A Merry Day

After a few busy days and a rest day I am back in the saddle, aka, my chair in front of the computer. We had a very nice visit with the son and DIL Saturday. They brought cheese lasagna, Italian sausages and bread, a delicious salad and........tiramisu! I love tiramisu and he remembered. We provided wine and sparkly water. It was a lovely, relaxed day. The first Christmas with family since 2018 and it was good.

Today I will try to catch up on you all and get my Monday task of laundry done. Otherwise, I am free to finish my book.

Let it Snow

More of my decorating efforts.

I have finished. The garland and lights around the clock added some color to the snug. The living room gets all the attention, which just didn't seem right. I am now officially finished. Decorating, that is.

Leftover steak became a pasta dish for last evenings dinner.

And......this is what I woke to this morning. 

Very windy with about five inches of snow predicted. It seems we will have a white Christmas after all. I am happy about that. The equines will stay in the barn today, because of the wind. A slippery surface and hyped up horses don't go well together. No one needs to be hurt because a tree branch made a cracking noise and of course, horses have never heard that before.

Results

As I have mentioned before, it's been six years since I've done any decorating for Christmas. I only intended a tree. I ended up doing the whole deal. Surprisingly, like Mikey, I liked it. 

I have my son's Tonka toys and his Garfield. These things have much more sentiment for me than for him. He slept with his Garfield for all his young childhood. The stuffed basset was from a friend after Howard died. I think it all  makes the tree more festive and brings memories of all the years it was just the boy and I. Memories are part of the season, the good and the bad. These memories are the good.

I've also decided to make a Christmas dinner for us. A special dinner. Duck, escalloped potatoes, asparagus and a Gateau au Chocolat, alla Julia Child. I decided to dig into my memory and pull out my French cooking "skills". Since it's just the two of us, I won't be under any pressure. Something sparked my interest.

We had a light snow last evening with more coming overnight and into Thursday. It looks like it may be a white Christmas after all. That makes me happy. A man I used to know had a saying "happy wife, happy life". He may have been onto something.

*Mikey was a character in a tv commercial in the 1960s. He hated everything. When he ate something the other kids gave him, the kids all cried out " Hey, Mikey, he likes it!"*

Happy Birthday, Boud.😊

Humor 

What Can I say....Gatto

I decided to decorate. I have not done so since 2018, the last time we had company, and it was limited then. Gatto is much more interested in the packing than in the contents. He's a basic kind of dude.

The son sent me a text a couple of days ago saying he and his wife will visit Saturday. He will bring the food. This sounded fine by me. I'm sure the impulse to decorate came from knowing we will have company. It's amazing to me how much I have. Only about a quarter of it will be used. I think I may have had an over-the-top personality at one time. Now I'm more like an under-the-covers type.

I placed a pick-up order from Total Wine for 21 bottles of NA wine. They had twenty percent off, what's a person to do? It is the holiday season, afterall. Cheers!

Deep Thinking

I think about half of the US population knows we are heading for serious trouble. I also believe that at least another quarter of the population will come to the same understanding sometime during the next year. I thought a couple of days ago about the fact that we were the first modern democracy to form after the ancient Greeks. We have, for almost the entire time of our existence, lived with democratic rights, often flawed, but still intact.

This thought gave me hope. We are not "trained" for autocracy. There is no question in the minds of millions of people that we are heading into a period of just that. We are being told this everyday, by those leading the way. It likely will not stand. This is what I thought. I believe there is a strong chance my thought is correct. We aren't used to being told what to do and how to do it.

Now....after my deep thoughts. I made stock Wednesday and soup yesterday. We have been below zero fahrenheit for a few days and soup was perfect for the weather. We warm up some today and then warmer over the coming days. 

Try It. You'll Like It.

We are having a few cold days before it jumps back up again. I don't like the up and down. The weather gods do not care about what I like nor do not like. Meanies. We did have light snow overnight. Winter is my favorite food time of the year, so I will be posting too many photos. 

