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January 28, 2026 – Gotta Use Your Noggin

January 28, 2026 / bhayes952

So, the war is on. We were at the lake house last week for our longest stint ever, three days. We were there primarily because we had the house inspection and Radon test. I was willing to come back so that the tester could pick up the Radon module after two days but my wife wanted to stay.

One of the things that the inspector asked was if there were any concerns. I said that the heating is absolutely inadequate. My wife and I actually were discussing about purchasing and replacing one of the wall heaters the previous night. One of the heaters I could put my hand on the metal grate while it was running for as long as I wanted. It was warm, but that was it. The other heater I could hold my hand about an inch from the metal grate for about two seconds before it was too hot.

I was also interested in the electrical panel to see if there was any space if we do want to add a mini split. Maybe we will resize the heaters? I don’t know for sure but I will say that it takes 24 hours before the downstairs living space is comfortable. One of the thoughts we had was to turn on the ceiling fans in reverse. That is supposed to help keep the heat from moving upstairs.

I didn’t have a ladder so I climbed up on one of the few pieces of furniture that we had, a bar stool. I didn’t have enough height to see on top of the fan base but I felt around and I could not find anything. On the list for the next trip was a ladder. Only the cheapest of ceiling fans cannot be reversed. Ask me how I know but these had remotes and different light hues and fan speeds. I found it hard to believe that there was no reverse switch.

On Saturday, we were working on a puzzle and really just killing time until the Radon test was picked up so that we could leave. This was my time to get busy with the ladder. On the first fan, I plopped the ladder down, climbed up and the switch was right in front of me; fan reversed. I was excited that in five minutes I would be back to the puzzle.

I move to the second fan and I don’t see a switch. I checked three different angles on the fan base. Then my wife wanted to see. She said, “here is the hole where it is supposed to be”. I said “what”? I still couldn’t see it. Once I got through the paradigm that the switch wasn’t there, I missed it because I was looking for something raised, not a hole She was underneath the fan and said that it looks different than the other fans. We did some bickering about why I could not see the hole and I reluctantly agreed to take the fan down and see what I could see.

Ceiling fans are job that I don’t like doing. These things are heavy and awkward. More so than this, it really is not my place to be taking down someone else’s fan to see if I could determine what is wrong. But I did it anyway. When I got the fan off the ceiling, I could definitely see the hole. I stuck the flashlight in the hole and I couldn’t see a switch anywhere. I reluctantly agreed that I would take the fan apart further to see if I could determine the problem.

Once I got the upper housing off, I could see that it was installed about 120 degrees from the switch. Hence, the switch was underneath the housing but not visible or accessible. Once I got thing put back together the way they were supposed to be, I begin to wonder how this was possible. This had to have been built incorrectly in the first place.

The escutcheon was painted to the ceiling. It is possible that this was a homeowner installation, but based on the fact that the previous owners only lived in the house three years, there has already been a major remodel and there are some other electrical oddities, I suspect that this is exactly the way it was installed. Before I am too hard on the installer, I can’t say that I would have noticed this problem either. I strongly believe this is how the fan was built as the fan cover is not a typical user installed part.

End Your Programming Routine: Because we had already been at the house for three days with the heat blasting the whole time, it is hard to say if the fans actually helped. It also makes me wonder if I should pull apart the heater that is only kind of working. I will probably do that while we are here this week. I would have never have guessed that something made incorrectly, installed an used but never noticed the problem would be the case.

January 27, 2026 – What is Radon?

January 27, 2026 / bhayes952

It’s been a long time since I have gone total science. I will keep it really high level today since I know that most of you first won’t care and second probably don’t have the chemistry background to truly understand. But, I will do the best I can to keep it approachable. I think the Wikipedia article is pretty good if you want to go deeper into this.

You have for surely heard of Helium and Neon they are elements arranged on the farthest right hand column of the periodic table. Because their elemental properties are all similar, they get the nickname ‘noble gases’. A noble gas is an element that is very non-reactive due to its atomic structure. Radon is also a noble gas.

That is not all of the story. Being non-reactive doesn’t mean that elements live in perpetuity. There is something called a half life and it is what it seems. It is the time that it takes for half of the total molecules to degrade into something else. We typically refer to that as radioactivity. The farther down the column you go of noble gases the shorter the half life or the more radioactive they are.

