Focaccia Bread Recipe

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by Lisa

Focaccia Bread Recipe

Difficulty: Easy
Prep time

25

hours 
Cooking time

30

minutes

Ingredients

  • 6¼ cups bread flour

  • ¼ teaspoon active dry yeast

  • 1 teaspoon sugar

  • 1 tablespoon sea salt

  • 3+3 tablespoons olive oil

  • ~2 cups water

Method

  • Combine yeast, sugar, and one cup of water. Wait until foamy on top.
  • Combine flour and sea salt, mix to combine.
  • Add yeast/water mixture and mix for a few minutes
  • Add 3 tablespoons olive oil and kneed until a shiny dough ball forms, adding water as needed
  • Let dough rise for 24 hours
  • Coat a half-sheet baking pan with 1 tablespoon of olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt
  • Spread dough over baking pan
  • Coat with 1 tablespoons olive oil
  • Allow to rise for 60 minutes
  • Preheat oven to 450
  • Coat with 1 tablespoon olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt
  • Bake for 25-35 minutes

School’s Out — Books

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by Lisa

Well … it doesn’t look like school is going to resume until, possibly, August. Maybe not even then. Our district’s go at distance learning has been quite lacking — they’ve basically taken three weeks off to (hopefully) sort out some content to complete the year. I wanted to get Anya a bunch of books — she doesn’t enjoy e-books in spite of the fact we’ve got an endless supply from the local libraries. She likes physical books. I do not like blowing fifteen or twenty bucks on a book … so that’s not going to work out well 🙂

I remembered Book Outlet, where I got her Lucy and Andy books (they have a referral program – 10$ off your first order of 25$ or more and I get a bonus 10$) — I went through their entire collection of not-yet-teenager books and ordered 43 books for about 150$. That’s about 3.50$ per book, mostly hard covers. There are some reference books, drawing instruction books, science experiments, maker ideas, programming books, and a lot of fiction books to try out. I even found a book about urban animal rescue — she’s rather enticed with the idea of being a vet and rescuing wild animals. This will be a great supplement to whatever the school puts together for the remainder of the year. (I also picked up a 2nd and 3rd grade curriculum — additional work for the remainder of this year and something for the summer).

Science Experiment: Potato Powered

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by Lisa

I came up with a bunch of science experiments for Anya’s covid not-a-break. Some are really straight-forward, some are open-ended design challenges, and some are pretty tricky. I thought the potato powered LED experiment was straight-forward. A list of materials, step-by-step instructions, and a clear visual product. Except … one potato generated like 0.8 volts. Cut the potato in half, get some extra clips, and we’re up to 1.6 volts.

I’d read about a research project where energy production was increased by using a boiled potato … I needed to make lunch anyway, so I boiled a bit of potato. I also microwaved another bit of the potato — so we’ve got two raw quarters, a boiled quarter, and a microwaved quarter. All four produced about 0.8 volts. In combination, this was enough to light up an LED.

Reading the article, it looks like Wh capacity is what is increasing … not output voltage. Connecting all four quarters (plus finding more pennies, nails, and clips) produced enough power to light up our LED. Now we’re seeing how long the potato-powered LED lasts. From 3PM on 24 March 2020 until … well, it needed to get cleaned up on 26 March as the potatoes started getting dodgy.

Rules for the Zombie Apocalypse

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by Lisa
Rules for the Zombie Apocalypse:
  1. Don’t let the zombie bite you
  2. Don’t let the ship full of zombies dock. Anywhere.
  3. The zombie apocalypse is the one scenario where walls will work (zombies aren’t that smart or nimble); build a big one
  4. Don’t get lax about safety just because it is tiring. (Really, don’t!)

Also, Anya is working on a plan to train the raccoons to defend our property.

Commercial and residential demand

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by Lisa

The great toilet paper run of 2020 … may not be panicked hording the way it is portraits in the media. I work from home, but Anya is in school (well, was). And used the bathroom there a few times a week. Back when I worked from an office, I used that bathroom once or twice a day. That’s somewhere between a 30 and 50 percent increase in home bathroom usage. Per person, per weekday.

