Mike D

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Some pretty leafs for your timeline

Brunch Day Vegetarian Benedict #21: Florentine Eggs Benedict Step 1 - Review the list of Eggs Benedict Recipes left to make Step 2 - See that most of them require some advanced planning Step 3 - Wonder why I haven't made the Florentine Eggs Benedict yet? After all it's just regular eggs benedict, but the Canadian bacon is replaced with sautéed spinach. Step 4 - Buy some spinach and English muffins.

Brunch in just a few easy steps

Been looking forward to this for a while now.

This carry on joke was worth the journey

Having a Gumbo Enchanted Recipe #10: Tiana's Gumbo, Surf and Turf Gumbo with Stewed Okra, Chicken, and Shrimp "Gumbo, a classic Louisiana dish, warms the heart and brings people of all stripes together." - Thibaud Villanova, Enchanted Recipes With the exception of Ratatouille there might not be a Disney movie where cooking, and food bringing people together, is more of a central theme than…

You gotta dig a little deeper...

Bella Notte Enchanted Recipe #9: Date Night Dinner, spaghetti speciale heavy on the meats-a-ball-a. "Lady and the Tramp features Disney's most iconic romantic dinner when the two dogs1 share a plate of spaghetti at Tony's Restaurant. Here's how to cook you own delicious spaghetti and meatballs." - Thibaud Villanova, Enchanted Recipes It's unclear exactly where Disney's Lady and the Tramp is set.

This is the night...

Photo Friday Dark Mode

Night of Illumination at Garden In The Woods

I was going to write a post about breaking my phone, but I chose not to relive the stress.

Final Exam One of the outcomes of cooking recipes from The Complete Cooking for Two Cookbook by America's Test Kitchen was signing up for test recipes. Over the summer I made the testing version of Black Pepper Steak Fried Rice and they have since published the recipe on their website. I had some steak in the freezer and I still have plenty of the Shaoxing wine left over so this week I made the fried rice again using the published recipe.

Fried Rice Follow up

Runsploring October I've deferred my goal of running 15 miles from Framingham to Boston until the spring. My knee is back to 100%, but the time I took off and our busy calendar means I probably can't train up to 15 miles before the snow flies. I sort of floundered without any running plan and haven't done much running in October. I probably would have just stopped running all together until the spring, but my running app reminded me that I have gone running at least once a week for the last 25 weeks.

Not much running in Oct, but I made sure to add some lines to my heat map

The Azure US West issues today are clearly my fault. When AWS went down yesterday I said (out loud), " This doesn't really affect us because we went all in on Azure." Sorry about that.

Some of column A Enchanted Recipe #8: Prince Ali's Kebabs, Sumac-Spiced Lamb and Grilled Vegetable Skewers When Prince Ali' makes his sensational entrance into Agrabah and the Genie sings about the details of the grand entourage, we see cooks holding out fat skewers of spiced meats. Now you can make these delicious kebabs that are fit for a prince! - Thibaud Villanova, Enchanted Recipes…

All of Column B

Mother Knows Soup Enchanted Recipe #7: Mother Gothel's Soup from Tangled, Hazelnut Parsnip Soup "Alone in her secluded tower; Rapunzel sometimes turns to cooking to relieve the boredom, but this hazelnut soup is a special treat that Mother Gothel prepares for her. In the film we catch a glimpse of parsnips in the witch's basket." - Thibaud Villanova, Enchanted Recipes Another soup? Yes I went with another soup.

"I don't know why, but overall it just smells like the color brown."

Getting ready to hear some music

Boston has had a lot of practice at this #NoKings thing.

Great turn out at the #NoKings Framingham,MA. Lots of energy and lots of cheering. "No Kings!"

They can't all be Enchanting

Bourgeois See as Bourgeois Do During the last week a new song dropped from Dessa. And since this blog became a Dessa music review site for a month back in May, reviewing all of the songs from Bury the Lede, I felt it was only r…

My quick review of the new song from @dessadarling.bsky.social #Dessa #Camelot mikenmitch.wordpress.com/2025/10/16/b...

