Not Minden Austrian Infantry, But. . .

The preparation of my late maternal grandfather's pulled pork BBQ and red slaw recipes. The Grand Duchess, bless her, always whips up a large batch of hush-puppies to go with the dish, which is authentic.

The tangy sauce is created with, more or less, equal parts ketchup, sugar, and white vinegar with course ground black pepper and Worcestershire sauce added to taste. I typically add another shot of white vinegar before kitchen clean-up to attenuate the tomato ketchup flavor a wee bit.

We enjoyed the dinner last evening on our screened porch and will do so again this evening. Afterwards, we will freeze the remaining meat (from a huge pork shoulder slow barbecued over indirect charcoal coals for about six hours in the Weber grill) for a few more dinners at different points this fall.

The slaw, thanks to the vinegar and sugar, keeps well for months and will live in several storage containers in the refrigerator. It works very nicely too as a chutney of sorts with Indian dishes, which the Grand Duchess has become a dab hand at preparing during the cooler and cold months.

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Sigh. The Young Master is at that age -- 13 in October -- where he simply will not cooperate with a pleasant smile when a camera or iPhones are produced. Needless to say, school photos are a challenge for the poor photographers brought in each autumn for the job. It is most vexing since -- we feel, at least -- TYM is a handsome young man when his face is in repose.

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Picking away at the second batch of 20, or so, Minden Austrian infantry -- the Wied Regiment -- as and when time permits by the way. Beginning on building up an inexact series of thin washes today on their white coats, waistcoats, and breeches as it happens, which yields a pleasant effect after a fashion. Photos to follow.

-- Stokes

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And We're Off!!!

Arrrgh! Gotta go back into camera settings on my iPhone to bring all of the frame into focus. Blast! Painting is underway on the 60 or so Minden Austrians, which are slated to become my version of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment of AWI renown. More or less indistinguishable from Austrians of the era really, right down to the red facings and turnbacks, but the eventual flags (already in my files) will set them apart. I went ahead and based-coated all of them over a couple of days lthe last week of August, using a mix of light gray and white acrylic gesso, before next applying my usual basic alkyd oil flesh tone to the faces and hands. In a day or two, I'll hit that with Army Painter Flesh Wash to tone things down a bit and bring some definition to the faces and hands. As usual, the plan is to focus on about 20 figures at a time, splitting the regiment roughly into thirds along with the color party and regimental staff. Depending on ...

Sunday Morning Coffee with AI. . .

A rmed with a second cup of fresh, strong coffee, I messed around a bit this morning with artlist.io using its image to image function in an attempt to convert my hand-drawn map from September 2006 to something that more resembles an old map from the mid-18th century. And just like my experiments with Ninja AI in June, the results are mixed. The above map is pretty good, but Artlist keeps fouling up the place names and has trouble putting a faint overlay of hexes across the entire area. Hexes, admittedly, are not likely to be found on any genuine maps from the era in question, but there we are. Frankly, I prefer the appearance of the Ninja map, but there were problems getting it to correct its errors. Grrrr. As is the case with so much having to do with the various AI's out there now, the output generated is a direct result of the prompts entered. For text alone, and when you develop a lengthy, highly detailed prompt, it is...

Continued Regional Map Revisions. . .

F ooled around a bit more with the revised map just before and after dinner this evening, using the Fotor app to reinsert missing text . I also removed a few other things using the 'Magic Eraser' function, which works surprisingly well. Now, we're getting somewhere. I just have to figure out how to ensure that the text is all a uniform font style and maybe figure out a way to add a few bunches of trees to suggest forested areas, Ninja AI is not always entirely cooperative to the tune of "I'm sorry Dave. I can't do that." -- Stokes

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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