Audrey

Baked Chicken Katsu

2026-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

Ingredients:

panko
neutral oil
boneless chicken thighs
salt
black pepper
all purpose flour
1 egg

Optional:

tonkatsu sauce

Instructions:

Set the oven to 400F
Add neutral oil to a pan and toast the panko over medium heat until golden brown
Allow panko to cool
Butterfly the chicken thighs
Pound the chicken thighs until they are even
Season both sides of the chicken with salt and pepper
Whisk 1 egg and some oil, set in a bowl.
Set the pank and the flour each in their separate bowls.
Put each peice of chicken in the flour, and then egg mixture and then the panko.
Place each breaded chicken onto a wire rack and bake for about 25-30 minutes

Yakiudon

2026-03-23T00:00:00+00:00

Ingredients:

1/2 onion sliced
2-3 leaves green cabbage sliced
2 inches carrot julienned
2 shiitake mushrooms sliced
2 green onions sliced
6oz sliced pork belly
2 servings udon noodles
neutral oil
salt and pepper

Sauce:

3 tbspn mentsuyu
1 tsp soy sauce

Instructions:

Slice the pork belly into 1 inch squares
Boil water and blanch the udon noodles for 30-40 seconds
In a large frying pan, add neutral oil and stir fry the pork belly
Season the pork belly with salt and pepper, cook until no longer pink
Add all of the vegetables and stir fry
Cover with a lid and reduce the heat to low, let everything steam for 3 minutes or until the vegetables are slightly wilted
Add the noodles and toss to combine
Add the sauce and mix together

Lemon Butter Salmon

2026-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

Ingredients

Salmon fillets, skinless
2 tbspn lemon juice
1 tbspn olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
2 tbspn Dijon mustard
1/2 tspn black pepper
pinch of salt

Lemon Garlic Sauce

1/4 cup unsalted butter
1 1/2 tbspn garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup heavy cream or half and half
1-2 tbspn freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tbspn parsley, chopped
1/2 tspn black pepper
lemon slices

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 425F
Marinate the salmon in lemon juice, olive oil, garlic and dijon mustard
Put salmon in baking dish, pour the mixture and rub evenly. Season with salt and pepper. Bake for 10-15 min or until cooked through.
While salmon is baking, melt the better in a saucepan over low-medium heat. Add minced garlic and saute.
Pour heavy cream into the saucepan and bring to a boil, letting it thicken slightly. Remove from heat, then stir in lemon juice. Garnish with parsley and season with salt and pepper.
Pour the sauce over the salmon and let it rest for 5-10 minutes.

Honey Glazed Carrots

2026-03-10T00:00:00+00:00

Ingredients:

Carrots, peeled and cut cross wise
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 tbspn unsalted butter
1 1/2 tbspn honey
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt

Instructions

Preheat oven to 425F
Melt butter and add minced garlic to cook. About 30 seconds.
Remove pan from heat and whisk honey in.
Mix the carrots in the glaze and season with salt and pepper
Roast for about 15 minutes. Add time (5-15 minutes) until the carrots are browned.

Hong Shao Rou (My Uncle's)

2026-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

Ingredients:

5lb pork belly with skin (with ribs, even better!)
3/4 cups regular soysauce
300-350g sugar
3-5 star anise
cooking wine

Directions:

Cut the pork belly into 1 inch cubes and wash the pork belly 3 times to soak out the blood
Get rid of the water in the pork belly (the less water the better)
Add soy sauce, sugar and star anise and meat into the pot
Pour cooking wine until the meet is covered
Cook on the stove until boiling, skim off the foam. Taste and adjust flavor.
Leave in a slow cooker with high heat for about 6 hours.
Do not skim off the oil until it’s ready, in order to keep the meat moist.

