Anya’s 10th Birthday Cake: Strawberry Cake with Strawberry Whipped Cream

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by Lisa
Strawberry Cake with Strawberry Whipped Cream
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Strawberry Cake with Strawberry Whipped Cream

Recipe by LisaCourse: DessertCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Medium
Servings

12

servings
Prep time

1

hour 
Cooking time

40

minutes

Ingredients

  • 14 oz all-purpose Flour

  • 2 tsp baking powder

  • 1 tsp baking soda

  • 1 teaspoon baking soda

  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

  • 226 g unsalted butter, room temperature

  • 284 g sugar

  • 1 Tablespoon lemon juice

  • 170 g egg whites, room temperature

  • 125 g strawberry reduction, room temperature

  • 170 g heavy whipping cream

Method

  • Preheat oven to 350F. Flour three 8″ cake pans and set aside.
  • Whisk together the cream, strawberry reduction, and lemon juice.
  • In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
  • In the bowl of a stand mixer, place the room temperature butter and beat until smooth and shiny.
  • Gradually add in the sugar, beating until the mixture is fluffy and light colored.
  • Add the egg whites, one at a time, and beat at a medium speed.
  • On a low speed, add about 1/3 of the dry ingredients followed by 1/3 of the wet ingredients, mixing until mostly incorporated into the batter. Repeat until all ingredients have been added.
  • Divide the batter evenly between the three pans.
  • Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes (a cake tester should come out clean).
  • Place pans on a wire rack to cool for ten minutes, then turn the cakes out onto the rack and allow to cool.
  • To assemble, place a cake on the cake plate. Cover with strawberry reduction, and top with a second cake. Cover with strawberry reduction, then top with the third cake. Coat liberally with strawberry whipped cream and serve.

Commentary

  • This year, Anya chose a strawberry cake. We looked through a lot of recipes online and merged a couple into what we hoped would be a very strawberry flavored cake. It was — the strawberry whipped cream was specially tasty. I think it could have used more strawberry reduction between the layers, though the cake was already very moist.

Kahtoola MicroSpikes

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by Lisa

I picked up a pair of MicroSpikes and NanoSpikes at the end of last season as retailers were clearing out their winter gear. These are awesome for walking in the snow and ice — I wasn’t sliding around at all.

The negative five degree temps (negative thirty with windchill) taught me that I’m not quite done purchasing winter gear — my balaclava kept most of my face warm, but ski goggles for the little bit of skin around my eyes away from the blowing ice.

Recipe: Tomato and Pear Salad

Anya Rushworth
by Anya Rushworth

Ingredients (1 serving):

  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/8 tsp ground black pepper
  • 1 Tbsp lemon juice
  • 1 tsp maple syrup
  • 1 tomato
  • 1 pear

Method:

  • Remove stem and core from tomato and pear. Cut each up.
  • Put tomato and pear in a bowl and drain juice (to remove acid).
  • Mix together the salt, pepper, lemon juice, and maple syrup.
  • Put the tomato and pear into non-draining bowl.
  • Pour the dressing onto the pears and tomatoes.
  • Eat and enjoy!

4K v/s NanoCell

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by Lisa

We did a side-by-side comparison of the LG UQ75 and QNED80 — I was surprised at how different the picture was — there are so many more stars visible, and the background black space was much darker. Since both were basically the same price, the QNED was certainly a good purchase.

UQ75QNED

Ash Kit

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by Lisa

Ash Kit is doing well — he stays in Anya’s room at night, and I’m trying to train him to pounce on Anya to wake her up when the alarm starts in the morning.

Accessing Records – Cuyahoga County Probate Court

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by Lisa

We went up to the County Courthouse today to view some old probate records — just like the recorders office, this is all stored seemingly forever and available to the public to review. There is a room where the microfiche is stored in cabinets.

Each drawer is full of boxes — when you search the Cuyahoga County probate court records, newer records have files in the “Docket” that you can view. Older cases don’t.

They do, however, contain a record that provides the film roll number.

And each file drawer has a list of numbers housed in the drawer — to find the film for this case, I needed to find the drawer with roll 03575

Voila — here’s the roll. Each box indicates the range of case numbers imaged onto the roll … I confirmed the case number I wanted was in that range.

They also have a film viewer computer — if you select the type of film, the screen will give you a little animated video with instructions on loading the film. Look for that in the lower right-hand corner of the screen.

Quick Python Bingo Caller

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by Lisa

I keep re-writing the same quick script to implement a bingo “caller” so Anya and I can play a game … figured I’d save it somewhere and save a few minutes next time! We use more words than squares so not every word is on both boards, but you can shorten the list to 24 and just put the words in different squares on each board. 

import random
  
# initializing the word list -- 24 words for the 24 squares but we play with more words than squares!
wordList = ["Hypothesis", "Observation", "Theory", "Variable", "Cat"
, "Fun", "Science", "Happy", "Dog", "Thyme"
, "Rosemary", "Sage", "Time", "Run", "Pot"
, "TV", "Rogue", "Smile", "Black", "Rock"
, "Ash", "Kitten", "Love", "Bingo (but not BINGO like somebody won!)",
"Mom", "Dad", "Anya", "Wood", "Trail", "Tail", "Star"]

# shuffling word list
random.shuffle(wordList)

i = 0  
while i < len(wordList):
    print(wordList[i])
    i += 1
    x= input()

Windows Admin Center – Changing the Port

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by Lisa

Where I work, the “OS Support” and “Application Support” functions are different verticals. Sometimes what constitutes an “OS” and what constitutes an “application” is nebulous. In this case, we needed to install a web-based application but found TCP port 443 was already bound to Windows. Unfortunately, the OS support group disclaims any ownership of “Windows Admin Center” and told me I was welcome to fix it myself. So … oddly, there isn’t any easily located configuration for this thing. You have to go through the add/remove programs and modify the installation of Windows Admin Center.

Select “Change”

You will get the configuration panel — here, you can specify a different port for the Admin Center.

Let the installer complete …

Voila — not using port 443!

Geothermal Energy Use — Multi-Year Analysis

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by Lisa

I’m starting to look at some year-long roll-ups of our energy usage – the geothermal is running just around $700 a year to both heat and cool the house to really comfortable levels. Since we had paid $800 to fill up the propane task that lasted maybe a month, this is an incredible saving compared to the propane heater.

2020 Energy Usage

2021 Energy Usage

2022 Energy Usage