February Blogging. No Travel.

I like to check my blogging statistics each month. In February I wrote 50 entries (see monthly view), for an average of 1.8 posts/day. That's above my goal of 1.5 though not to my stretch goal of 2. I've beaten that stretch goal a few times— most recently in January.

One curious thing about Feb 2022 is that I managed to blog literally every day. "Blog at least once a day" was the first goal I set a few years ago. I quickly relaxed that to "Blog at least once a day on average" as I realized there were some days I really just didn't have the time to sit and write. Most months there are a few such days. But this February I found— or made— time to write every day. A few times it involved telling myself, "Yeah, it's after 10pm already, but just spend 10 minutes writing something now instead of putting it off until tomorrow."

Does this little success lesson mean I'll write every day in the future? No. Much of the time when I've skipped a day in the past it's because I've been busy, particularly with travel. Whether it's work travel or leisure, there are some days when I just don't have enough downtime to write. February was a month without travel. Ergo, my biggest reason for needing a day off now and then was absent. FWIW, January was travel-less, too, after several planned trips were canceled; there I missed a few days of writing because of spiraling.

Coming up in March I've got a few trips planned. I'll be in Vegas for a work conference next week. It'll be my first real business trip in over 2 years. (Long lunch in San Jose a few months ago doesn't count). On the heels of that we've got a long-weekend leisure trip. And elsewhere in the month we'll take a long day trip and maybe another weekend trip. So, if I miss a few days of blogging in March it'll be for the best reason: because I'm too busy doing the things to write about them.

Calzone #2

A month ago I wrote about making calzone at home for the first time, using store-bought dough. The results were good... but I could see room for improvement. Thus I tried Calzone #2 a few weeks later.

One process improvement this time was that I remembered to take pictures as I worked. 😅 It flummoxes me that as much as I enjoy photography and have integrated it with other pursuits, particularly hiking, I have to remind myself to take pictures when cooking.



This picture shows the dough rolled out to a circle... or as close to a circle as I could get. These store-bought dough balls are rarely as workable as from-scratch bread dough I've made a few times.

I've piled the toppings up on one side of the dough. This time I skipped including the slice soppressata I used last time (it wasn't very tasty). I doubled up on pepperoni instead. I also added onions and reduced the amount of ricotta cheese I used. Those were two additional ideas for improvement I'd noted. From here I folded the circle of dough over into a half-moon shape and pressed the edges together.

The dough here is only half the 1-lb ball that came in the package. The other half is that separate lump in the upper-left corner of the picture. I had other plans for that piece; more about that in my next blog.



I baked it in the oven for [mumble] minutes. Maybe 12? I don't remember now since it was a few weeks ago. Recipes like this I judge by how they look, not what the clock on the wall says.

One change I made with the cooking was to increase oven temperature to 500° F. That was recommended in the recipe I followed but I decided to try 450 instead the first time because multiple responses to recipe blog I followed said, "OMG, don't use 500, it burns!" I used 500 and it didn't burn. 🤷‍♂️

How did it turn out? On the whole Calzone #2 was better than Calzone #1. The higher cooking temperature allowed me to slightly brown the top crust without overcooking the bottom crust. I enjoyed the pepperoni and bit of onion, minus appallingly poor soppressata (from Whole Foods, of all places!), as fillings. Reducing the amount of ricotta cheese I used was also an improvement, though I went a little too light on it this time. I'll try to dial that in right next time. Finally, there's room to go heavier on the fillings than what's shown in the first picture. This calzone came out feeling... not quite stuffed. And I was still slightly hungry after eating it. So I'll scale up the mozzarella and pepperoni next time.