Tomato Pasta

2025-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

Ingredients:

1 box pasta
2 cloves chopped garlic
1 handful of grape tomatoes
1 tbspn olive oil
pinch of salt
1 lemon (for zest and juice)
white wine
1/5 stick of butter
(optional) basil, parsley, parmesean

Directions:

Fry chopped garlic in olive oil
Cut cherry tomatos into halves and add them to the pan with a pinch of salt
Let cook until they soften and break apart
Add lemon zest and white wine
Once the sauce is reduced by half, turn off the heat and add in cold butter
Turn heat back on and let the butter mix in
Add cooked pasta and add pasta water
Add fresh basil, fresh parsley, parmesean and lemon juice

Honey Glazed Sea Bass

2025-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

Ingredients:

1 tbspn Olive Oil
2 Seabass filets

Marinade:

1 tbspn Chinese BBQ Sauce (Char Siu Sauce)
1 tbspn Oyster Sauce
1 tbspn Soy Sauce
1 tbspn Sugar
1 tbspn Honey

Directions:

Preheat oven at 350F
Make Marinade and rub marinade on fish filets
Pour some olive oil on the fish as well
Bake for 12 minutes
Brush some honey on the fish
Bake at 475F for 5 minutes.

Best Asparagus

2025-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

Ingredients:

Asparagus
2 tbspn olive oil
1/2 teaspn salt
1/2 teaspn black pepper
1 pinch pepper flakes
2 tbspn nutritional yeast or parmesean
1/2 lemon
2 minced garlic cloves
1/2 tablespoon agave/honey

Directions:

Preheat oven or air fryer at 390F
Cut asparagus into thirds
Mix all of the ingredients together in a bowl
Lay the asparagus out on a baking tray
Bake for 10 minutes, shake half way through.

WSET 1 Notes

2024-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

Grapes + Components of a Grape

There are white grapes and red grapes. Red wines and Rose wines are made from red grapes, whereas white grapes can only make white wines. But white wines could be made from white or red grapes.

Grapes flower and then ripen in the summer. They can only be planted in areas that are 30 - 50 degrees above and below the equator. In warmer areas, the grapes tend to be sweeter and more ripe. The riper a grape is, the more sugars are in the grape and the less acid. White grapes are more common in cooler areas and red grapes are more common in warmer areas.

The grape is made out of two parts: the pulp and the skin

Skin contains tannin, which gives the wine it’s color and that drying taste on the tounge. The longer the skin is in the wine, the deeper the color of the wine. Deep red wine has had skin contact for a long time. Roses only partially.

Pulp contains acid and sugars. The sugars are a key component when making wine.

New Zealand and Australia make new world wines.

Making wine

Basics

Wine is made by adding yeast to grape sugars. Yeast + Sugars = Alcohol + CO2. Sweet wines occur when alcohol is added so the yeast dies prematurely. Yeast could also be removed or unfermented grape juice could be added. For dry wines, when all the sugars are gone, the yeast dies and falls to the bottom of the wine.

Wines are generally 11 - 14.5% ABV.

Sparkling wines are made by either not letting the C02 escape during the fermenting process, or adding CO2 during bottling.

Red Wine

Crushing, fermentation, draining + pressing, maturation, bottling

White Wine

Crushing, pressing, fermentation (with no skins), maturation, bottling

Rose Wine

crushing, fermentation (short), draining, more fermentation (with no skins), maturation, bottling

Wines

Red Wines

Merlot

Merlot is dry, full bodied, medium acidity, medium tannins.

Flavors of red fruits, black fruits.

Frequently aged in oak.

Bordeaux is a type of Merlot.

Commonly blended with Cabernet Sauvingnon.

Chateauneuf du Pape

Chateauneuf du Pape is dry, full bodied with high alcohol.

Flavors of red fruit.

Frequently aged in oak, with flavors of clove.

Syrah

Syrah is dry, medium - full bodied, medium - high tannins, medium acidity.

Flavors of black fruits and spice.

Frequendly aged in oak.

French -> Fresh fruit + peppers

Australian (Shiraz) -> jammy + licorice, lower in tanins

Rioja

Rioja is dry, medium to full bodied.

Flavors of red fruit.

Oaked. Spanish.

