fluffle  noun

Coined as a ghost word on the Wikipedia article Rabbit on 30 July 2007. By surface analysis, fluff +‎ -le.  fluffle (plural fluffles)  (informal, collective) A group of rabbits. 

verb  fluffle (third-person singular simple present fluffles, present participle fluffling, simple past and past participle fluffled)  (transitive, informal)  To fluff up.    

Golden gooseberry pie is a delicious introduction to gooseberries for anyone who is unfamiliar with these tart summer berries.  Add as much or little sugar as you like depending on how sweet your gooseberries are.  Find recipe at https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/12192/gooseberry-pie-i/   

Food Forests are a relatively new concept in Iowa.  Food forests serve as a park for reflection and relaxation, a food source, and a place for education.  Food forests are based on permaculture design and offer numerous environmental and health benefits for the communities they are in.  The food forest follows a planting model designed to mimic the ecosystems and patterns found in nature. https://sproutgarden.wp.drake.edu/food-forest/   

Tank McNamara is a daily syndicated comic strip written and illustrated by Bill Hinds.  The strip debuted on August 5, 1974, with Jeff Millar as writer and Hinds as illustrator.  Hinds took over writing after the death of Millar in late November 2012.  The title character is a local sports television reporter who used to be a defensive lineman in the National Football League, hence his nickname.  The strip focuses primarily on contemporary American athletics, which allows it to remain topical and also to dabble in related subjects such as politics and social issues.  Before becoming a multi-sport broadcaster and reporter, Tank McNamara played college football for "Enormous State University" (team name:  the Sandcrabs), which serves the role of a generic NCAA Division I university with problem-plagued athletic programs.  The local professional teams are fictional American major-league franchises (baseball's "Bashers"; football's "Smashers"; ice hockey's "Igloos"; basketball's "Stuffers").  The strip also portrays fictional sponsors, including "Heavy Beer", spoofing the light beer ads that are so common in American sports broadcasts.  It also features caricatures of many real figures from sports.  A scientist named Dr. Tszap (also spelled Tzap) develops strange products intended to help sports teams.  In earlier years, Tank was portrayed as a buffoon ex-professional athlete (an NFL defensive linebacker, jersey number 55) unqualified to do his journalistic job.  Recurring gags focused on Tank's "fumble-mouth" mistakes (such as presenting the "Norts Spews"), and on his tendency to jump on anything loose on the floor as if it were a fumbled football.  Bill Hinds (born April 21, 1950, Houston, Texas) is a graduate of Stephen F. Austin University.  Hinds illustrated Tank McNamara with co-creator and writer Jeff Millar from 1974 to 2012, when he also took over writing due to Millar's failing health.  In addition to Tank McNamara, Bill created, writes and draws the feature Buzz Beamer in the monthly Sports Illustrated Kids.  His Buzz work can be found online at sikids.com Buzz animation.  Hinds created a parent/kids/sports strip, Cleats, which ran from 2001 to 2010.  Cleats reruns can be found on GoComics.com.  He also illustrated the feature According to Guinness for ten years, and created two experimental short-lived comic strips Clown Alley and Longshots for The Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday page.  Hinds collaborated with writing partner Millar on the Second Chances strip.  Bill Hinds received the National Cartoonists Society divisional award for Sports Cartoons in 1986 and their New Media Award in 2000.  He received an additional nomination for the New Media Award in 2002.  Tank McNamara has run in as many as 350 newspapers.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_McNamara    

Earthshine  From earth +‎ shine (noun), modelled after moonshine.  

Hyphenation:  earth‧shine   earthshine (uncountable)

(astronomy)  Sunlight reflected from the Earth's surface, especially when visible on the part of the Moon's surface not illuminated by the Sun (the night side); earthlight. 

