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Cheese blintzes or a breakfast burrito (bacon, egg, cheese, potato).

Seems to me that if the bread rose in the first proofing, overnight, and needed to be punched down, there wasn't a problem with the yeast. The thing that stands out to me, and dbcurrie mentioned it, too, was that you did not let the bread come to a second rise before baking. Did it rise the first time? Did it rise in the oven? Your not using at least a blueprint for a recipe could make the texture odd. Reading your last post again, you said it tasted okay. The main problem was with the rock hard crust. 400 may not be the temp you need for that bread. That, plus no second rise to increase the volume of the bread and poof up the texture seems to me to be what made your bread the way it was.
I don't think bread baking is an exact science. Each batch is going to require a little more or less flour according to the amount of humidity in the air and how exact you measure the water. Try again and get a recipe to follow, if not exactly, then in spirit. Good luck. We all start somewhere.

Thanks for the tips. We'll be staying right at the Harbor. The timeshare is actually a yacht that doesn't go anywhere. I'm hoping that will be a fun time. We're open to almost anything since there are four adults who can negotiate wants and needs. Burgers are a must. Good Mexican. Asian is also good. Two of us eat sushi. The other two adapt to that. This is certainly a good start.

Baked potato with creamed spinach. Yum.

My favorite Weight Watchers leader used to tell us that the peanut butter lived next door. She kept it at her neighbor's house so her children could have peanut butter and it wouldn't grab her by the will power and sabotage her weight loss efforts. I've seen some portion control servings of pb that might help you. Fighting to get the package open will probably offset the calories and fat you'd ingest. Good luck.

Come to the burbs, children. We have Kimballs, and Bedford Farms, Sullivans and Dairy Joy! You can work your way from one to the next on a tour that will make your eyes and your belly bulge out. But I have to say, Christina's rice pudding ice cream is one of my all time favorites. Once I can find a place to park my car.

Oh, thank goodness! I was worried about the shakes I served to the Shavuot crowd at our house.

My husband used to this at Wendy's and asks for the cheese on the side. It sort of works out better. But then he's stuck (and I do mean stuck) with two limp pieces of processed cheese in another piece of foil. Wasteful all around.
I suggested he ask for it saying 'without cheese' and that did the trick.

Any more definitive name on the "squishy band-aids - you can get over the finger ones. They're the ones that stick directly to everything, acting like a second skin over the wound" ones? I don't cut myself all that often, but when I do, it would be good to be prepared with something like this.

There was one Rumanian dish my mother agreed to learn to make for my father. She wasn't crazy about my grandmother's cooking, but she made this dish like a champ. Once, long ago when I was shopping in the Essex Street Markets, I had picked up an eggplant with one hand and asked the greengrocer where the green peppers were. He said, "Ah! A Rumanian." He knew.

Putlagella
(Romanian Eggplant Salad)

1 1lb eggplant roasted til soft (about an hour at 400)
1 small onion
1 carrot, peeled
1 half green, orange or yellow sweet pepper
1 hard boiled egg
1 T. mayonnaise or olive oil
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste

Scoop the flesh from the eggplant skin. Force it through a wire grater over a medium sized bowl. Grate the rest of the vegetables and the egg into the bowl. Add the remaining ingredients and mix. Refrigerate for several hours. Serve as a salad or on crackers or pita triangles as an appetizer. This can be made in a food processor, but be sure to chop, not puree. You want chunks.

Enjoy!

My kids used to laugh about my mother in law's fretting that she wouldn't have enough food on the table, and then pushing more on everyone because there were left-overs. It's definitely a cultural thing. Hopefully the 'clean plate club' will be disbanding at some point in the near future. As one of my friends is fond of saying, if you want a little behind, you have to leave a little behind. And while I'm dishing out platitudes, I'll just add the one I found in a fortune cookie. "Life is a journey, not a destination." It's like that with managing food intake. You can't expect the issues to go away just because you meet a weight goal. It's something you're going to live with forever. And Ed, it seems as though you've made a breakthrough. Congrats!

That sure looks a lot like what my mother used to make. I make it on rare occasions, too. And I wonder why I don't do it more often. It's totally delicious and provides soulful comfort.

Wait! That wasn't Lauren Krueger. It was/is her mother, Challah using her laptop and, inadvertently, her name. Sorry. She really isn't a WW employee. That's me