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Aunt Deb’s Thanksgiving Stuffing

One of my fondest Thanksgiving memories is of making massive batches of this stuffing with my Aunt out on The Ranch to feed my massive family– which has only grown since!

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup of chicken stock
  • 4.5 cups of day old sourdough bread (or 36 oz of stuffing)
  • 1 lb of sausage (2 cups)
  • 1 lb of chestnut (2 cups)
  • 4 stalks celery  (roughly chopped)
  • 2 yellow onions (roughly chopped)
  • 1 tbsp thyme (minced)
  • 2 tbsp sage (minced)
  • 3 tbsp of rosemary (minced)
  • 4 tbsp parsley (minced)
  • 1 red apple (Honeycrisp)
  • 1 green apple (Grannysmith)
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 stick of butter

Directions:

  1. Preheat your oven to 375°F and butter two 9×11″ baking dishes
  2. In a large skillet, sauté your onion, celery, chestnuts, and herbs in butter over medium heat until lightly browned
  3. Then add your sausage to the mix, and cook for a 3-5 minutes
  4. Pour your mixture into a large bowl, and combine with the breadcrumbs and apple slices
  5. Finally, pour in your stock and eggs
  6. Transfer to baking dishes and let bake for roughly 30 minutes

Note:

  1. If you plan on making the bread cubes yourself, make sure you buy the bread ahead of time so it has enough time to dry out (this will vary based on regional humidity)
  2. You can also use turkey stock instead of chicken, if you can find it.
  3. Make sure the sausage you buy isn’t too spicy or it will overpower the dish, I like to use breakfast sausage
  4. Chestnuts can be hard to find, but I swear they make the dish, so plan ahead to ensure you have them
  5. Fresh herbs are always better than dried herbs
  6. You don’t need to cook your sausage all the way through on the skillet because it will cook more in the oven
  7. Make sure you have twice as much stock as needed in case more moisture is needed
  8. If the top of the stuffing is browning too quickly in the oven, cover with tinfoil for the remainder of its time in the oven

Dad’s Lobster Pasta

Ingredients:

  • 6 fresh lobster tails
  • 1/2 cup of yellow onion, chopped
  • 1/2 cup of organic celery, chopped
  • 1/2 cup of organic carrots, chopped
  • 2 cloves of garlic, minced
  • 4 tablespoons of butter
  • 2 32 oz cartons of seafood stock
  • 1 bottle of dry white wine
  • 1/2 cup of cognac
  • 4 tablespoons of crème fraîche
  • 4 tablespoons of organic tomato paste
  • 2 teaspoons of Old Bay seasoning
  • 4 sprigs of fresh organic tarragon
  • 1/2 of a lemon or 1 tablespoon of tarragon or white wine vinegar
  • White pepper to taste
  • Cayenne pepper to taste
  • Salt to taste
  • Fresh fettuccine pasta

Directions:

  1. Start by dicing the onion, celery, carrots, and garlic
  2. Sauté them together with butter over medium heat in a large pan
  3. While vegetables are browning, lightly poach the lobster tails in a large pot with one carton of seafood stock, half of the bottle of white wine, the Old Bay, and the tarragon (4 minutes, or until shells are red)
    • You can add more wine if needed to cover the lobster depending on the size of your pot
    • Note: you are only cooking the meat so it is soft enough to be removed from the shells, so try not to overdue it or when you add them back in with your sauce at the end they will become chewy
  4. Remove lobster tails from pot and then remove the meat from the shells, and set meat aside
  5. Cut up the lobster shells into 1 inch pieces and put back into your stock pot
    • I recommend using kitchen shears for this step
  6. Add the tomato paste to your vegetable mix and deglaze with cognac
  7. Once the cognac has reduced, and your vegetable mix into your stock with the lobster shells
    • At this point you can add salt, pepper, and acid to taste
      • I add a 1/2 a lemon, a tablespoon of tarragon vinegar, and a teaspoon of cayenne pepper
  8. Reduce for at least an hour (longer if you have time)
    • Add equal parts stock, wine, and cognac as needed, and continue to season to taste
  9. Pour your stock, with the vegetables and cut up lobster shells into a blender, and on the lowest setting, pulse blend until lobster shells are closer to 1 quarter inch in size
    • Note: you don’t want to shells to be ground up to finely because you are going to put the mixture through a chinoise strainer and you don’t want them to go through
  10. Pour this mixture back into your pot and reduce again for at least half an hour
    • Add equal parts stock, wine, and cognac as needed, and continue to season to taste
  11. After reducing, strain your mixture in a chinoise, and then return it to the pot for the final touches
    • Now is about with you should start to boil the water for your pasta
  12. Add the crème fraîche and stir to combine
  13. Add the lobster meat into the mixture
  14. At this point you can either strain the pasta and finish it in the lobster sauce, or serve them separately so people can control their ratios, I like to keep them separate so that if there are leftovers the pasta doesn’t become soggy
  15. Add salt to taste
  16. Finish with parsley if so inclined (it’s a relatively homogeneous in color)

AI Indulgence

My understanding is that AI software is bad for the environment because it is so energy inefficient but I allowed myself to experiment because I needed a new head shot for my LinkedIn profile. I used a service called Aragon.ai, it asks a few questions like your age and hair color, you upload six photos of yourself and you get 100 AI generated head shots in return. The experience is uncanny (pun intended).

I sent a handful of them to friends and family. Unfortunately, everyone knew me well enough to know I didn’t do a professional photo shoot, hair, and makeup, all for a new head shot, so they had their suspicions, but they were unanimously impressed with the realism of 95% of the photos. Only a handful didn’t seem to look as much like me, or looked more obviously artificial to us.

See exhibits A – C below and try to guess which is which.

One is AI generated. One is Photoshop. One is just hair and makeup.

Exhibit A.
Exhibit B.
Exhibit C.

Not that hard to figure it out. But I still find the takeaway interesting. I like the middle photo the least. I don’t know what they did on Photoshop but I don’t think it looks very much like me. I actually like the first photo the best, even though it’s AI generated. The last photo was a very flattering photo of me when I was younger, but my family and I could not stop staring at the AI ones. They were so compelling.

This is one that we felt didn’t look like me. The hands in this one are the give away.
This one to me feels the most obviously fake.
Given that these were the worst of 100 options… I feel really good about the relatively small investment I made to acquire these.

I was blown away by the technology.

Psychologically, the experience of seeing these photos hit me differently than seeing photos of myself that I took using filters on Snapchat for example. I don’t know if that because I didn’t see the photos made, or simply if it’s just been a very long time since I even played around with that sort of technology, etc. But the AI photo made me feel motivated to keep up my skincare, and look into learning how to blowout my hair because it felt like I was seeing the best version of myself, instead of just a different version. What I could look like if I learned how to do my makeup better, instead of plastic surgery, for example.

Anyway. This has all been a bit self-indulgent. Even for me. But I think a little vanity is good for motivation, so my recommendation would be to try out Aragon.ai. I can’t speak to other services. I’m sure I could have looked around a little longer and found a free version that would have done the job well enough, if not just as well, but I didn’t so here we are.

A Poem About Motherhood

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