Even though Radon is very stable from a reaction standpoint, the half life is only a couple of days. What that ultimately means is half of Radon becomes another element (radioactive Polonium) in a couple of days. Further to that, the half life of Polonium is only three minutes until it becomes radioactive lead. This continues for twenty some years until that Radon becomes elemental lead and is considered safe.

Where does this Radon come from? Believe it or not, Radon starts off as Uranium in the soil. I think that we are all aware that Uranium is radioactive. That is what the bombs are made of, it is what powers the reactors for energy. Is it any surprise then that it decays into Radon for a short period of time? I will spare all the breakdown beginning at Uranium since I can sense I have pushed things to the edge already.

Don’t be scared, this has been happening since the beginning of time. It’s here and we just don’t know it. Since radioactive elements have a habit of increasing cancer risk, it is definitely something that would be best avoided for prolonged exposure. The worst part about it is that when we build homes, we trap the natural air and put ourselves in the middle of a concentrating environment.

We didn’t choose to have a radon test. It is certainly something I have wondered about throughout the years but you know how things go, out of sight, out of mind. Looking at the projected maps, I was a little uncertain about how we would fair with the testing and ultimately would prefer not to spend money on a mitigation system. But that would not be the case. The main house was fine but the ADU got a result above the action level.

You should know that radon testing is not required and neither is doing something with the readings in Oregon. Strictly speaking, we could have ignored things but my wife wanted to act. Putting in a mitigation system was not terrible. I am pretty sure that there is a lot of margin in the work, four hours, six inch PVC pipe and elbows and an inline fan makes $2500 look like a pretty good living. That cost also included a retest, a $200 value.

The way mitigation works is that it starts with coring a hole in the slab. A pipe is placed in the hole and any gaps are sealed. From there the pipe is directed outside. Add an inline fan and you are done. The principle is that the fan is going to suck on whatever ground is under the slab and the air that comes up is going to be blown into the atmosphere. Testing is done in the living space.

This by the way is the same type of mitigation that is also done with dry cleaner or fuel contaminated soils in a place that cannot be dug out. For several years I did this kind of work on superfund sites. In those cases, the plume can move underground with the winds so to speak. Our job was to map and monitor what that plume looked like via test results.

I could tell that something was happening because there has been a distinctive stale grease and mustiness smell when I walk in the door. We have not cleaned the place up since the tenant moved out other than some really high level sweeping. It really is not required for selling a house, the standard is reasonably clean. I have done it plenty with every tenant turnover so I am taking advantage of not having to do it. After the fan was installed, the place smelled much better.

After running the fan for a week, the retest was started. Since we were just barely above the action level in the first place, I am not surprise in the least the testing showed that we had half of the amount of radon than we did before mitigation. You would call this a success.

End Your Programming Routine: I am not here to say that Radon is not a problem. In our house, we should definitely look at any kind of weird and foreign potential causes of disease. I will say that I am a little bit skeptical that it is something to worry a lot about especially when right at the action level. If the potential buyers were never to wanted the test, we would have never known.

January 23, 2026 – The Talent Code: Part 1, Chapters 1-2

January 23, 2026 / bhayes952

Admittedly, I did not know anything about this book before I purchased it. It came from a co-worker recommendation a couple of years ago. If I remember this conversation correctly, I was telling him about my former position at another company. I believe that he said something like, you should read this book that I just read. I wrote the title down and then I just waited until I had some time to fit it into my reading.

Honestly, I was expecting the book to be about techniques to get the best out of people as a leader using teambuilding skills. At least, that is the conversation I was having with my co-worker. I didn’t even read the dust jacket and just jumped into reading the book. To my surprise, it has nothing to do with that. The book is all about how the individual masters skills.

Because I was expecting something different, I was puzzled when I read the introduction. What do high performance teams have to do with a middle schooler practicing the clarinet? It is no surprise there, nothing really. OK, I am going to change my paradigm now, we are going to get educated on how to learn skills well. This is up my alley.