A friend made Giada De Laurentiis' sheet pan lasagna and told me he liked it. I decided to give it a try. I recommend it, it's simple and fast to put together and only takes about thirty minutes in a hot oven to bake. It can be prepped ahead of time, which I did, making dinner ready in a half hour. I used no boil lasagna noodles and didn't bother wilting the spinach, the heat and steam in the oven does that just fine. Give it a try.

Yesterday was an errand day. I ordered and picked up groceries. Mark took my truck into the tire place. It has dual rear tires and needs to be taken in periodically to check air pressure. The outside rear tire has to be removed to get to the inside tire. It's well worth having the experts do this. 

We are both trying to live in the moment, not thinking beyond now. For good reason.

Apples. Beans. Possums.

I had a good Saturday. I spent the day in the kitchen, baking, cooking, cleaning up and watching the last three episodes from the final season of the 2000's era TV series, Monk. You either liked that series, or well, you didn't. I think we liked/like it partly because Adrian Monk is an amalgamation of Mark and Sandra. We see it and we laugh, because, we see it. Monk is an extreme version, so don't worry too much about us. Seriously.

Ok, moving on. I made an apple galette the easy way, using puff pastry. Bill had brought me a large amount of apples, most of which I cut and froze. I had several sitting on the counter long enough they were getting soft, so...puff pastry rescue. Apple slicing and Adrian Monk, not bad.

Dinner was this very simple, very good casserole which I made with cannellini beans, bacon, onion, garlic and broccoli, And cheese. Lots of cheese. It's much better than you would think. So, so easy.

I have been having a new nightly visitor to the cat food. Along with the stray tabby we have a young possum, or opossum if I'm being correct. Even with the rat-like tail, they are so cute. It will watch me through the window with that adorable face. Let us hope this one doesn't show up one day with babies. Please be a boy. I would like to keep feeding the kitty. Not the poker kitty, the cute little tabby kitty.

I have nothing planned for today. It's a warm day, warm for us, and cloudy. Perhaps I'll think about dragging some Christmas stuff up from the basement. Or not. Gatto makes decorating an almost insurmountable task. I'm not sure almost belongs in that sentence.

Bright Sunshine. Cold Air.

It's been cold here for over a week, not getting out of the teens most days. We are in for a warm-up over the weekend, meaning we will lose the little snow we have. Back to drab. I kept myself occupied throughout the day. I set up installation of new wireless internet service. We have had one option since the beginning of internet time, going back to dial-up. Frontier Communications. The devil in corporate form. A new company started laying fiber optic cable a couple of years ago, but left the four houses on my street without. Why? Good question. They just finished adding us in last week.

Frontier had no competition, so they thumbed their greedy noses at those of us stuck with them. Very slow, very unreliable. I can't stream music anymore because the service pops in and out. For this mess they are charging $105 per month. This new provider is only 1G, but for us that is like a sonic boom. It will be installed next Thursday. There will be music in my house once again. For less $$$.

So....on a cold, extremely windy day I spent the rest of my day in the kitchen. I have become a hausfrau, whoda thought? I made a loaf of spelt bread and turkey and dumpling soup. The soup was lunch. I like my dumplings large. That way I can say I just had one. I also prefer them soft. I did a little ironing. Woo-hoo!!

Well, that's it on this sunny, frigid morning. The horses are out, the cats are snoozing and I am on my second cup of coffee. A brilliant start to the day.

Not Much

I know. I know.....food. We work with what we've got, right? Well, I do, anyway. Mark's lunch, his is much larger than mine. The last of the turkey sandwiches. Don't they say the messier the sandwich the better it is? This had to be a good sandwich. 

I made stock with the turkey bones and will use the rest of the turkey for turkey and dumplings. I certainly used "turkey" a lot in that sentence. I'll never make a writer. But I do make soup.

We've had a little snow and it looks more festive outside with it. I have another orange tabby showing up that I'm feeding. It looks young. So many cats roaming about. The rural people don't do spay/neuter, so.....you know. They kinda break my heart. 

We have appointments for our vaccinations today. We are a bit behind on this. Mark gets a reaction and was busy, so he couldn't have a day of feeling ill. Luckily, we don't get out and about much. Luckily at least contagents-wise.