Fresh Crusty Bread for Two

Gourmet Chef Elaine found this recipe for a small round of bread that's perfect to serve 2-3 people.  Since I'm the baker I made this recipe which is as simple as it can be.  Mix flour, salt, and rapid-rise yeast together and stir with 100-to-110-degree hot water.  Let rise for two hours, fold the sides to the middle a few times, and rise for another hour.  The dough ball is placed on a long strip of parchment paper and placed in a preheated 450-degree Dutch Oven.  Bake with the lid on for 15 minutes and then another 20 minutes with the lid removed.  Use the parchment paper to lift the bread out and let cool down on a wire rack.  All the minute details can be found at the link below.

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchen/fresh-crusty-bread-for-two-19010473

PEBKAC

PEBKAC is an acronym for "Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair".  And what is between the keyboard and the chair?  Yep, the human.  So it's just a coded way of saying there's nothing wrong with the computer and the user's to blame.  Is it surprising that the IT department with all the acronyms they have (even in the name of the department) would cook up something like this just so they can hide their insults?  

https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/p/pebkac.htm

Lean Cuisine Math

Gourmet Chef Elaine is a big fan of eating Lean Cuisine's for lunch.  She refuses to buy them at their normal price ($3.75 each in the picture below).  But when can be had for $1.99 each, she'll throw five or ten in the shopping cart.   

If you look closely at the sale sticker, you'll see a "buy 5 & save $5", but if you do the math, buying five at the sale price totals $9.95, but buying five at the $3.75 price totals $18.75, so the savings is actually $8.80. Math isn't their strong suit. 

The Chosen

The Chosen is a series on the life and death of Jesus Christ.  The first four seasons are available on Amazon Prime (link below) but can also be viewed online for free (I love free) at watch.thechosen.tv.  Season 5 debuts in theaters on March 28 after which it will be exclusive on Prime for ninety days before it's free on the website.  Two more seasons will be made to bring the total to seven.

This series features many miracles that Jesus was famous for including the Miraculous Catch of Fish (shown below), turning water into wine at a wedding in Cana, and using five loaves of bread and two fish to feed thousands.  

https://www.amazon.com/The-Chosen/dp/B0CQ5JGK4K

Vince The Sign Guy

I've added Vince The Sign Guy to my morning reading routine.  Each day is a different, humorous sign like the one below.  You can find Vince online at the link below or follow him on Facebook if that's your thing (I gave that up years ago).  A chuckle is a nice way to start the day.

https://www.vincethesignguy.com

Old Bay Crab Cakes

Back in 2017, I blogged about making Baltimore-style Crab Cakes and have only made them that way for the last eight years, so it was time to try something different.  Using the recipe at the link below, I combined a $35 pound of crab meat with breadcrumbs, egg, Worcestershire sauce, Dijon mustard, Old Bay, salt, pepper, and chopped fresh parsley and formed 8 patties.  Some butter melted in a skillet on medium heat and 4 minutes per side resulted in the beauties shown below.

https://delectablerecipe.com/original-old-bay-crab-cakes

Accent Chairs

We've had accent chairs in our bedroom for years and when we recently added carpet and changed the bedspreads to match, the old chairs had to go (donated to Saint Vincent de Paul).  Gourmet Chef Elaine found the chair below at our local TJ Maxx store marked down to $99.  She raced home and we took the QX60 SUV right back to the store to pick up two before they were gone.  The last change to our bedroom, and two other upstairs rooms, will be a fresh coat of paint, probably some shade of ivory.  I just need to figure out if we keep the two light blue accent walls, choose another color, or paint it all the same.

https://tjmaxx.tjx.com

Trash Can Hack

This simple hack would not be needed if our trash pickup was close to the same time each week.  I dislike going out to the curb in the freezing cold just to find the trash is still there.  So the hack is to cut off about 12 inches of the handle on the last trash bag and place it under the lid with a few inches sticking out in the direction I can see from the house.  When the trash is dumped, the red handle (shown below) goes in with the rest of the trash and I know I will not be taking a useless trip to the curb.  

Pixel Buds Pro 2

I'm probably one of the last holdouts to buy earbuds and I was going to wait until late spring to get these Google Pixel Buds Pro 2, but when I found them for 15% off, I jumped on the deal.  The Active Noise Cancellation is the biggest attraction to these, which should come in handy at the pool this summer.  I'm amazed at how beautiful the music came through as I listened to The Sounds Of Silence while walking on a treadmill.  Impressive!

https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_buds_pro_2

ID-10T

One of the terms the Information Technology team used to describe a problem that turned out to be a clueless end-user issue was to say it "was an ID-10T" error.  If you haven't caught on yet, that's a euphemism (i.e., an innocuous word or expression used instead of one deemed offensive) for the word "idiot".  Sometimes that was well-earned and other times the blame is better placed on a poorly designed program.  Thousands of IT acronyms can be found at the link below.

https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/id10t