This is going to sound a little spacy but Coyle’s assertion is that the way we master skills is by something called deep practice. That act of deep practice in turn causes a bio-chemical reaction for the body to build a compound called myelin. This is the material that wraps nerve fiber. The more the deep practice, the thicker the myelin gets. This then causes the message transmissions to become faster and more precise. That is mastery.

The phrase deep practice has a specific implication. Deep practice is the act of working until a mistake is made, stopping and analyzing the problem and starting again at that point. Coyle uses a word exercise to try and prove a point. If you struggle with something then you are more likely to recall it and in turn master it. The list of words that he provided with missing letters was more memorable then the list where everything was filled out.

Coyle’s also asserts that there is a phenomenon out there that seems to line up with the theory anyway. Why do so many major league baseball players come from the Dominican Republic? It is because the culture has mastered deep practice when it comes to baseball. They are not a super race of baseball phenoms and certainly pound for pound when you look at Olympic medal totals it not because of genetic athleticism and deep population pools.

He also maintains that poorer demographics are more likely to use deep practice because they don’t really have any other options. They are less likely to have analytics and coaching, not discounting those things but they are making mistakes and learning from them which is what then leads to greatness.

If that is then true, I am reminded of several misguided coaches that I have had over the years. They boldly assert that the phrase “practice makes perfect” is wrong. It should be “perfect practice makes perfect” when in reality the first statement is actually more true. Someone cannot get to perfect practice without practice. And it should also be noted that using this theory, repetition holds no value. If you are not trying to do it faster or better or some other variation then likely you are actually repeating the same mistakes in your ‘perfect’ repetition.

Another novelty to me is the 10,000 hours theory does not play a role but not as big as you would think. Remember that is that it takes 10,000 hours to master something. But, combine Deep practice with 10,000 hours and you will be a master. That make sense for me because when I think about certain things like reading, sometimes I have a difficult time remembering what I read. I am sure that I have probably read that many hours in my lifetime and yet that information is only temporarily available. It goes into my brain and then six months later I would have to read the book again to even know what that is about.

And yet, I think that I am a pretty good programmer. I struggled and struggled to get it. After months of debugging I sometimes found that the program did not work like it should. Things that technically were correct did not execute in ways that they were supposed to. I learned from that particularly to be a better programmer and test my work in smaller chunks to the point that I didn’t need to do that anymore because I had mastered the nuance.

End Your Programming Routine: Despite the fact that this is not the book I was thinking that it was going to be, I actually think that it might be better than that. Sometimes, things that matter are comfortable and familiar, but sometimes they are stretching us and making us better. While a business book is interesting, this may not be the right forum. Next week, we will cover chapters 3 and 4.

January 22, 2024 – Small Engine Maintenance

January 22, 2026 / bhayes952

If you are like me (probably not) then you don’t do your own yard maintenance. I never grew up with a silver spoon and my parents still do all of their own yard work. It was really hard for me to consider paying someone when I had the ability to do the work, and in some cases, desire as well. That being said, I was travelling a lot for work and I simply could not keep up. It was well worth the cost considering how much they can do in the time versus myself.

I have gone through a couple of cycles. I had everything that I needed like lawnmower, trimmer, etc. Then after a couple of years I slowly gave stuff away until I had nothing. But, when I quit my job I needed to take over that task for financial reasons. Fortunately, an uncle gave my son a lawnmower so that he could build his financial empire and he wasn’t using it, so I did. Then, my father-in-law died and I refilled my shed with the things that were missing.

We still have someone doing the yard but at the lake house, not so much. Each trip I have been hauling over yard equipment. I started mowing the grass but I could not get the edges so then I brought over the trimmer. The beach brings a lot of higher wind and now I have a lot of evergreen debris on the driveway and deck so I am bringing over my blower.

If you have ever tried to start a lawnmower after sitting for five years, you might be surprised as how much work is involved. Fortunately for me, I have been in the habit of running gas engines out of fuel when I am uncertain about the future. But, I gassed the mower up and pulled and pulled to no avail. A small engine’s best friend is a can of starter fluid, sometimes called ether. I sprayed a good shot into the carburetor and viola, it started.

