin/su -c "/home/davep/shop-calendar/do-cal.sh" - davep

That did the trick, running my script as me, and everything seemed to work just fine. After a few mornings of manually shutting down the pi after the update was done, I put the sudo shutdown now back into my shell script, but after a sleep 300 so that I have a couple minutes to get into the pi should something go wrong.

As for controlling when the pi boots up to update, I'm using a cheap lamp-timer from the hardware store. It powers the pi up early in the morning, and then shuts off the power after about a half-hour (the smallest on-time possible with this timer).

Getting the time synced

I also discovered that I need to wait for the Pi’s clock to be set correctly, so I had to add code to the script to loop until /run/systemd/timesync/synchronized exists. But I also ordered a RTC shield from MicroCenter so that the pi doesn't have to ask someone else for the time.

Looking back

As for the fan, after getting everything up and running, I determined that the steady-state CPU temperature with the box closed up and the fan running was about 35°︎C, and with the fan disabled about 51°︎C, which is still well within the safe operating range. I’ve left the fan in the box, as I may need it after a couple years worth of dust accumulates. I may add a display of the CPU temperature taken mid-script to the output.

Hat-tip to SystemSix

John Calhoun also did SystemSix which I read about before starting this, but couldn’t remember until after I was mostly done. But John’s art may well have been the bit that planted the seed that became my project.

#tech #calendar #piProjects

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Back in Minnesota, I originally made a shop stool from an offcut of spalted elm that I bought to make my low workbench. I haven’t been using that stool much lately, and was getting tired of tripping over it in the shop.

With my back surgery earlier this year, plus getting a new mattress that would properly support my back, I had a new problem. The mattress is too tall, and when I try to put on my socks in the morning, I will slip off the edge of the mattress if I’m not careful. I thought about my shop stool, and realized if I cut the legs down by about a foot, it would work perfect.

So I did. I took about a foot off the legs, cut the old stretchers free, drilled a few new holes, and remounted the (shortened) stretchers. Re-tabled the stool (getting all three legs equal length and sloped correctly so they sit flat on the floor) and that’s the finished project. Took me parts of two days, and works great for sitting on while I put on my socks in the morning.

#woodworking #reuse #stool #project

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Ingredients

• 12 oz bowtie noodles
• 1 cup Olive Garden Italian dressing
• ½ cup mayonnaise
• ½ tsp basil
• 5 cups assorted vegetables (diced cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, matchstick carrots, peas, black olives)
• 1 cup diced pepperoni or salami

Directions

• cook noodles according to package directions
• drain and rinse noodles with cold water until completely cool
• in a large salad bowl, blend salad dressing, mayonnaise, and basil
• stir in noodles, assorted vegetables and meat
• cover and chill

Servings: 8

#recipe #pasta #salad

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I've mentioned to a few people that I'm not planning on moving to MacOS or iOS 26 when Apple ships those. This attempts to collect some of my reasons for that stance. Not that things are organized by how I thought of them, not most important to me (at least not yet).

Continuing keyboard issues

The keyboard in iOS used to be pretty usable for me. Not as good as a physical keyboard, but during the three-and-a-half years I lived iOS-only, I got pretty adept at using the keyboard, and didn't have too many problems with it. But over time, Apple has done things attempting to fix problems for other people which have made the keyboard worse for me.

Dropping two keys pressed in rapid succession

If you type two keys rapidly on iOS (such as touch-typing “the”, when the “th” come very rapidly because they're on different hands), iOS simply throws them away. You get a solo “e.” This also bites me very frequently on “ng” at the end of a word, and I get a lot of words like “runni” when autocarrot generally mangles. This got noticeably worse in 2022 or 2023.

Slow autocarrot when it goes back multiple words

As you're typing, the “window” for autocarrot has grown, often past the capabilities of the device to keep up. On my iPad Air 5th Gen, when I'm typing rapidly on the on-screen keyboard, autocarrot will sometimes look back two or three words to make a correction, but I've typed multiple characters before it decides to make the change, so I end up with a word that's back a couple words getting selected, and rather than getting it changed, it ends up being what I'm currently typing, with words that should have been before it now after it, because autocarrot moved back.

Smaller bezels on everything

I have big hands. When I buy motorcycle gloves, I have to buy either 3XL or 4XL gloves in order to have them fit correctly. For work gloves in the yard, 3XL is also the minimum. As Apple continues to shrink the bezels on all of their devices, I get more false-hits from the hand holding the device. I've put a thick case on both my phone and my iPad, and still get false clicks near the edge of the screen which screw up whatever I'm trying to do at the time.

No Home Button

As I age, I have noticed that I'm developing a slight tremor in my hands. It's not bad, but it's enough to make it impossible to me to swipe reliably on an iOS device. If I'm trying to swipe up to get home, I frequently get a “swipe and a half” which takes me to the task switcher. Or a too-short swipe which activates one of the controls so many apps insist on putting across the bottom of the screen. The older I get, the more I need an actual Home button. I get by okay with the Assistive Touch home button, but that requires constant repositioning because there's always some control underneath it, and while it does move somewhat intelligently when the keyboard appears (for example), it doesn't always, and sometimes it just does the completely wrong thing.

Liquid Glass

The straw that broke the camel's back was Liquid Glass. Apple announced this for iOS and MacOS 26. I looked at a few examples and I just can't see the controls. There are supposedly ways to cut down on the effect to make the controls more visible, but this is a just plain stupid idea. Yes, content is important, but when you are working on content, the controls to work on it are also hugely important, and having them fade into the contents is... stupid. I may be looking at the past through rose-colored glasses, but I think SJ would've thrown a fit and fired people until this idea went away. It's a real shame Tim Apple doesn't have a similar sense of aesthetics.

#computers #tech #apple

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