Classic Sweet Tea Oven-Fried Chicken

When I saw this on The Kitchen, I was intrigued and had to try it.  In the morning, I mixed the brine of sweet tea, soy sauce, garlic, and onion, added the chicken, and put it in the fridge.  At dinnertime, I salted the chicken and coated it with flour, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and pepper.  With a little melted butter in the rimmed baking sheet, the chicken was baked skin side down for 30 minutes, flipped and baked for another 20 minutes.  The crispy deliciousness is shown below.

The recipe calls for a whole cut up chicken, but the next time I make it I'll use either all breasts or all thighs.  These wings ended way over done and using similar-sized pieces should be a better idea.  

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/katie-lee/classic-sweet-tea-oven-fried-chicken-20794824

Veggie Pizza

The pizza you see below is one of the most delicious we've made at home without a single piece of meat.  The thin Boboli crust was topped with a thin layer of tomato paste mixed with a couple of frozen, crushed garlic gloves and a generous amount of Italian seasoning.  Finely shredded Pecorino-Ramano and mozzarella cheese, sliced mushrooms, diced green onions, roasted red peppers, and corn and jalapenos left over from last year's harvest completed the pie.  Fifteen minutes in a 450-degree oven and we had a dinner fit for royalty and peasants alike.

Mini Seat Back Tray

On a recent American Airlines flight I noticed this clever little mobile device tray on the seat back in front of me.  Pulling up on the plastic piece (with the little triangle on it) releases the tray and it can accommodate small to medium sized mobile devices at a more comfortable viewing angle.  The handy USB to the left is perfectly placed to allow you to keep your device charged.  

Pretty darn clever!

Cell Phone Signal Strength

This post is only for technology-curious people who have an iPhone.  Android users can find the information somewhere in their phone's Settings.

When you dial *3001#12345#* (including all the special characters), you can find some information about your connection to the cellular network.  The carrier listed below is TFW, which is short for TracFone Wireless, which Verizon bought and is now the label for Total Wireless.  The signal strength is the RSRP (Reference Signal Received Power) and RSRQ (Reference Signal Received Quality) numbers.  Since the phone has one bar, you would expect some bad numbers, and they are.  An RSRP between 0 and -90 dBm is considered good and the -127 dBm shown here is solidly in the bad range.  The RSRQ of -29 dBm is also really bad.

Lots more information for the curious can be found at the link below.

https://www.wilsonamplifiers.com/blog/how-to-read-cell-phone-signal-strength-the-right-way

The Rifleman

The Rifleman was a TV series that aired from 1958 until 1963 and featured Chuck Connors in the title role.  In the opening sequence, the Rifleman is seen shooting his customized rapid-fire Winchester rifle.  I was a little boy at the time (born in 1955), but I do remember this.

The picture below is from the Texas A&M baseball field and the pitcher had just struck out a batter.  The scorecard lit up with that opening sequence, which you can see at the YouTube link below.  The Rifleman fires off about twelve shots, as fast as he can pull the lever.  Since this is Texas, celebrating a strikeout with a hail of bullets just seems to make perfect sense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsitJZUcFL4

Beer-Braised Beef with Onion, Carrot, and Turnips

Gourmet Chef Elaine has made this dish many times, but I didn't blog on it before because the recipe wasn't available online.  The original recipe was copied to the link below, so all the details are available, but we suggest more than a pound of chuck roast if you're real meat eaters like us.  Avoid bagged carrots and pick out the best looking individual ones.  Compared to potatoes, turnips have one-fourth the calories and carbs, but if you don't tell people ahead of time, they probably won't know the difference.  The last tip is to cut everything into big chunks to make it easier to eat.

http://recipeofhealth.com/recipe/beer-braised-beef-with-onion-carrot-and-turnips-686541rb

Cinnamon Roll Grahams

Gourmet Chef Elaine and I have very different approaches to grocery shopping.  She's on a mission and focuses on finding the items on her list as quickly as possible.  I prefer to walk up and down every aisle looking for new and interesting products.  Such was the case when I spotted the Cinnamon Roll Grahams you see below.  I love graham crackers.  I love cinnamon rolls.  The goldfish size helps with portion control.  Each fish is only 4 calories, so even a handful doesn't kill the diet.  Yes, they are delicious flavor bombs.

https://www.pepperidgefarm.com/product/cinnamon-roll-grahams

Coldest Times

Over on my Life Experiences blog (link below) I write about seven times I was so bitterly cold and miserable, all but one self-inflicted.  It gave me chills (pun intended) to recall the details of each experience, reliving the frozen feet, numb fingers, and rattling teeth.  The cartoon below captures the feeling of sitting on a metal bleacher seat for three hours hoping the game would end soon.

https://lifeexperiences.paulishing.com/2025/03/the-coldest-times.html

Chiropractor

I've been going to a chiropractor most of my life, mainly to get my body aligned to avoid back problems and to get my back freed up during the painful times when it slips into a bad place.  Years ago, after battling plantar fasciitis for months, I mentioned it to my chiropractor and he used a percussion type on my heel and after a few weeks of treatment the pain was gone.  I recently had another painful foot problem

and was checked by my podiatrist who took dozens of x-rays but found nothing.  I told my chiropractor about it, and the pain was gone after two adjustments.  Lastly, I was having left shoulder pain, which was causing sleep issues, and after just one adjustment it's almost totally gone.

I know many people who don't even want to consider a chiropractor, but I firmly believe that getting and keeping my body's alignment correct is one of the most important things I can do for my health.

Eighteen Dollar Lesson

I use the Speedtest app on my Android phone to test the speed of Wi-Fi connections, and while visiting my sister-in-law in Pittsburgh, decided to check out how fast my cellular Google Fi (which uses T-Mobile's network) connection was.  I turned off my Wi-Fi and ran the app.  To my surprise, it came back at over 600 Mbps and I tried it a second time to verify it.  Shortly after I received an alert from Google Fi that I had exceeded my 2 GB limit for the month and that I would incur additional data charges.  Those blazing fast speed tests chewed up 1.8 GB and are the big part of that spike in data usage shown below.   I pay a dollar for each 100MB over 2GB, so this ended up being an $18 lesson I'll never make again.