Cabernet Sauvignon

Cavernet Sauvignon is dry, medium - full bodied, high tanins, high acidity

Flavors of black fruits, herbacious

Frequently aged in oak.

Commonly blended with other grapes (like Merlot for more softness)

Bordeaux

Bordeux is dry, medium - full bodied, high acidity and high tanins.

Flavors of black fruits and cedar.

Blend of Cab Sauv and Merlot.

Burgundy

Burgundy is high acidity and medium bodied.

Aromas of citrus and stome fruits (white) or red fruits (red).

Vanilla notes from oak maturation.

Make from Chardonnay grapes (white) or Pinot Noir (red).

Cotes du Rhone

Cotes du Rhone is dry, medium body.

Flavors of red fruit and white pepper.

Can be aged in oak or no oak.

Chianti

Chianti is dry, high tannin, light - medium bodied, high acidity.

Flavors of red fruit.

Oaked. Italian.

Pinot Noir

Pinot Noir is dry, light - medium body, low - medium tanins, high acidity.

Flavors of red fruit.

Frequently aged in oak.

Makes Champagne when blended with Chardonnay.

Beaujolais

Beaujolais is dry, ligh bodied, low tanins.

Flavors of red fruits.

Frequently unoaked.

White Wines

Sauternes

Sauternes is a sweet, full bodieid high acidity wine.

Flavors of stone fruits and honey.

Oaked. Sauternes is in Bordeaux.

Chardonnay

In warm climates: medium - full body, medium acidity with flavors of tropical fruit.

In cool climates: light - medium body, high acidity with falvors of green furit + citrus.

Usually aged in oak.

Makes Champagne when blended with Pinot Noir.

Sancerre

Sancerre is a dry, medium bodied.

Flavors of green fruit and herbacious.

Made from Sauv Blanc.

Chablis

Chablis has high acidity and light - medium body.

Flavors of green fruits and citrus.

Unoaked. Made in France.

Sauvignon Blanc

Sauvignon Blanc is dry, light - medium bodied, high acidity.

Flavors of green fruit, citrus, tropical fruits, hebacious.

Frequently aged in stainless steel.

Riesling

Riesling is dry - sweet, light - medium bodied, high acidity.

Flavors of floral, green fruits, citrus and stone fruits.

Frequently aged in stainless steel.

German Riesling is sweet.

Alsace in France and Rieslings in Australia are dry.

Pinot Grigio

Pinot Grigio is dry, light bodied, medium to high acidity.

Flavors of pear and lemon.

Frequently aged in stainless steel.

Rose

White Zinfandel

White Zinfandel is a medium sweet, low alcohol.

Flavors of red fruit.

Unoaked.

Sparkling

Prosecco

Prosecco is dry - medium sweet, light bodied.

Flavors of green fruit and floral.

Cava

Cava has flavors of green fruit and citrus.

Spanish.

Champagne

Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

Foritifed

Sherry

Sherry is dry - sweet with many styles.

Spanish.

Port

Port is sweet, high alcohol, full bodied with high tannins.

Flavors of black fruit.

Portugal.

Tasting Process

What color is the wine? Is the wine clear?

Is the wine sweet or dry?

How acidic is the wine?

How is the body?

How are the tannins?

How much alcohol is in the wine?

What are it’s notable aromas and flavors?

Pairing

Food is… -> Wine is…

Sweet -> more drying, bitter, acidic, less sweet + fruity, body

Want SWEET wine

Umami -> more drying, bitter, acidic, less sweet + fruity

Want FRUITY wines with LOW tannin

Bitter -> more bitter

Want white wines or low tanin fruity reds.

Salty -> more fruity, body, less drying, better, acidic

Want high ACID, high TANIN, OAKED Chips? Sauv Blac/Champagne Red meat? High tanin + oaked red.

Acidic -> more sweet + fruity, less drying, bitter, acidic

Want high ACID. Sauv blanc/Chianti.

Highly flavored -> overwhelmed

Want a wine thats similar in intensity (maybe like a full bodied red?)

