John helped cook lunch today. We went to Bodner's Market, picked up some pork chops and used this recipe to make what he says the best recipe he has ever cooked. They were delicious.

Ingredients

• 3-4 pork chops
• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
• Seasoning: mix 1/2 tsp each of salt, black pepper, garlic powder and paprika

Instructions

• Bring the chops to room temperature. Pat dry.
• Rub both sides evenly with seasoning. Let it marinate while oil heats up.
• Heat oil in a pan on medium low until shimmering hot.
• Sear undisturbed for 4-5 minutes on one side.
• Flip and spoon melted butter over chops, cook for another 3-4 minutes (until the inside is at least 145F or 63C).
• Take it off heat and let it rest in the juices for 5 minutes before serving.

📷 Photo by John

Got a Ninja Foodi 9-in-1 for my birthday this year and it’s been great. Tonight I used it to make air roasted wings which John said are the "best wings in the world" and if I got a job at a restaurant and make these, people would come just for this. Here's the recipe I used:

Ingredients

• 2 lbs chicken wings
• 2 tsp smoked paprika
• 1.5 tsp garlic powder
• 1.5 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• black pepper, to taste
• 0.5 stick butter, melted
• 0.5 cup Frank's hot sauce

Instructions

• Season wings with paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, dried thyme, and black pepper.
• Air roast at 400F (200C) for 25-27 minutes, rotating halfway. I did about 27 minutes.
• While wings roast, mix together the melted butter and Frank’s hot sauce.
• When wings are done, transfer them to a stainless steel bowl and toss with the sauce.

Today I upgraded my long-standing chili recipe. Bit of a different spin but equally (if not even more) delicious. Corn remains of course, and I also added lean ground beef today.

Ingredients

• 400g lean ground beef
• 1 red bell pepper, diced
• 1 small yellow onion, diced
• 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil or grapeseed oil (I used grapeseed oil today)
• 1 680ml can Hunt's Tomato Sauce
• 1 540ml can chickpeas
• 1 540ml can six bean mix
• 1 341ml can corn
• 1 tbsp Italian seasoning
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• 1 tbsp Gochujang sauce
• 1 tbsp Sriracha sauce
• 1 packet Old El Paso taco mix

Instructions

Heat oil in a medium-sized pot over medium heat. Sautée onion and red pepper for about 8-10 minutes. In the meantime, in a bowl, mix the tomato sauce with the Italian seasoning, chili powder, Gochujang sauce and Sriracha sauce. After onion and pepper are sautéed, mix in ground beef and cook through until no pink remains. Add taco seasoning and mix well. Reduce heat to a simmer and add in the seasoned tomato sauce, beans, chickpeas and corn. Stir well and let simmer on low until serving. As in the previous recipe, you can serve with sour cream, shredded cheese and green onion. This recipe pairs really well with a nice crusty bread like French, Belgian or sourdough.

Serves 3 people.

Been neglecting this site, again. Going through my old entries and thoughts after my Buffalo Tomato post made me reflect. Life has been a whirlwind, that is my excuse. Plus, I have also been journaling in the iPhone native Journal app. That is until I tried something new recently. In fact I have now switched to Daylio pretty much exclusively for the past couple of weeks and I really like it. It has the advantage over Apple’s Journal app that it is also a mood tracker. I customized the moods and the activities by loading the full emotion wheel with the goal to challenge myself to best describe what I feel that day. I also like the subtle daily check-in reminders and weekly summaries. Apparently Nikki has been using this app for years.

Here is a ~100 calorie snack, if you like tomatoes as much as I do. I call it buffalo tomato.

Ingredients

• 2 medium tomatoes
• 1 tbsp chunky blue cheese
• 1 tsp Frank’s Red Hot sauce (original)

Instructions

Slice tomatoes to desired thickness. I like them cut thinner for this snack, to enjoy a few more bites. Arrange it on a plate, drizzle the chunky blue cheese all over it (I prefer Litehouse, you can get it at Walmart or wherever) and then add the Frank’s. That’s it! Enjoy!

Digitalizing my mom’s really old recipe of a traditional Hungarian dessert called Meter Cake.