Tune up kits can be purchased relatively inexpensively. They typically contain a spark plug, air filter and sometimes a quart of oil or some fuel filters or primer bulbs and tubing depending on what engine it is. What I have heard is that lawnmowers should have the oil changed once a year along with the blade sharpened. Spark plugs and filters are optional if they look plugged or black. You can bet that I haven’t done it in five years, if ever. So, that is on the future agenda for the mower.

I also had to use the starter fluid to get the trimmer going. It had an additional problem that the priming bulb cracked as I was pushing on it. The second picture is the new bulb installed and I also changed the filter and spark plug. I did this because the filter was pretty clogged and those items came with the tune-up kit. Now that is up and going again.

I haven’t been able to get the blower started yet. I think all it probably needs is a shot of starter fluid. However, it seems like my son helped himself to the bottle that I had here and so this will become another unknown project until I get to the beach. Even though it is cheap, I really do not want another thing to move considering I use it very infrequently in the first place. One can will last me for years, two would almost be a lifetime.

Our yard is small. I can mow all the grass in about twenty minutes. I think that when we do move, our days of yard service will be over. That will save a couple of hundred dollars a month. It will be important to get these things going and keep them going. One thing that I do now is only use ethanol free premium. The previous homeowners left a couple of full gas cans for the generator. I suspect that those are not ethanol free. So, it is what I have used for the mower to date but once that is gone, it won’t be.

Side note here. Gasoline should be rotated. So, if we do not run the generator extensively and I have gotten several mows from a partial tank of gas, the gasoline in the the cans will sit for a long time, possibly years. What I do is pour the fuel in my car after a year and then take the can to the filling station for the car and the can. This ensures fresh fuel is always stored.

I learned the ethanol free trick years ago. I had the lower grade gas destroy my gas line in my chain saw. I suspect that it was also the culprit for the primer bulb in the trimmer. Aside from starting the trimmer, I have never used it. Most people won’t go to the cost and effort to get ethanol free gas. It’s not like I can ask my father-in-law. In summary, ethanol damages the rubber or whatever the plastic parts are made of.

Side note two. Ethanol is water soluble. If your gas has ethanol then likely it will also have water if it sits around long enough. Fuel additives called stabilizers help prevent that as well as replace the lightest components that tend to evaporate over time. If you are not going to use ethanol free gas, you should highly consider using a stabilizer product. Regardless of stabilizer, I think the ethanol is going to attack the plastic.

You would think that ethanol is the only problem for small engines but it is not. Sunlight degrades the plastic parts as well. What I mean is that there is no such thing as a small engine that does not require maintenance at some point. This seems like a good opportunity to make some short videos or at least articles so look for more of these as I get things going again.

End Your Programming Routine: You know what else doesn’t help? My bad neck and shoulder. Pulling on those starters leads to pain. The easier I can start things and the better they run makes life a lot better for me. I want to offer some encouragement, I don’t know a lot about these things either. But, you can try some simple things like starter fluid and tune-up kits and probably get things going again.

January 21, 2026 – Selling Stuff Sucks

January 21, 2026 / bhayes952

I know that I have threatened to sell things in the past. By all accounts, I should have gotten off the stick and got to work. But, in the process of moving, I came to the realization that there are things that I really don’t need to move, like this stack of canning jars. I don’t need to move them because I don’t really need them. With just two of us in the house, six dozen quart jars is plain overkill.

My wife has also been on me sell my lumber pile. That too I do not want to move, but I also don’t want to get rid of all of it either. Woodworking lumber can be very expensive and I literally have thousands of dollars worth of it that I am selling at 10% of its value. Nevertheless, I set about on my first, recent experience with selling items on-line.

You could probably label me as an old fogey. When I think online classifieds, I think Craigslist. But, all I hear is that Craigslist is dead. I don’t know, not only do I really not sell things, I don’t really buy things either. I set about putting an add in Craigslist, Nextdoor and gasp Facebook. I broke my personal ethos and made my first ever Facebook post (on Marketplace).

I am no rube, I know how to sell things. Marketing, pricing and potentially negotiation are all involved. I took a spin around the market to see what jars are going for. I also looked at new jars and I knew that I wanted to sell all of them as a lot. A dozen jars go for $15 at the store, I thought that I would sell the entire six for $40. That was a even amount that I wouldn’t have to make change for. Don’t even get me started about electronic money.

