You might recall that just a few months back, Tom taught me about Ctrl-Z, the "undo" feature on computers that has, apparently, been around forever. It has improved my life in a most remarkable way, and then I taught it to my sister and she has been transformed as well. People, tonight I have learned the true meaning of "neutral color picker" in Picasa. My life's ease has just jumped another notch towards awesome. I swear to you I have long thought that when you clicked the neutral color picker button and then were gifted with that little dropper icon, you were supposed to scour the image at hand for a perfectly neutral or white bit. Hell, some pictures just don't have such a thing, and I cannot tell you how many -so many!- minutes I would then spend attempting to remedy my color and white balances in ridiculously difficult ways. No more! I have now learned that neutral color picker only wants you to click on something white or gray; from that base, it will render your picture in correct hues. #lifechanger

As I'm singing his praises and swearing that I married him for many reasons but especially for these mini-tutorials, Tom asks, "Em, do you know what I'm going to say?" To which I respond, "Yes, you are going to tell me that if I'd just read the manual years ago, I would have already known all these things already." He started wheezing with laughter because that's exactly what he was going to say, but my position remains thus: I detest instruction manuals, especially thick ones (one pagers are tolerable), and would rather simply plod through whilst learning on my own than plod through a black-and-white novel-length book written by someone who simply MUST want to die afterwards so horrid must the dullness of writing such a tome be. I simply do not have the time, nor do I want to. And so we're back to, "I'm so glad I married you, dear T, because you always read the manuals and then I can ask you and you love to be able to answer and so really, this is perfect.

In the meantime, I made an inspired dinner of plank-grilled turbot, Carolina gold rice cooked in whey, and a corn-leek-bacon saute to top both. Quite good!

Then I made the strawberry shortcake and though it looked beautiful and Tom is still going on about it, I was underwhelmed and won't make it again. I'm so sorry Melissa Clark- you are a cooking lady extraordinaire, but this shortcake recipe (yes, click the link; it's worth it) is superior.