Ingredients

• 4 egg yolks
• 250 g powdered sugar
• 100 ml lukewarm water
• 100 ml vegetable oil
• 250 g all‑purpose flour
• 20 g baking powder
• 4 egg whites, beaten stiff
• 40 g cocoa powder (for dark batter)
• 1 tbsp oil (for dark batter)
• 1 tbsp lukewarm water (for dark batter)
• 200 g powdered sugar (cream)
• 150 g butter (cream)
• 1 packet punch‑flavored pudding powder
• 1 tbsp milk (to mix pudding powder)
• 200 ml cold milk (to cook pudding)
• Chocolate glaze for finishing

Instructions

• Prepare the batter: Beat the egg yolks with powdered sugar until pale and fluffy. Slowly add lukewarm water and oil.
• Add dry ingredients: Mix in the flour and baking powder until smooth. Gently fold in the stiff egg whites.
• Divide and flavour: Split the batter into two equal parts. Leave one plain; to the other add cocoa, 1 tbsp oil, and 1 tbsp lukewarm water.
• Bake: Bake each batter separately in a greased loaf (őzgerinc) pan until set and lightly golden.
• Make the cream: Beat butter and powdered sugar until creamy. Mix pudding powder with 1 tbsp milk and a little sugar, then cook with 200 ml cold milk until thick. Let cool and combine with buttercream.
• Assemble: Slice both cakes along their ridges. Alternate white and dark slices, using the cream to glue them together.
• Finish: Pour chocolate glaze over the assembled loaf and chill until set.
• Serve: Slice diagonally to reveal the striped pattern.

Original Recipe

Négy tojássárgát 25 dkg porcukorral habosra keverünk, majd 1 dl langyos vízzel es ugyanannyi étolajjal lassan felenedjük. Most 25 dkg sima liszttel es 2 dkg sütőpotrral simára keverjük. Hozzáaujuk a 4 tojás kemény habját, és a tésztát két részre osztjuk. Egyik fele fehér, a másik fele barna lesz. A barnába 4 dkg kakaót, 1 kanál olajat, és 1 kanál langyos vizet teszünk, és a kétféle tésztát külön őzgerincformában megsütjük. A krémet így készítjük hozzá: 20 dkg porcukrot 15 dkg vajjal jól kikeverünk, kozzáadunk egy csomag puncsos pudingport, egy kanál tejjel és cukorral elkeverve, az egészet két deci hideg tejhez öntjük és állandó keverés mellett sűrüre főzzük. A tésztát bordánként felszeleteljük, és a krémmel úgy ragasztjuk egymáshoz, hogy tetszőleges hosszúságban egy fehér és egy barna tészta kerüljön egymás mellé. Ha mindezzel megvagyunk, az egészet öntsük le csokimázzal. Ezután lehűtjük, és ha a csokoládé megdermedt, a tésztát ferdén vágva felszeleteljük.

I keep expecting you to be on your bed in the bedroom, or in John’s room, or somewhere. Anywhere. You were woven into our daily family routine and it feels lopsided now.

I want to take you out for a break tonight. I want to take you to the bus stop tomorrow. I want to hear you sing in the morning as we wave Nikki off to work with John.

Thirteen years of small moments added up to the best dog we could ever ask for.

I am so grateful you chose us. You were the best good boy in all the land.

I will miss you forever.

We generally use sturdy, reusable/refillable 5 gallon bottles for our water cooler but sometimes we get disposable ones (usually when we didn't time it right and the refill place is closed, or like in this case, their refill station is frozen.) The disposable bottles are thinner, flimsier and always collapse on themselves slowly as they empty, as you can see in the photo.

So clever me figured I would try to get it to not collapse by poking a little vent hole above the water line. Makes sense no? A vent hole. Like a coffee cup. But instead of expanding the bottle, it actually made the water cooler leak uncontrollably. Or flow freely… you know… like a coffee cup? 😄

So I turned to a LLM for an explanation. Here's what it had to say:

Two really interesting bits of physics and design are happening in your water cooler, and they fit together more tightly than most people realize.

Why the bottle slowly crushes as it empties A 5‑gallon water jug on a cooler is not vented to the atmosphere. When you flip the bottle upside‑down and place it on the cooler:

• Water flows out of the bottle into the reservoir.
• Air cannot flow back in, because the neck of the bottle is submerged inside the cooler’s internal water tank.
• As water leaves the bottle, the air pressure inside the bottle drops.
• Outside air pressure (much higher) pushes inward on the thin plastic walls.
• Result: the bottle slowly collapses or “crushes” as it empties.
• This is exactly the same reason a sealed plastic bottle dents inward when you suck the air out or cool it down.

The crushing is normal and expected. It’s part of how the cooler regulates flow.

Why poking a hole made the cooler leak When you added a hole above the water line, you unintentionally broke the pressure‑based flow control system.

• Here’s what normally happens in a properly sealed bottle:

• The cooler only lets water out when the reservoir level drops.

• As water leaves, a small bubble of air glugs up into the bottle.