I could not believe the response that I got. The very first night, someone emailed me, so I assume that must have been a Craigslist hit. We arranged that she would come tomorrow and pick up the jars. Well, I waited and then I waited, no show. Her email actually had her phone number in it but I just stewed.

While I was waiting, I checked Facebook Messenger, I had eight other buyers. I was certain that I was going to complete the transaction that night so I responded to all the potentials that there was a sale in progress. When that person did not show up, I went back to all of those messages in chronological order. The first person only wanted the wide mouth jars, the second person wanted to offer $36, the third person offered $30. I said no to all of those people. The forth person responded immediately when I said I was in talks, they also asked if I had anything else. This was the one.

Not only was I a little overwhelmed by the number of offers and the amount of communication that was required but I was working around two different house showings that weekend. Then I got several offers off of Nextdoor. Now, I had to include that platform in the communication loop. This process spanned from Thursday into mid-Sunday afternoon. I won’t lie, I questioned whether this was actually worth the money. Throwing the jars away would be so much easier and then this would be over.

In the end, the jars went to the right person I feel like. They wanted them, they didn’t hassle me on price, in fact they said this was a good deal and so they recognized the value. They communicated and I am sure that they were going to use them. I think that is why it was worth my effort. It would have been easier and possibly cheaper to throw them away but that would also be wasteful.

I am going to have to go back and revamp my wood listing. I need to get all of the stuff cleared off the pile and take a few more pictures. Because I was under pressure from my wife to get it listed, I did the minimal amount of prep. In all of the house selling and jar selling chaos, I missed out on some timely communication with potential buyers. The wood is also priced to sell but it will be more than pocket money.

I also didn’t realize how much woodworking wood was out there for sale. When I did my initial research, I was seeing prices of $10 a board foot for Douglas Fir from lumber suppliers. But, I see it on Facebook Marketplace at $1 per board food. I priced mine at half of that but I may need to re-evaluate things now that I have a better feel for the market. I am still not giving it away, if I do it will be to my neighbor who will burn it. They have done a lot for me over the years and I don’t feel bad about that.

End Your Programming Routine: I have learned that I don’t get a lot of charge out of selling things online. It is why I have things I would like to get rid of but have not done it. The chairs I talked about a couple of years ago, shotgun barrels, things that all have value. I probably need to focus on one thing at a time and possibly one platform if I am going to be successful at this. I am happy that I am not bombarded with messages at the moment.

January 20, 2026 – There Outta Be a Better Way

January 20, 2026 / bhayes952

I admit it, I am frugal. That is one way of saying that I really despise waste. A standard construction tube of caulking often contains way more material then a typical home owner project will use at one time. So the remainder of the tube becomes waste if it sits around too long.

I have tried every trick in the book to preserve the life of caulk tube remnants. I have put electrical tape over the nozzle. I have tried to embed nails and screws so that there is a channel when I come back to it. I have cut the nozzle shorter to pull the plug of dried caulk out. I have used large, screw on electrical connectors to act as a cap. They all suck.

Caulking is a love hate relationship. You want to believe that it is an ideal solution to a less than ideal situation. That being said, I find about a five year or less life with it in an outdoor application. My personal preference is to use as little as possible because if you are at the point where your hopes are on caulk, you are waiting to fail.

Certain projects typically can use quite a bit of caulk. I am thinking back to siding replacement I did a couple of years ago. In those cases, it seemed like I was going through it as fast as I could blink. But, because I despise waste, I want to make sure that I am purchasing the exact amount I need. Caulk will even dry up in an unopened tube and when you only use a squirt at a time, it doesn’t pay to keep it around.

Recently, I was doing a quick cleaning to get ready for a house showing. I hadn’t really spent any time in the apartment since the tenant moved out. It looked like it was in the need of TLC and when I looked at the vanity, I could see a gap between the top and the tile backsplash. I can’t remember if I ever mentioned this but we had to replace the entire floor a couple of years ago. The shower had leaked and it had rotted the structure. So, the vanity had to be removed and I suspect it shrank.

