alternative title – tips on gaining the quarantine 15.

Prior to COVID-19 I started getting interested in pizza. Some would call it obsessive. Even though I don’t proclaim myself a great cook. I do enjoy learning how to make a few dishes that can truly impress people.

To paraphrase filmmaker Robert Rodriguez – not knowing how to cook is like not knowing how to fuck. You’re going to do it your whole life, you may as well know how.

My first few attempts turned out pretty meh. As with most recipes – I start with the easiest version and slowly work my way up to more authentic versions. In this case I was simply using store bought sauce + a generic pizza dough in cast iron skillet.

Pretty quickly after that – I started making my own dough. 55% Hydration + Used a Pizza Stone. Though at this point  I was still using store bought sauce.

This was at the start of the pandemic – when the only place I could find bread flour was Costco. Unfortunately they only sold 50lb bags. At this point I was committed.

A few more weeks in – and I started layering a simple San Marzano tomato sauce. In hindsight, I probably should have done this much sooner. At this point I was as close to a neopolitan pizza as I could get without a true pizza oven. I probably should have stopped then and let good enough be good enough.

But naturally – I caved and ended up getting a pizza oven. I ended up getting an Ooni Fyra, which I immediately sold and replaced with the propane fueled Ooni Koda. While it is romantic to think about cooking a fire in a wood burning oven, experts agree that 60 seconds isn’t enough time to get any flavor out of the wood. Plus the propane oven was just so much cleaner/less fuss than the wood pellets. Below is literally the first pizza I made, so pardon the burnt edges.

At this point I started getting ads for real wood fired pizza ovens. Zuck – you know me all too well.

Since then – I’ve spent the past few months making pizzas. I’ve played around with increasing hydration levels (I now stick to ~60 -65% for the most part).

I decided that post-pandemic, I’m going to start a pop-up pizza stand at a farmers market. I’m still working on the details – but Moonlit Pizza is in the works.

Here’s are some photos from a little shoot we did.

So there’s a little snapshot of what I have been up to the past year.

Final thoughts:

• Pizza is good.
• If you’re in town – give me a shout and we’ll fire up the pizza oven.
• If you’re having a little party and want to have a pop-up neopolitan pizza stand, I’d be happy to do it.
• If somehow my doctor is reading this post, I promise I’ll start eating better.
• Pizza is really really good.

First trip sailing on the coast.

Huge thanks to Chris R. for helping get the boat ready and sailing around with me. Here’s to hoping that we get to sailing the full Texas Coast soon.

Arriving at the beach.

Rigged and ready to launch.

fin.

The shirt I’m wearing right now is currently 9 years old. Damn, I have a nephew who’s younger than that. Does this mean I’m getting old?

It’s not just some shirt that I wear on occasion, it’s a shirt I wear weekly. It’s become a staple of my wardrobe and more importantly changed the way I think about clothing.

Yes I recognize this photo is not nearly as cool as I thought it was at the time.

Here’s a picture of me circa 2011 in the same shirt I still wear to this day. Not the same type of shirt or the same brand, but literally the same exact shirt I was wearing in 8th grade.

When I first went backpacking, I bought one of these merino wool base layers to wear. At some point, I bought another one when they were on sale. But for the most part, I didn’t care much about it. Over time, I would wear them camping, but that was about it.

For the most part, they sat in my box full of camping gear. Until one fateful day my freshman year of college. I had put off doing laundry. All I had left was the base layers. So I threw one on and repeated the next day. Over time, they ended up being a staple in my wardrobe. These days my wardrobe consists of a pair of chinos, a base layer, and some fun socks. While simplifying my wardrobe wasn’t a conscious decision, I’m glad I made it and encourage you to do the same. Here’s why.

It was my senior year of high school and I was running for Central Region Vice President of DECA (a high school organization for business-ey kids, yes you can tell the nerds early).

I needed to raise somewhere in the neighborhood of $4,000 in order to cover the cost of campaign booths, flyers, giveaways, etc. Both Illinois DECA and some local high school’s contributed to the campaign, but I was left with around $3,000 to raise. The only problem, I didn’t have a job and I didn’t want to ask my parents. I knew that running a regular fundraiser selling coffee or candy wouldn’t raise nearly the amount of money needed. So I launched a different plan.

It was 2015 and portable power banks were all the rage. Everyone now had smartphones, but the battery life on these things was still quite lacking. I realized most stores were selling these things for around $20.

I went to my favorite website on the internet, Alibaba and realized I could buy these things for about $2/piece. I drafted up some flyers and got started. But instead of selling them to students myself I decided to sell them as a fundraising opportunity for other schools.

Let’s say you’ve found your dream company and identified someone you think you would connect with, now for the approach. How do you be heard when you reach out to someone at your dream company? The goal here is not to directly ask for an internship, but rather build a genuine and useful relationship with the company.

I made the most childish resolution I could last year. I resolved not to read any books. Yep, you heard me right nada, nothing, zippo, zilch. No books.

Before you judge me, let me state that I love to read. I’ll read anything I can get my hands on. As a kid, I would read every Rebecca Caudill book (20+ books a year) every year on top of my regular reading. I would get in trouble for reading during class. After five years of taking band, I still can’t play the saxophone because read during practice (by hiding a book on the music stand). That has stuck with me in college. When I moved to Austin, all I brought with me were two suitcase s, a carryon, and a backpack. Even then I ended up bringing 25 books with me. The point is, I read a lot.

Last year I set out to change something. I wanted to create more than I consume. I know it sounds like something an angsty fifth-grader would say, but I was genuinely curious to see what would happen if I stopped reading. While there’s a large camp out there of successful individuals such as Ryan Holiday who swear by reading a lot, there’s a small but vocal minority of individuals who swear that you’re better off spending your time doing things. Why read about being a pro-cyclist when you can get on your bike and become a cyclist. That’s always been the voice nagging me at the back of my head.

The dreaded career fair. Love them or hate them, it’s where big firms recruit most of their students. The fact is that people DO get internships at career fairs, your goal is to make sure you are one of them.

I’m writing this article with the assumption that nobody will read it. In six months I’ll ask myself why I even joined gymnastics. I’m hoping this will help jog my memory then.

Let’s say you’re craving something different. You’re craving something out of the ordinary. Simply put, you want to go on an adventure.

You can buy a plane ticket to a fancy place. Let’s say Iceland*. You grab your passport, pack your bags, and you jet off. While you’re at it you rent a swanky RV.

You can drive around, eat at neat restaurants, see lots of sights, and take lots of photos.

But that’s not an adventure. That’s just travel.

To me, travel does not equal adventure.

Adventure is almost missing your flight, losing your phone, and getting stuck in the mud. Adventure is what happens when you go off the script.

Adventure is trying to cook soup while driving. Adventure is climbing behind waterfalls. Adventure is finding love in random places.

Here’s the secret, you can do all of these things without traveling far.

You can find just as much of an adventure biking through a part of town you’ve never been to or by getting lost in your local state park.

Here’s my challenge to you. Stop watching travel vlogs. Close your computer. Throw on your shoes and get out there. Because adventure awaits and it rewards the restless.

*I chose Iceland because this was a realization I had while traveling around Iceland in a swanky RV.