Food is apt to have a simialr shortfall – kids aren’t eating lunch at school, uni kids are staying home, office workers aren’t going out to lunch. Plus people at home have more time to make breakfast … So goodbye eggs at the grocery store.

Now, if I am right, that means there’s a surplus of the one-ply commercial stuff no one likes. There’s not a shortage – there’s a surplus in the commercial supply sector and a corresponding shortage in the retail one. Which is a lot easier to solve – check out Staples or online warehouses that specialize in office supplies. And restaurant supply centers may welcome smaller scale orders.

Excel – Including Current Date In String

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by Lisa

Here’s a trick to include the current date in an Excel string — especially useful if you want to include the current date on a graph without having to actually type the current date each time. If you just include TODAY(), you get the integer representation. Wrap TODAY() in TEXT() and supply the formatting you want (“yyyy-mm-dd” in my example). Voila, a date like 2020-03-22 instead of 43912.

SARS COV-2 Visualizations

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by Lisa

I see charts of the cumulative number of infections (‘the curve’) and the number of tests administered … but comparing the daily number of tests to the cumulative number of infections is not particularly meaningful beyond seeing that the increase in infections is still rather exponential.

A better visualization compares the cumulative tests to the cumulative infections (or, for less staggering numbers, the daily tests administered and the daily number of new infections identified). No, it doesn’t appear that ‘the curve’ is flattening. I’m curious to see, however, the impact of multiple states going into lock-down has in a week or two.

Looking at a number of infections, especially compared across the globe, provides a bit of a distorted view. Comparing countries by the percent of the population that’s been identified as infected instead of the raw number of identified infections avoids the appearance that small countries are less impacted (and that highly populated countries are disproportionately impacted).

Non-Bail-Outs

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by Lisa

I don’t get why we they’re talking about “bail outs” instead of making purchases that solving other problems. I was seeing news stories about people stuck abroad followed by news stories about airlines needing money because no one was flying — paying for flights to bring people back to the US seemed like an obvious win-win. Now there are restaurants going under & kids who are out of school not getting meals. Hotels with no customers and individuals without a safe home in which to shelter. Instead of floating loans or handing out money, *buy* services and fix two problems simultaneously.

News and Falsehoods

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by Lisa
Even without watching the live mid-day briefings (which we do watch), I’m amazed at how much disinformation makes it to the edited evening newscast. Trump’s got a good feeling about some drug that didn’t have production scaled up for a bunch of “wtf, it cannot get worse” off-label use. Or, hell, his seeming claim to have legalized off-label use because it’s the only way we’re going to address the current health crisis.
 
Before this outbreak, it infuriated me to tune into the evening news and hear “Trump said X” when X was verifiably untrue. Sure, ‘Trump said the untrue thing’ was accurate … but without clarifying the veracity of Trump’s statement … saying “Trump said X” comes across as “X” to a whole lot of people. Hasn’t changed just because it’s more dangerous to say “Trump says chloroquine / hydroxychloroquine is a game-changer and is totally safe”. If nothing else, were I writing copy, I’d delve a little into the difference between the two drugs. Hydroxy- is a less toxic derivative … which doesn’t at all sound like “totally safe, slam some and see if it works” to me.

Low Yeast, Long Rise Bread

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by Lisa

There’s been a run on yeast. Well, there’s been a run on a lot of things. But most things have viable alternatives. No broccoli, get some carrots. No tomato sauce, get diced tomatoes and use a blender. While there are unleavened breads, and breads leavened with baking soda … it’s not yeast bread. I’ve found some recipes using brewing yeast for bread, but I wanted to see how little baking yeast would make bread. Last night’s pizza dough used a quarter teaspoon of yeast. I took a cup of warm water, added about a tablespoon of sugar, and a quarter teaspoon of yeast. That sat until there was activity. Mixed together three cups of whole wheat flour, one cup of white flour, a few tablespoons of vital wheat gluten, and a teaspoon of salt. Added the water/yeast, then added enough water to make a dough. The dough sat overnight to rise. I gently deflated it in the morning, then left it to raise again. Gently deflated it around lunch time, and left it alone until dinner time. Very good crust — great flavor, nice crunchy crust to it. And beautifully leavened.