One of my various hobbies is designing and building terrariums. It lets me bring a bit of nature inside my home, while minimizing the number of mosquito and tick bites. While I have plans to expand into vivariums (anoles, perhaps?) in the future, right now I’m focusing primarily on recreating aspects of Minnesota’s woodlands. In my office, I have a 55-gallon enclosure containing a portion of a tree trunk which fell in my yard last summer. ...

I owe one of my neighbors for helping watch Lady and Carl during a recent trip, so I decided to repay him in baked goods. In this particular case, I’ll be making Alvin Zhou’s 100-Hour Fudgy Brownies and some butterscotch chocolate chunk cookies. I prepared the cookie dough a few days ago (the internet tells me that a few days’ rest in the fridge helps improve the flavors, and who am I to argue with the internet?). The recipe was a simple one, taken from the back of a package of Tollhouse chocolate chips. My only slight tweak was using chopped Aldi’s 85% cocoa bars instead of chocolate chips (sorry, Tollhouse). ...

In preparation for trying out Alvin Zhou’s “100-Hour Fudgy Brownues” recipe, I figured I should try my mom’s recipe first, for comparison.

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