• That bubble equalizes pressure just enough to let more water out, but only when needed.

• The nozzle doesn’t leak because the reservoir stays at a controlled level.

But when you poke a hole:

• Air can freely enter the bottle at all times.

• The bottle is no longer sealed, so there’s no vacuum to hold the water back.

• Water flows continuously out of the bottle into the cooler’s reservoir.

• The reservoir overfills.

• Once overfilled, water escapes through the nozzle or drip tray.

In other words: The hole turned your cooler into a gravity-fed open tank, so it overflowed.

This graph illustrates my lifetime consumption of bourbon as of this writing. Nikki said “what a great way to document your burgeoning alcohol habit”. 😏

I had no idea Flickr was still a thing. I’ve been struggling with where to post my photos since I got a real camera earlier this year. Posting it on the doom-scroll apps is a waste and posting it on this site isn’t ideal either as this is more of a stream of consciousness brain dump. So Nikki and I signed up for Flickr Pro again today. (She is also the owner of a Fujifilm camera now which I am super excited about.) It feels strangely nostalgic and nice. 😊 I’m looking forward to taking photos with a purpose again.

I am not a mixed drink kind of guy. I stumbled on this combination by accident one night using what we had at home at the time. If I am ever associated with a “signature drink” in the future, this here will likely be it. So good.

Phrase of the day.

I dared him to wear this hat and casually go get some milk from the fridge.

Tonight I learned about Fujifilm recipes (presets). Basically there are 7 programmable slots in my camera where I can save custom settings (colour, grain, white balance, etc) which I can then access. This opened up a whole new world to me. I can’t wait to do more with it. There are so many out there!

This photo was taken using a recipe called Classic Cuban Negative.

The best dog in the world.

I have always been a Nikon guy. Ever since my D700 died a couple years ago I have been wanting to get something to replace it and fill the void. For the past couple of months, however, I have kept coming back to the Fujifilm X100VI. Finally found one on Facebook Marketplace from a guy who preordered one of each colour but liked the black instead of silver so he put the silver — my preference! — up for sale. I couldn’t resist the deal so I snatched it up!

I am in love with it and have been bringing it everywhere snapping photos like back in the old days.

I have also been trying to get familiar with all the features. Tonight I was learning to program some of the function buttons for quick access to useful things (like switching between different film simulations) and showed Nikki what I learned. She grabbed the camera from me and snapped this photo.

Pinch and zoom to see the film-like quality.

Update March 2026: Ranger has been sold in exchange for this.

I haven’t posted about my watches in a long time, so here we go.

I keep going back and forth between an Apple Watch 42mm Series 10 and a traditional watch these days.

Back in January I impulse-bought a used Tudor Black Bay Pro on Reddit. It was [mainly, but I guess I could use any excuse to justify it] to mark the milestone of becoming President of the Welland Hungarian Hall (!!)—which I will cover in a separate post, maybe. About a week ago I traded the BBP for a Tudor Ranger on Marketplace. Truth be told, I've been coveting the Ranger since it came out in 2022. I feel very fortunate to be able to own it now.

I love watches with the 3-6-9-12 dial and no date so the Ranger is a home run. In fact, I like it so much that it prompted me to make this post. 😃 Something the BBP didn't even compel me to do, even though that was a nice [and arguably better] watch too. The Ranger just feels way more at home and much less flashy too.

Sheesh! It feels like we just celebrated the last one, John. Happy 🍰 birthday! I love you more than there are words in books.

Tried an interpretation of this shawarma sauce. I didn’t have tahini, but instead I sprinkled a bit of Tajin 😃. Made it for lunch today with chicken breast kabobs wrapped in warm naan bread. Turned out better than expected!

Ingredients

• 1 cup plain yoghurt
• 1/4 cup light mayo
• 2-3 tbsp lemon juice, freshly squeezed
• 2 medium cloves of garlic, grated
• 1/2 tsp Tajin

Instructions

Whisk everything until smooth. Keep refrigerated up to 2 weeks in an airtight container.

Made some applesauce tonight. Turned out decent… I assume… (it’s still cooling down). 😎

Update: Ok it was very good. Just tried it on prebiotic toast with a bit of butter… 😋

Ingredients

• 6-7 apples, peeled, cored, diced
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup water
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

Instructions

Mix all ingredients in a pot, heat on medium heat until apples are soft (~20 minutes), stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and let cool. Mash to desired consistency with a potato masher or (less efficiently) a fork.

Update Oct 12: I made another batch today for Thanksgiving. Softer apples this time, turned out more saucy, but equally as tasty. John says this tastes like a new Thanksgiving tradition. 😄