Thanks for asking. Just got new requirements a couple hours after deploying to prod.

Yesterday I went to the menu tasting for my daughter's upcoming wedding. Trying to remember food from previous weddings (including mine) and realized it isn't the food people remember, it's the dancing.

Let’s Do Lunch Benedict #20: Mushroom Benedict, Damn Good Food Yesterday was a day of cooking1. For dinner I made a beautiful grilled fish, Kira baked an apple pie with apples we picked on Saturday, and for our lunch I made a mushroom eggs benedict dish from the original Cookbook-of-the-month: Damn Good Food. I don't think I've made this recipe again since that…

Yesterday I made this amazing Mushroom Benedict. Today we had frozen pizza for dinner. I contain multitudes.

Figaro’s Lament Enchanted Recipe #5: Geppetto’s Grilled Fish, Whole Grilled Fish with Herbs and Rustic Vegetable Hash Enchanted Recipe #6: Compound Butter "Bursting with pride in his wooden boy, Geppetto decides to prepare a feast to celebrate Pinocchio's first day of school. Here is the recipe for the delicious grilled fish and vegetables that the old man cooks." - Thibaud Villanova, …

When you fish upon a star...

Prepared a Very Normal Way Enchanted Recipe #3: Crème de la Crème à la Edgar, Cream of Jerusalem Artichoke with Nutmeg Enchanted Recipe #4: Cheese Crackers "In the film, we watch as Edgar prepares a special cream for the cats — before secretly seasoning it with sedatives. Here's a delicate recipe for Crème de la Crème à la Edgar, minus the sedatives that's designed for a human palate!" - Thibaud Villanova, …

Everybody's picking up on that feline beat...

Being Picky MAdventure #8: Red Apple Farms, Phillipston With all of the out of state travel in September we didn't explore our new home state very much, but today we drove a little over an hour to an apple orchard in central Massachusetts. Eric and Melanie joined us for our adventure today, which is fun because I think the last time I was apple picking Melanie was also there - probably when she was 10.

A is for Apple

New Dessa song dropped today. Currently on repeat.

Happy Pizzamas! Tomorrow is the last day of Pizzamas 2025. Pizzamas is an annual, hard-to-explain, Nerdfighter fundraiser selling even-harder- to-explain, Pizza John merchandise to raise money for Partners in Heal…

My Road to Nerdfighteria story mikenmitch.wordpress.com/2025/10/09/h... #NFstories #DFTBA

The Case for Scooby-Dooing: Solving SQL Server Mysteries Like a Pro– Scooby Dooing Episode 8 If there’s one thing every Scooby-Doo episode teaches us, it’s that solving mysteries is a team skill. The gang doesn’t stumble onto answers by luck (well… except when Scooby and Shaggy fall into secret passages). They solve the case because they know how to spot the clues and put them together. Performance tuning in SQL Server works the same way. If you don’t know where to look—or how to interpret the trail of breadcrumbs—you’ll spend more time running from shadows than unmasking the real villain.

The Case for Scooby-Dooing: Solving SQL Server Mysteries Like a Pro– Scooby Dooing Episode 8- Performance tuning isn’t about luck—it’s about following the breadcrumbs SQL Server leaves behind. The trick is knowing where to look and how to read the clues. I even built a table of clues + Scooby…

How do you measure measure a blog

Mahnomin-na Benedict #19: Mahnomin Autumn Benedict Mahnomin is the Ojibwe word for wild rice and I've been cooking with it for over a decade. I bought this wild rice as we were leaving MN and it is finally the right season to make some wild rice cakes with craisins and pecans1. I've been planning this one for a while now, but I still had to do some last-minute…

With practice I can now make a pretty good Hollandaise in about 10 minutes