Fatty/oily -> less acidic

Want high acidity, Sauv blanc

Hot/Spicy -> increases heat, alcohol burning is more noticeable.

Want FRUITY whites, low tannic reds, or low alcohol sweet wines.

Storage and Serving

Cool constant temp
Away from light
Corked? Store on side. Screwcap. Store upright.

How to preserve wine once opened?

A. Vacuum system - remove air from bottle

B. Blanket system - push gas into bottle, which removes air

Serving temp:

Room temp -> Medium - full bodied reds

Lightly chilled -> full bodied white / light bodied reds

Chilled -> light - medium bodied white + rose

Well chilled -> Sparkling, sweet wines

Reds should be served in wide mouth glasses.

Whites in narrower mouth.

Sparkling in flutes.

What is Threading?

2024-06-04T00:00:00+00:00

When we’re writing a program, we usually write things sequentially. Which, is great, but modern computers have more computing power and can do more. We can use different processes to concurrently solve problems to get a faster result.

Multithreading vs Multiprocessing

Multithreading is the ability for one process to run multiple threads. Multiprocessing is the ability for a system to run multiple processes.

A system can have multiprocessing of multiple processes, where each process uses multithreading.

Concurrency vs Parallelism

Multithreading is concurrent, which means that the threads don’t actually run at the same time. They mimic running at the same time by staggering execution of a thread. Parallelism is what multiprocessing has, where processes do execute at the same time.

This is mainly because a process has its own memory and interpreter, whereas in multithreading, all threads share the same interpreter.

Python’s Global Interpreter Lock

Python has something called a Global Interpreter Lock, it only allows one thread to have control of the Python interpreter. Only one thread can be executing at a time. Python works by using reference counting, meaning that when data is created in Python, Python tracks the amount of references the object has. When all references are deleted, the memory is freed. In order to prevent a race condition where multiple threads are trying to edit the reference counter, the GIL was introduced.

This does not mean that you don’t have to use a lock in your Python code. GIL only protects the interpreter. You still want consistency if you share state between threads. You don’t know when your thread will get interrupted and switch to executing another thread, which means that when you save a state in a thread, you want to lock that code.

What is a Daemon thread?

A Daemon thread is one that runs without blocking the main program.

Python Threading Coding Notes

What is the difference between lock() and join()?

Lock guarantees that only one thread can execute a portion of code at a time. Join waits for a thread to complete.

What is RLock?

RLock is a lock that can be acquired many times by the thread that got it the first time. The lock stays locked and is held until each acquisition is released.

In a case where a locked function is calling another locked function, that code would not work with a normal lock. The lock would have to be released before the second function could be entered. If you have a RLock, the same thread can enter both functions.

As of Python 3.2+, RLocks do not have any sigificantly greater performance cost than a regular Lock.

What is Scrum?

2024-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

These notes are taken from a conglomeration of places, including:

scrum.org

szalapski’s scrum rubric

What is scrum?

Scrum helps teams deliver products in an incremental way. Its split up into sprints, which should be less than a month long, where the team works on specific goals. The scrum team always tries to improve their procedures and adapts to new challenges.

Who is in a Scrum Team?

A scrum team is responsible for pretty much all work is required to delivered a product and generally should have less than 10 people.

Product Owner

The product owner tries to create value in the product for stakeholders:

creating and ordering task backlogs
representing the needs of the customer
makes decisions

Scrum Master

The Scrum master helps by:

empowering developers to be self-managed
break down blockers that are in front of the team
establish goals for the product the team is making
in general, helping the team become more effective

Developers

Developers work on the product and also:

create a plan for the sprint
producing quality work
self-managing to acheive sprint goals

Scrum Events

Sprints

During sprints, nothing should be changed to endanger the sprint goal, but the scope can be renegotiated with the scrum master if more information is learned. Each sprint should be between 1-4 weeks long and end with working software.

Theres two goals:

Product Goal: What the product ideally should look like.
Spring Goal: What are we doing this sprint to acheive the product goal?