Coordinate terms:  moonshine, ringshine, (poetic, rare) starshine, sunshine

Alternative forms:  Earthshine, earth-shine    

April 12, 2026

Sous vide (French for 'under vacuum'), also known as low-temperature, long-time (LTLT) cooking, is a method of cooking invented by the French chef Georges Pralus in 1974, in which food is placed in a plastic pouch or a glass jar and cooked in a water bath for longer than usual cooking times (usually one to seven hours, and more than three days in some cases) at a precisely regulated temperature.  The temperature is much lower than usually used for cooking, typically around 55 to 60 °C (130 to 140 °F) for red meat, 66 to 71 °C (150 to 160 °F) for poultry, and higher for vegetables.  The intent is to cook the item evenly, ensuring that the inside is properly cooked without overcooking the outside, and to retain moisture.  Low-temperature cooking was first described by Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford in 1799.  He used air as the heat-transfer medium in his experiments while attempting to see if he could roast meat in a machine which he had created to dry potatoes.  In Thompson's own words, the meat was:  "Not merely eatable, but perfectly done, and most singularly well-tasted."  Sous vide has become common on cooking TV shows such as Iron Chef America and Top Chef, and in restaurants such as Panera Bread.   It has also been used to quickly produce significant quantities of meals for hurricane evacuees.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sous_vide  Thank you, reader.   

lone wolf (plural lone wolves)

A wolf that is not part of a pack.  (figurative)

A person who avoids the company of others; an independent or solitary person; a loner. 

(crime)  A criminal who acts alone, not as part of a group. 

Derived terms

lone wolfer

lone-wolfing

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lone_wolf#English   

The phrase lap of luxury emerged in English during the early 1800s.  The term lap here is metaphorical for a place of comfort or care, similar to how you imagine a child sitting comfortably in a parent’s lap.  It’s a metaphorical way of saying that luxury is caring for you, providing comfort and pampering in some capacity.  If you’re in the lap of luxury but want to say it differently, here are a few synonyms for your vocabulary:

Life of Riley

Bed of roses

Easy street

Clover

Top of the heap

https://grammarist.com/idiom/in-the-lap-of-luxury/  Thank you, reader.   

The history of the chopped liver can be traced back to the early days of Ashkenazi Jewish culture in Eastern Europe.  Wealthy Jewish farmers who grew geese wanted to put every part of the poultry to use, so turning the liver, a usually discarded organ, into a tasty spread was both resourceful and delicious.  As the dish began to gain notoriety, and less fortunate households started to make the dish themselves, goose liver was swapped with chicken liver for affordability.  It was not until the early 20th century, however, that chopped liver truly came into its own as a cultural delicacy.  With the rise of delicatessens in major cities like New York of  and Chicago, Jewish immigrants began enjoying chicken based chopped liver alongside other traditional dishes like gefilte fish and pickled herring.  One of the key ingredients in traditional chopped liver is schmaltz or rendered chicken fat.  This rich and flavorful ingredient gives the spread its characteristic taste and texture and has been a staple in Jewish cooking for centuries, when olive oil was expensive and butter wasn’t allowed to be cooked with meat.  https://aish.com/jewish-history-of-chopped-liver/  Thank you, reader.    

2026 Rosary Cathedral Concert Series 2535 Collingwood Blvd. - Toledo Friday, April 17, 2026 7:30 pm Toledo Symphony Orchestra Alain Trudel, Join the Toledo Symphony for a special event celebrating the restored E.M. Skinner Organ at Rosary Cathedral.  On Friday, April 17, organist Todd Wilson teams up with TSO musicians:  Triumphal March by Louis Vierne Symphonie Concertante by Joseph Jongen.  Director Alain Trudel also leads a rare performance of Claude Debussy’s Nocturnes, inspired not by Chopin, but by the paintings of James Whistler.  Reserve your tickets at (419) 246-8000 www.artstoledo.com  Secure parking is provided and the cathedral is handicap accessible.  The Concert Series relies on our donors to present excellent musical performances in the beautiful ambiance of Rosary Cathedral.  Your support will ensure that these performances continue as a significant artistic outreach to our community. 

