I’d like to start things off by wishing you all a happy new year!
Though many are not aware of it, the website actually went live – although shielded behind an access gate, with a generic welcome page that you’ve probably seen by now, and likely never will again if you’re reading this – yesterday, December 31st, 2025. It was kind of a symbolic thing to get it going before the new year, given that so much work occurred in 2025.
Right now it feels and looks a lot like moving into a new house. The rooms – pages in this case – are pretty empty and devoid of stuff, but the actual structure – the walls, ceilings, trim, etc – it’s all really attractive. Or so I feel.
Much of this morning has just been spent moving from a local development environment (MAMP, VSCode w/Claude Code, etc) to a local and live setup, and getting the mechanisms set up for backing up incrementally as I release patches and new features, and also uploading those to the live site.
It’s somewhat amusing how I’ve spent oh, probably at least three to four months working on things, and am just now noticing things I never saw before, now that the site is live. They are small things, but important. It’s nice, though, that we are to that point – where it’s no longer huge issues, massive framework buildouts, but instead just small quality-of-life improvements here and there.
The long work ahead at the moment is going to be getting all of the content that I currently have shifted over from my prior legacy blog platforms to the new bespoke system I have here. I suppose I could build an export / import tool, but I value the quality of content too much to place that much trust in it. It will be a gradual process, but it will produce a superior experience.
First post, but make it food…
Given that it’s a food blog, and last night was New Year’s Eve, I can’t pass up an opportunity to comment on how we celebrated. We had a truly magnificent ravioli casserole, consisting of Trader Joe’s Vegan Spinach & Cashew Ravioli, Gefen Marinara Pasta Sauce, Kite Hill Almond Milk Ricotta (a new one, and excellent) and topped with Follow Your Heart Shredded Parmesan.
To drink, I prepared The Last Word, a classic NYE cocktail with equal parts of Green Chartreuse (I was able to score a bottle of the real deal – more on that later), Luxardo Maraschino (a “structural” liqueur I’d never had before now), Citadelle Gin (a new favorite), and lime juice. To spread it out a bit, I cut it with Fever Tree Ginger Beer – 1:1 ratio, as the drink on its own can be rather stout.
Purists may disagree with my choice, but I am a lover of white wine, so we had a Nobilo Sauvignon Blanc following the light opener. Nothing fancy about it, but has a nice pleasant acidity that cuts through the heavy creaminess of all the different cheese and cream flavors.
I did not stay up to ring the new year in – those years where I do are few and far between now.
More to share soon! Back to the grind.