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

Those who do not weep, do not see.  Victor Hugo   

Victor-Marie Hugo, vicomte Hugo (1802–1885) was a French Romantic author, poet, essayist, playwright, journalist, human rights activist and politician.  His most famous works are the novels The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) and Les Misérables (1862).  In France, Hugo is renowned for his poetry collections, such as Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles (The Legend of the Ages).  Hugo was at the forefront of the Romantic literary movement with his play Cromwell and drama Hernani.  His works have inspired music, both during his lifetime and after his death, including the opera Rigoletto and the musicals Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris.  He produced more than 4,000 drawings in his lifetime, and campaigned for social causes such as the abolition of capital punishment and slavery.  Although he was a committed royalist when young, Hugo's views changed as the decades passed, and he became a passionate supporter of republicanism, serving in politics as both deputy and senator.   His work touched upon most of the political and social issues and the artistic trends of his time.  His opposition to absolutism, and his literary stature, established him as a national hero.  Hugo died on 22 May 1885, aged 83.  He was given a state funeral in the Panthéon of Paris, which was attended by over two million people, the largest in French history.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Hugo    

The enigmatic street artist Banksy has built a multimillion-dollar business empire as opaque as his identity, operating through a network of British companies while largely staying outside the traditional art market, according to corporate filings and interviews with art market insiders.  The sale of Banksy pieces has generated an estimated $248.8 million in secondary market sales since 2015, according to data from art market research firm ArtTactic.  The secondary market refers to the resale of artwork after its initial sale.  The artist himself receives only a small fraction from those sales, paid under a provision in UK law that entitles artists to royalties.  But sources say Banksy now conducts private sales for VIP collectors that may generate millions of dollars directly, Reuters learned.  Reuters identified seven companies that have been directly connected to Banksy over the years, and at least two additional firms that were connected to the artist by name or via his lawyers and accountants.  The centerpiece is the Pest Control Office, incorporated in 2008.  It serves as both the artist's authentication body and business operation.  Its parent company is Picturesonwalls Limited, which once operated a London gallery.  Today, most Banksys changing hands are sold through private collectors, galleries, and auction houses, without apparent direct involvement or financial participation by the artist.  “It’s very hard to buy a Banksy from Banksy,” explains art historian Ulrich Blanche.  Unless you’re one of a select group invited to one of the artist’s private sales.  In February 2024, Banksy held a secret exhibition in a Shoreditch basement, according to a collector who obtained photos from attendees.  The source shared some of the surreptitiously snapped photos with Reuters.  They included shots of previously unseen original Banksy works.  The event, held in a building on Hanbury Street, was open only to collectors invited directly by Pest Control.  Banksy has consistently used his art to fund charitable causes.  As his fame has grown, so too have the sums he raises.  Reuters could not confirm how much money the artist has donated.  In his book “Banksy:  The man behind the wall,” author Will Ellsworth-Jones notes that “there is no Banksy Foundation donating money publicly,” making it impossible to “give a complete picture of what he gives away.”  In September 2000, Banksy was shifting from painting freehand to using stencils, a method suited for repetition and speed.  But when he climbed up on a roof to have at the billboard, he painted freehand.  The half-finished image resembled a billboard Banksy saw in Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws.”  In his 2023 “Cut & Run” exhibition in Glasgow, the artist said the movie scene inspired him to get into graffiti.  In “Jaws,” someone doctored a tourism billboard depicting a woman on an inflatable raft in the sea. The vandal added a shark fin and gave the woman bulging eyes and a speech bubble:  “HELP!!! SHARK.”  Before his arrest, Banksy had lived for months at a time at the Carlton Arms Hotel, which over the years has let artists stay for free in return for decorating their rooms.  Archived pages of the hotel website indicate that in 1997, Banksy painted a mural at the hotel.  In 1999, the site shows, he finished an entire room, 5B.  The work looked nothing like the Banksys of today.  It was painted freehand, in a rainbow of colors.  The characters were cartoonish.  The hotel site attributed the works to “Robin Banks”–a play on “robbing banks,” later shortened to Banksy.  When Banksy was busted in 2000, he wasn’t on the New York Police Department’s radar, said Steve Mona, the now-retired lieutenant who ran the 75-member vandal squad back then.  The police had no idea they had nabbed “Banksy” because the artist had only recently begun employing the style and pseudonym that would make him famous.  Given Banksy’s celebrity, the name of the culprit now takes on significance.  The man who confessed was Robin Gunningham.    https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/global-art-banksy/   