April 3, 2026

 

Peter Gene Hernandez (born October 8, 1985), known professionally as Bruno Mars, is an American singer-songwriter, record producer and dancer.  Regarded as a pop icon, he is known for his three-octave tenor vocal range, live performances, retro showmanship, and musical versatility.  He is accompanied by his band, the Hooligans.  Raised in Honolulu, Mars gained recognition in Hawaii as a child for his impersonation of Elvis Presley, before moving to Los Angeles in 2003 to pursue a musical career.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Mars   

The lemon plum with the scientific name Prunus salicina is a rare variety of plums belonging to the Rosaceae family.  They were developed by a grower in Israel under the name of Lamoon plum.  It gets its name because of the color and shape, but mainly the unique lemon-like shape.  This particular variety of plum was then licensed to growers in Chile.  Since then there have been a few growers in the United States growing them as well.  Their season is fairly short and is available from late winter to early spring.  They can be found in the United States and Canada where they are imported from Chile.  Also, they can be found in the Middle East.  https://www.inthekitchenwithmatt.com/lemon-plum   

The Foucault pendulum which was displayed for many years in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History was removed in late 1998 to make room for the Star-Spangled Banner Preservation Project and there are no current plans to reinstall it.  The Foucault Pendulum is named for the French physicist Jean Foucault (pronounced "Foo-koh), who first used it in 1851 to demonstrate the rotation of the earth.  It was the first satisfactory demonstration of the earth's rotation using laboratory apparatus rather than astronomical observations.  If you start a Foucault Pendulum swinging in one direction, after a few hours you will notice that it is swinging in a quite different direction.  How does this happen?  Imagine you are in a museum located at the north pole and that the museum has a Foucault Pendulum suspended from the ceiling at a point exactly over the pole.  When you set the pendulum swinging it will continue to swing in the same direction unless it is pushed or pulled in some other direction.  (This is due to a basic law of nature called Newton's First Law.)  The earth, on the other hand, will rotate once every 24 hours underneath the pendulum.  Thus if you stood watching the pendulum, after a quarter of an hour or so, you would be likely to notice that the line of the pendulum's swing has changed to a different direction.  This would be especially clear if one marked the position of the line of swing in the morning and had the pendulum knocking down pegs arranged in a ring at the center.  https://www.si.edu/spotlight/foucault-pendulum     

The NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, branded as March Madness, or The Big Dance, is a single-elimination tournament played in the United States to determine the men's college basketball national champion of the Division I level in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Played mostly during March, the tournament was first conducted in 1939 and currently consists of 68 teams.  Known for its upsets of favored teams with its single game single-elimination format, it has become one of the greatest annual sporting events in the US.  The 68-team format was adopted in 2011; the tournament format had remained largely unchanged since 1985, when it expanded to 64 teams.  Before then, the size of the field varied from as little as 8 teams to as many as 53.  The field was restricted to conference champions until at-large bids were extended in 1975 and teams were not fully seeded until 1979.  In 2020, the tournament was cancelled for the first time due to the COVID-19 pandemic and in the next season, the tournament was contested completely in the state of Indiana as a precaution.  37 different schools have won the tournament to date.  UCLA has the most with 11 championships and their coach John Wooden has the most titles of any coach with 10.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_Division_I_men's_basketball_tournament 

Tropical Cyclone Narelle triggered massive dust storms across Western Australia, turning skies blood-red over Shark Bay and Denham.  Powerful winds lifted iron-rich soil into the air, scattering light and creating the eerie glow.  The cyclone followed a rare cross-country path, reaching Category 4 strength before weakening.  Updated March 29, 2026  https://www.freepressjournal.in/viral/watch-blood-red-skies-shock-western-australia-as-cyclone-narelle-triggers-massive-dust-storms

March 30, 2026