Premake Series Potato Gratin

Next in the premake series is potato gratin. This was alot more effort than I initially thought but I think it was worth it. I setup a workstation and to process everything and did some trials with different potatoes and different diameters. I tested different options and designs, I think the curled rose design was the nicest but it didn’t taste that well as the top would crisp up but the bottom was never that appealing. The best one was the gratin topped with caramelized onions and I will definitely making those again. I baked all of the samples in ramekins and then stored in the chest freezer. I found this to be a great option and I have used it many times when I don’t have time to make a side for dinner. I would throw this into the oven while I prepare the protein and the potatoes can hold well in the oven. Highly recommend. Also gives a fair bit of easy “class” to a meal.

Winter Grow Tent

For this winter I setup a automated grow tent to finish off my peppers and keeping my ficus/rosemary healthy. System was fully automated including watering and I went with a radiant heater to manage temperature (I find this much safer than trying to use a space heater). This let me harvest peppers deep into winter when there was snow on the ground. I think this system is great for extending the growing season.

Automatic Watering System

I setup a watering system for my grow tent over the winter. I modified an cheap watering system with a nodemcu for a controller and a simple mosfet to run the pump. I tied into the existing system so I can use the battery. Overall it was a relatively simple modification and was able to set it up in esphome to run at 7am in the morning each day.

Premake Series Pumpkin Soup

Next in the premake series is pumpkin soup. Similar to last time I made a large batch of pumpkin soup but this time I bought takeout containers and packed everything into them. They handled the freezer fairly well but microwaving didn’t heat evenly. Fortunately this is soup so a simple shake was able to mix it all through. Overall worked well but I feel like the french onion soup was something more worth to premake.