All posts by admin

Records anyone?

Finally decided that it’s time to let go of my record album collection.

I began collecting in the 70’s up until the end of the 80’s when I packed it all up. My collection was stored away for many years, and then it seemed records were a thing again (and I was getting tired of mp3’s). In the mid-2000’s I unpacked everything, and started to enjoy it again.

Slowly I have been cataloging my collection on Discogs, and I’m just over a third of the way through it – that’s just under 300 entered in!. From my collection so far I’ve listed 10 albums for now and will see how things work out.

I’m using Discogs as a guide to set pricing for some of my albums and seeing what happens. I still have to go pick up some packing material. It’s surprising what it costs for packing and packaging materials.

I have a number of audiophile pressings from Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs titles – Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon, Led Zeppelin II, Steely Dan Aja, David Bowie Let’s Dance – just to name a few! I think I have at least 15 more titles, including some Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Alan Parson’s Project. There are also a number of Japanese imports that were considered to be much higher quality pressings than the standard Canadian and American releases.

I’ve been pretty fanatical about how my albums are handled and stored, so the bulk of my collection is in amazing condition. I’m sure most could do with a good cleaning – and I did purchase a Spin Clean MKII record washer a couple years ago. It’s a pretty manual process still and very time consuming. Will probably clean as I list 🙂

If you’re interested in seeing what’s for sale at the moment, check out my Discogs store. I’m also trying to sell some using a local Facebook group called #yegdigs.



Sourdough Waffles

Since almost the beginning of the COVID lockdowns last year, I had started maintaining a sourdough starter as yeast was not to be found in the grocery stores. Needed a way to use the starter discard as it was starting to take up too much space in our refrigerator, and waffles were the answer!

I use a Cuisinart Griddler – to which I added a set of Cuisinart Griddler Waffle Plates.

Overnight Sourdough Discard Waffles

Course Breakfast
Servings 3 large waffles

Ingredients

  • 240 g sourdough starter discard
  • 136 g flour
  • 1 tbsp sugar
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

Next morning

  • 1/4 cup butter melted and cooled
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp baking powder

Instructions

Night before

  1. In a large bowl, mix sourdough starter, flour, sugar, milk and vinegar together.

  2. Set aside, covered loosely with plastic wrap

Next morning

  1. Preheat waffle iron

  2. In a small bowl, mix beat egg, butter and vanilla together

  3. Pour mixture into large bowl of starter batter, and mix well

  4. Sprinkle baking soda and baking powder over batter and mix well

  5. Add batter to waffle iron – I use a ladle that holds approx. 1/3 cup.  One ladle scoop for ½ the waffle ironplate.  Close lid and set a timer for 5minutes and 30 seconds. (That’s what I use, and find it’s perfect for my waffle iron – adjust time or waffle iron temp to suit your own preferences)

MyVolumio and Tidal subscriptions – Are they worthwhile?

I’ve made some changes to my JustBoom/RaspberryPi – including updating to the latest version of Volumio. Over the holiday break I signed up for a 4 month trial of Tidal’s Hi-Fi plan. To access a Tidal plugin on Volumio, and subscription to MyVolumio was required, so I signed up for the trial, and ended up getting a 1 year Volumio ‘Virtuoso’ subscription. My only motivation for getting the subscription was for the Tidal Hi-Fi plugin.

So far my experience with Tidal is less than stellar, and I doubt that I will keep using it beyond this initial 4 month trial. The sound is very good, but the Tidal apps aren’t. On AppleTV it’s very buggy, and whether I use the app on my phone or on AppleTV I really dislike having to endlessly scroll past a pile of content that I have no interest in, to get to my stuff. I mean, they do ask what interests you – why isn’t that shown first? Maybe it just takes a little more time to learn what I actually listen to. We’ll see.

The one thing I do appreciate in the Tidal interface within Volumio is that I don’t have to go through all the stuff I have no interest in. I only see what I have added to my collection, but I haven’t seen a way to add to my collection from within the app – I have to go to the Tidal iPhone app or AppleTV app to do that.

The other MyVolumio ‘benefits’ with their Virtuoso plan include:

  • remotely control Volumio devices outside your local network.
  • CD playback and ripping.
  • Music & Artist credits.

The Music & Artist credits might be interesting, but not enough to warrant a subscription.

It’s not clear whether the upcoming upgrades (multi-room playback and automatic updates) will only be available to subscribers, and I haven’t seen any timelines on when those new features will be available. Regardless, they probably wouldn’t be enough for me to commit to continuing my initial 1 year subscription.

