Friday 5-19 Playing With New Stuff

Never too old to play

We woke up this morning with nothing on our agenda so we decided to go to town and do our weekly grocery shopping. While we were shopping we picked up a couple of rolls in the bakery and a pound of salsa turkey, I used this along with some provolone cheese to make submarine sandwiches for lunch. After lunch I did three loads of clothes and housework (vacuumed the house and mopped the floors).

Chores

I've talked about Larry being in The Home Depot Seeds Program many times. He didn't participate in the program while we were on vacation so when we got back he was excited about returning to the program. He was notified to select his products a week or so ago and a couple days ago the UPS Store notified us that we had packages waiting.  The packages were from the Seeds Program and we knew one of them was going to be pretty big so we took the truck to pick them up. We received a 4'x4'x1' garden planter, programmable plug and a cast iron pizza pan. 

When we got home Larry checked out the garden planter. He found that one of the caps was broken. The kit comes with eight, four foot boards, four posts that hold the boards and caps for the posts. He laid out four of the boards by the oak tree in the front yard. We decided that maybe having the planter a foot high would be too tall. Larry said he could modify the post so it will only be six inches high. It was too humid outside so we put the planter away for another day. I will need to decided where I want the planter to go and how tall I want it.

Planter Kit

A couple days ago Larry ordered an Echo Dot from Amazon and he received it this afternoon. The Echo Dot is a hands-free, voice-control device that uses Alexa to play music, control smart devices, receive messages and it will answers all kinds of questions. It is so cool. Want to know the time, how to spell a word, who is singing a song, the weather forecast, set a timer, simply ask Alexa.

Amazon Echo Dot

We currently have a programmable plug in module that we received a long time ago from the Seeds program, I use it to control turning on and off the lamp where I work on my puzzle but the timer part of it has never worked correctly. This month Larry selected a different brand of programmable plug from the Seeds program and this one even works with Alexa. Larry setup the new plug and I now turn my lamp on by simply saying: "Alexa, turn on the lamp". It works excellent and I think it is so cool.

Control Module for dining room lamp

While deciding what products to choose on the Seeds Program Larry came across a cast iron pizza pan that was designed to cook pizza on your grill. I like pizza and we always have some in the freezer. At dinner time Larry setup the thermometer he uses for smoking meats so I could monitor the temperature of our grill. The pizza pan didn't come with directions on how to cook the pizza on the grill so I followed the direction on the pizza box. I preheated the grill to 400 degrees and cooked it for 27 minutes. The box said between 21 to 27 minutes. I checked the pizza out at 21 minutes and decided to let it cook longer. When it was 27 minutes I slid the pizza off the cast iron pan and onto a regular pizza pan, the cast iron pizza pan is very heavy and was hot so I left it sitting on the grill to cool off. I over cooked it a just a bit but the pizza tasted really good, different than using the oven. It was even more consistent in how it cooked. Later on I tried cooking cookies using the cast iron pizza pan in the oven. This time I under cooked the cookies so next time I will cook them longer. The directions said cook them between 8 to 10 minutes and I only cooked them 8 minutes at 350 degrees. I had fun trying out the new cast iron pizza pan and so far I really like it.

Lodge Cast Iron Pizza Pan

Our pizza cooking on the grill

What the pizza looked like when it was done

What our peanut butter cookies looked liked when they were done

In the evening we watched YouTube videos and three episodes of Bosch. We had a fun play day. You're not too old to have a play day.