Core Components of Sprint Planning

Product Owner should make sure that developers are prepared to discuss the backlog
How will this sprint help us acheive our Product Goal?
What can we do this sprint and what is the definition of a task done?
How should a specific task get done?

Sprint Review/Retro

The team should:

Talk about what items are done and not done
Discuss what went well/what could’ve been improved
Discuss how the backlog is looking and if theres any changes to product timelines or priorities
Team can then use that information to plan for the next sprint

Other Resources

scrum master checklist

On my reading list:

Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins

Scrum Mastery: From Good To Great Servant-Leadership by Geoff Watts

How to Build a Blog with Jekyll (and Hyde, the theme)

2024-04-21T00:00:00+00:00

I did some searching around and couldn’t find a good introduction that got you set up quickly with a blog and also had it look pretty. I finally found the helpful tutorial here on how to set up the Hyde theme and decided that I will add some helpful hints.

Downloading Ruby

Windows

Go here and find your desired Ruby version. If you don’t know what system type you have, search up ‘System Information’ in your start menu search bar and look under ‘System Summary’ and ‘System Type’.

P.S. I did end up downlading the ruby with the dev kit.

MacOS

At first I wanted to run this on MacOS because Ruby is included in the system already. This proved to be difficult and I couldn’t figure it out. Because Ruby is preinstalled, Mac doesn’t allow you to edit those Ruby files. It is also heavily discouraged to use sudo to override the safe guards.

I ended up trying this suggestion to no avail. I also ran into homebrew issues which a brew update-reset fixed.

Downloading Git

Download Git here

My ‘git’ command is still not being recognized by my terminal! You probably haven’t set your PATH correctly. You will need to add both:

C:\Program Files\Git\bin\
C:\Program Files\Git\cmd\

On Windows 10 you can:

Search for ‘environment variable’ on the start menu
Select ‘Edit the system environment variables’
Click ‘Environment Variables’ at the bottom
Click on the ‘Path’ entry
Using the ‘New’ button, add two entries, one for each Git path listed above

Downloading VSCode

You are more than welcome to use your text editor of choice. I downloaded VSCode. I did find a peculiar issue: when I download a new package, in order for my terminal to refresh, closing a window and reopening a window wasn’t enough. I had to close VSCode as a whole and then reopen it.

Install Jekyll

gem install jekyll

Install Dependencies

Needed for Poole, which is what Hyde is built on: gem install jekyll jekyll-gist jekyll-sitemap jekyll-seo-tag

Needed for Hyde: gem install jekyll-paginate jekyll-gist redcarpet

Needed for Jekyll: gem install bundler

Clone Hyde

You don’t have to create a folder for your project, just clone Hyde directly.

git clone https://github.com/poole/hyde.git

You can renaame the folder from Hyde to your project name of choice.

Making changes

This is taken from the blog (step 4) I followed.

Remove relative_permalinks: true from _config.yml
At the end of the file put in plugins: [jekyll-paginate, jekyll-gist, redcarpet]
Edit _config.yml markdown line to say markdown: kramdown
Change the url and baseurl to your url of your choice. Since I’m hosting through github pages I will use my github url with a base url of /
In head.html inside _includes folder, remove lines 17 to 25 and add this:

  <!-- CSS -->
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="/public/css/poole.css">
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="/public/css/syntax.css">
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="/public/css/hyde.css">
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=PT+Sans:400,400italic,700|Abril+Fatface">

  <!-- Icons -->
  <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="144x144" href="/public/apple-touch-icon-144-precomposed.png">
  <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/public/favicon.ico">

Add plugins to Gem File

Inside your Hyde folder (wherever you cloned Hyde), run bundle init. This should create your Gemfile.

Inside of that folder, add:

gem "jekyll"
gem "jekyll-gist"
gem "jekyll-paginate"
gem "redcarpet"

Then run bundle install, this will install the gems you have in your Gemfile.

In order to see your site locally, run bundle exec jekyll serve and it should be on http://localhost:4000.