Cyrus Stevens Avery (1871–1963) was a businessperson, oilman, and highway commissioner.  He created the U.S. Route 66 while being a member of the federal board appointed to create the Federal Highway System, then pushed for the establishment of the U.S. Highway 66 Association to pave and promote the highway.  As such, he is known as the "Father of Route 66".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_Avery    

John Tracy Kidder (November 12, 1945–March 24, 2026) was an American writer of nonfiction books.  He received the Pulitzer Prize for his The Soul of a New Machine (1981), about the creation of a new computer at Data General Corporation.  Kidder received praise and awards for other works, including Mountains Beyond Mountains (2003), a biography of physician and anthropologist Paul Farmer, the founder of Partners in Health.  Kidder was considered a literary journalist because of the strong story line and personal voice in his writing.  He cited as his writing influences John McPhee, A. J. Liebling, and George Orwell.  In a 1984 interview he said, "McPhee has been my model. He's the most elegant of all the journalists writing today, I think."  Kidder attended Harvard University and University of Iowa.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracy_Kidder 

March 25, 2026

Pyrrhic victory, a success that brings such significant harm to the victor that it differs little from defeat.  Although the triumphant party in a Pyrrhic victory is considered the overall winner, the costs incurred and their future repercussions diminish the sense of genuine success.  It is sometimes known as a hollow victory.  https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pyrrhic-victory   

Pyrrhus (319/318–272 BC) was a Greek king and statesman of the Hellenistic period.  He was king of the Molossians, of the royal Aeacid house, and later he became king (Malalas also called him toparch) of Epirus.  He was one of the strongest opponents of early Rome, and had been regarded as one of the greatest generals of antiquity.  Several of his victorious battles caused him unacceptably heavy losses, from which the phrase "Pyrrhic victory" was coined.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhus_of_Epirus#   

The Battle of Agincourt was an English victory in the Hundred Years' War.  It took place on 25 October 1415 (Saint Crispin's Day) near Azincourt, in northern France. The unexpected victory of the vastly outnumbered English troops against the French army boosted English morale and prestige, crippled France, and started a new period of English dominance in the war.  That advantage lasted for 14 years, until England was defeated by France in 1429 during the Siege of Orléans.  After several decades of relative peace, the English had resumed the war in 1415 amid the failure of negotiations with the French.  In the ensuing campaign, many soldiers died from disease, and the English numbers dwindled; they tried to withdraw to English-held Calais but found their path blocked by a considerably larger French army.  Despite their numerical disadvantage, the battle ended in an overwhelming victory for the English.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt    

March 20 is UN French Language Day, one of six such days established by UNESCO to celebrate multilingualism and cultural diversity and to promote the equal use of its working languages.  The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (International Organization of the French-speaking World) was founded on this day in 1970.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/d%C3%A9tente#English    

While the Nordic countries have long dominated the World Happiness Report, 2026 brought one surprise.  For the first time in the report's 14-year history, a Latin American country made its way into the top five as Costa Rica continued its multi-year rise to fourth place, jumping from 23rd in 2023.  The rankings, produced annually by Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, are based on a three-year average of how residents in 140 countries rate their own lives alongside factors such as GDP, social support, life expectancy, perceived freedom, generosity and corruption.  For the second year in a row, no major English-speaking countries made the top 10, with Australia at 15th, the United States at 23rd, Canada at 25th and the UK at 29th.  See the list including #1 Finland, and #2 Iceland at https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260317-the-worlds-happiest-countries-for-2026   

March 20, 2026