I thought that I would just quickly put a bead down. The more I can spruce up, the better the chances the buyer will be wowed, or at least not turned off. I had an open tube of kitchen/bath caulk. The best application for this is 100% silicone, that is not wholly important other than to say it is not water based. It requires mineral spirits to clean up.

In fact, I had two tubes. One was clear and the other is white, see picture above. The clear one had clearly given up the ghost. I determine that by forcing a nail into the small opening at the nozzle. If and when I pull the nail out and I get some still wet material, then I consider the tube viable. I would then set about trying to get at the good material.

The clear was clearly dried out, but the white was not. So, I set about poking and squeezing until it was flowing. If I can get away with it, I will cut half the nozzle off but that amount of opening causes a very wide bead. That tactic is not really suitable for a for a bath job unless you are OK with it all over the place. I was not.

Twenty minutes of poking and cleaning my hands and tools off with mineral spirits, I finally got it to flow at an adequate rate. Believe me, more than once I had this thought that I am spending way more money in time than just going to purchase a replacement tube. The nagging problem in my head is that this perpetuates the cycle all over again. I had to get it done quickly because I had 30 minutes before the showing so I persisted. Fortunately, I felt like the smell of bleach that I poured around the shower to try and subdue the mildew significantly overwhelmed the pungent, vinegary smell of silicone caulk or the petroleum smell of ‘Odorless’ Mineral Spirits.

The job got done and I screwed the electrical wire nut back on the nozzle. I know full well that the next time I want to do something like this again that this tube is likely shot at 3/4 full. I was lucky to get a second project out of this one as it is.

End Your Programming Routine: I used to keep a small tube of hand squeezable caulk. However, it also dried up. Just like we are buying half gallons of milk now, these things can almost cost as much as a standard tube. But, at least there is not so much waste. Now that we are moving to a newer house, I am expecting less home improvement projects. Maybe it is time to go back to the smaller tube?

January 19, 2026 – The Truth is In the Middle

January 19, 2026 / bhayes952

You might have been wondering where I am at such a polarizing time. That time has come. I comment on the Minneapolis, ICE shooting that occurred a couple of weeks ago. I also talk about history and how events of the Boston Massacre relate to this and what I think you should do about it, if anything. Remember, we should be doing what matters. Consider my words but keep on doing things that matter for the proper perspective.

January 16, 2026 – Mere Christianity, Conclusion

January 16, 2026 / bhayes952

We have made it to the end once again. I have to apologize that my focus has not been nearly as good as it should have been. This is only a 220 page book that took me over four months to read. On one hand, when something is dense and thought provoking, speed is not a good metric. But, my plan was not to read and ponder each word but to read a reasonable length block a week. This should have been approximately one short chapter a day.

I think what is pretty telling is that I read about a third of the book before I even started writing. I had a huge jump start at the beginning of fall which lagged and lagged. On both fronts it is telling about how I approached things. One being how late I am and the other about what I thought about the book.

I started out with pretty high hopes. Not only did Lewis attempt to do something nobody else has ever done, but he went about it in a way that was disciplined and secularly approachable. After a quick and spectacular start, the book and the argument got bogged down. That is as good a place to start as any.

In the introduction to this book, it was stated that this was originally a radio broadcast to the British people during World War II. The stated purpose of the broadcast was to provide hope to a nation under a looming cloud of war, specifically the early German bombing London. I think that it is a pretty good strategy to reassure everyone that there is something better than this life if things don’t go well.

I think where I got stuck on a hump is after book one, it is pretty much assumed that the point was sufficiently made. From Book 2 forward, it is all about doctrine. I suppose that if you were a brand new convert you might be at that point of tell me more, tell me more. It is probably a pretty good bet that this radio broadcast landed best with the non-believers followed by the conservative Protestant denominations. That more than likely is the majority of the British citizenry.

I definitely don’t want to argue theology. One, I could get my behind whipped by someone educated and prepared. And two, I don’t really care. I might not agree with doctrine such as the trinity but you can be darn sure that I am open to it and I respect your right to believe differently. I also strongly agree with the better good position rather than pick at nuance.

Despite what I said above, the rest of the book didn’t do that much for me. I am aware of biblical virtues and the supposed way to eternal salvation. I am aware of theology and beliefs and where they differ from mine. I think also that we have to look at mindset. Because I am already a believer and this does not reinforce my beliefs already, the whole things kind of fall flat.