Will see how it goes over the next few months…

volumio File Share Type and Options settingsOne thing I finally got around to after getting a new iPhone, was getting my sources set up again. They seemed to have become corrupted when restoring apps to the new phone.

Connecting to a shared Music library on my Mac proved to be a little tricky.

I found it necessary to set File Share Type to “cifs”, and adding “vers=3.0” to Options.

The message that popped up prior to those two changes could be more helpful I think. It also seemed to disappear to quickly. Or I could just be getting old.

Once the other fields were completed, including my username and password to access my shared library, I saved the settings and Volumio immediately began to index my collection. Hooray!

Braised Cauliflower in the Instant Pot

I came across a recipe in the “Mediterranean Instant Pot” cookbook from America’s Test Kitchen. The recipe looked pretty good, and used a spice blend I hadn’t heard of before called ras el hanout. I changed the recipe a little due to my own preferences and the unavailability of one ingredient.

The result was delicious, and I’ll definitely be making this again!

Braised Cauliflower with North African Spices

Course Side Dish
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Servings 4

Ingredients

  • 1 head Cauliflower trim leaves and stem, keep whole
  • 1 can Whole San Marzano tomatoes drain (keep liquid), and coarsely chop
  • 2 tsp Ras el hanout
  • 2 tbsp olive oil extra virgin
  • 4 cloves garlic minced
  • 1/4 cup golden raisins
  • 1/4 cup kalmata olives pitted and coarsely chopped
  • 1/4 cup fresh cilantro coarsely chopped

Instructions

  1. Turn on Instant Pot to Saute, high setting, and add olive oil, garlic, and ras el hanout

  2. Saute for about 2-3 minutes, until spices become really fragrant, then turn Instant Pot off

  3. Add the reserved tomato juice and chopped tomatoes to Instant Pot, stir well, and then reserve 3-4 tablespoons of the mixture

  4. Insert trivet then steaming basket into Instant Pot

  5. Complete preparation of the head of cauliflower by making a deep criss-cross slice into stem, then place head into steaming basket, stem side down.

  6. Pour reserved tomato/spice mixture over top of cauliflower.

  7. Cook in Instant Pot using high pressure, for 3 minutes, doing a quick release when cook time has completed.

  8. Set cauliflower head aside in serving dish, and cover with foil

  9. Set Instant Pot to Saute, add olives and golden raisins to tomato mixture. Cook this down to thicken a bit. You can salt & pepper this if you like (I didn't)

  10. Cut the head of cauliflower into quarters, then eights. Spoon more of the tomato mixture over top, and then sprinkle cilantro over when serving. Provide the rest of the tomato/spice mixture alongside so people can add more as they wish.

Recipe Notes

The original recipe called for green olives, anchovies, and pine nuts (which I couldn’t find at our grocery store).  Omitted the anchovies to make the dish vegan, and I prefer black olives over green 🙂

Making the Best Pumpkin Spice Latte

Well, I had to try it. James Hoffman’s recent video was interesting. I ended up making 2 batches after a visit to the Silk Road Spice Merchant on Whyte Avenue.

The first one I followed his direction and recipe as closely and exact as possible. After measuring everything out, I ground it all up into a Krups Coffee & Spice grinder. One step I added was to heat the spice blend up on the stove prior to adding the water and pumpkin juice. I also used a light brown sugar instead of Demarra.

This initial batch ended up much thicker than what his seemed, so I made a second batch, which I combined with the first one. I made the second batch without pumpkin, and added green cardamom.

The syrup is definitely very flavorful, and makes a delicious latte! The biggest challenge I found was in trying to strain the syrup. I used a couple different sieves and also a muslin filter bag, and it took a long time – must have taken almost an hour! I’ll have to find a better strainer.

Here’s are the ingredients I used for my second batch of pumpkin spice:

Vietnamese Cassia Bark: 14g
Indonesian Cinnamon Quills: 14g
Powdered Ginger: 8g
Whole Cloves: 2g
Allspice: 2g
Whole Nutmeg: 7g
Green Cardamom: 3g

For the syrup, I used a light brown sugar – 350g, and 175g of water, and 25g of the pumpkin spice.

I also made the coffee infused whipping cream to top the latte – it was fantastic, and much easier to make! Will definitely make the whipping cream again, as well as the pumpkin spice. I think that I’ll like skip the syrup.