The way that Lewis presented his case, he of course took from his own line of belief as defacto truth. Sitting from where I am, I would have been more interested in going deeper into the justification for those items. I am not opposed to challenging my own beliefs, in fact I would welcome that. But, then again I guess this is not the intent of the work in the first place.

OK then, who is this book for? I would say that it would appeal to Lewis fans, historical fans and people questioning the existence of God but are open for the possibility. I am not going to say that I didn’t get anything out of it but where it started and where it ended were disappointing for me. In that vein, I am glad to say I read it and I can recommend it circumstantially.

End Your Programming Routine: This is one of those books that I should come back to in a couple of years. Now that I know what to expect, it is likely that I will come back to a different opinion. It is short enough to read pretty quickly and I wouldn’t be surprised to have a more favorable outcome or at least new perspective. When something is labeled one of the greatest at anything, it is only an opinion. Just like this.

January 15, 2026 – Good Things

January 15, 2026 / bhayes952

Good Things by Samin Nosrat is the January selection of the Left Coast Culinary Book Club. I have to admit that I groaned slightly on the inside when it was decided that this was the book that we were going to pursue. I guess for me I much more enjoy culinary fiction more so than another cookbook. I also kind of get a little of worn out of celebrity cooking personalities that put out cookbooks frequently

Several years ago, we covered Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. In fact, we did a month on each subject. I have to say that if there was one thing I took away from that was to salt beef early. But, I really did not put too much stock in the book. We also watched the Netflix series. But, after reading this book, I wonder if I got it all wrong.

Yes, I would call Nosrat a celebrity chef. I have seen her on Anthony Bordain’s No Reservations as well as well as other places. That being said, I do not see her putting out content like The Pioneer Woman, Bobby Flay or Emeril. This is her first book that she has published since Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. When starting this book, she admits that this is a very different book in that her first one was all about how to create something using what she calls the key elements with no recipes. Now that you have all of the tools you should need to be successful, this seems counterintuitive.

This one starts off with building some fundamental sauces or condiments or what have you. It then moves into techniques for cooking ingredients and then you would layer those sauces into the recipes. This book builds on dishes using a matrix. So, you can pick one or two or three vegetables that you have and then the sauce and a few sprinkles or spritzes and you have a finished product.

It is kind of a ground up approach or a reverse recipe. While most recipes show a picture and then a list of ingredients to make it, this book starts with an ingredient and then it provides three to ten recipes that can be made with that ingredient. Typically, you kind of look a category and then try to pick something that is appealing or read to see if you have everything. Whereas this book, you pick a vegetable and see what options you have to make something appealing.

This is the way that I cook and I suspect that this is the way many of us approach meals, especially for people with gardens or deep pantries. “I have a lot of such and such, what can I do with it”? It is so revolutionary, that it made me consider going back to Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat because I suspect that I missed the significance of it.

If there is one knock on the book to me, it is that I feel like the book uses a lot of semi-exotic ingredients. Nosrat is middle eastern born and it highly influenced her cooking. As an example I don’t know where I would find a Persian cucumber or labna. I would say that if you are going to use this book then it behooves you to do some research on sourcing middle eastern ingredients. The beauty of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat would be using whatever cucumber you can find.

I will also admit that I haven’t done much cooking from the book either. Part of it is because I have not finished reading it as of the time of writing. I have gotten through 75% which I feel qualifies me to be able to comment at this point. I am also somewhat dubious of grocery store produce and so things like eggplant need to wait until a better time of the year. I did broil some cauliflower the other night because I was feeling the pull of Nosrat.

In my opinion, this isn’t the first cookbook you should buy. I feel like this cookbook is for someone that already has some skills and desires to learn more. From there, you can really elevate things with the knowledge that Nosrat can impart. But, it is not too bad either. I suspect that if you knew nothing, you might come away wondering why they all are not organized this way.

End Your Programming Routine: Before Christmas, my son sent me a picture from Barnes and Noble. Good Things was the 2025 gift book of the year. He knew that it was on my bookshelf to read. It very well could be, it is that good.

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