Eve of the Eve

I borrowed the title from a note from stepdaughter Linda; I think it's a nice name for Dec. 23. But I'm feeling pretty blue today. It's just me and Stan for Christmas, no other family here. Even Stan said yesterday, "I was just thinking it was a lot more fun when Jane and Dan were here." Now they're in Omaha, Elise, Kyrin & Pedro are up from Tampa and visiting his folks in Oswego (we'll visit them Dec. 26, weather permitting), Linda & Art are in Heber City, and Lana is in Austin, TX. Such a spread-out family sounds impressive--and it really is--but it's not as much fun on traditional family holidays. Since they are so far apart we'll only see them together at chance occurrences like weddings, or god forbid, funerals. So on other holidays we all travel as much as we can afford to. And I know that statistically there's apparently more people who visit relatives at Thanksgiving, I can get along alone with Stan on that holiday. This is the one that's harder. Maybe next year Stan will consider going to one of their houses for Christmas .....

Meanwhile, the weather is as gray as my mood. It's 43 degrees in Plattsburgh and our icicles, which were pretty impressive, are mostly melted. That's a good thing (in Martha-speak). Stan was up on the roof all afternoon yesterday shoveling off the snow. Nearly killed himself, the over-zealous idiot. But we do know that when the rain comes tonight it won't add weight to the roof because the snow is gone from it. That's Stan sometimes, safe but stupid. He keeps forgetting he's not 35 anymore!

Well, I did my treadmill like a good girl. Now I'm off to the showers. And maybe I'll make another batch of Spritz cookies, my favorites.

A Blue, er, make that Green-Ribbon Day

I did wrap gifts at the mall today. I arrived at 2:00 and there were two young lovelies working hard--just past college-age. (I asked later if they were students. Oh, NO, the one said. She'd graduated in 2004.) They were sisters. They stayed for about another hour and I was very grateful. The more assertive sister didn't quite want to leave the post to an oldie (that would be me), but the younger was ready to go so she just kind of hung around waiting for her sister. Like I said, I really was grateful for the help. Business was VERY steady! A couple had left about 8 gifts, ranging from a Scooby-Doo lunch box (no box around it) to a dinosaur in a sort of cardboard tray--you know, the kind that hangs on a rod in the store: has a back and bottom but no sides, front or top. Read VERY challenging to wrap! The sisters left me that pile to work on while the one handled the walk-ups. However, I did take one. He had only 2 things and brought his own boxes; well, they were Victoria's Secret boxes (nice boxes!). One was a very nice jog set and the other was a selection of 5 thong underwear. He was about my age. (Boy, I'd like to be the size that could feel attractive in a thong.) But the most challenging came later, a lovely older English woman who had bought gifts for grandsons. The hardest was an ice-fishing rod ... WITH reel attached. I KNEW all my Martha genes would pay off sooner or later! I got it wrapped and pretty attractively, too, I might add. Obviously I had fun.

But that was my second fun for the day. I bought myself a new toy yesterday.


Yup, they're snowshoes. I was just back from my first walk with them. There's about 10" powder to plow through in our back 40 and it was FUN. The dog of COURSE had to lead the way. I don't know how she can even walk for the rest of the day. This is how deep she was in, breaking trail for me!


As you can see, she's up to her chest. Boy it was tough going for a bit. Of course, the trail home was much easier because I was just pounding down what we'd opened up on the way to the dam. Whatever those muscles are on the outside of your hip joints were letting me know I should learn their names! Just sitting here now (10:00 p.m.) my fanny tells me it worked today.

But I remembered to take the camera so I got some nice pics. NYSEG had some crew working on the dam in the fall. Unfortunately they didn't get finished before winter hit. I wonder where they thought they were working that they could begin a rebuild on a dam in about October.....



Anyway, I think you can see rebar sticking out of the dam through the snow. (Faint dark horizontal lines at about 10:00 in the picture.) The crew didn't work for a few days while it rained, leaving their materials where they were, and then we got snap hard hard freezes for several nights. So much for their stuff. I wonder in the spring what will survive--the water pours over that dam with enormous power. In the inimitable words of daughter Jane, Oh well.

And I have to include a shot of my favorite photo subject at the dam, the tree that sits just opposite where I stand to take pictures. I love it in most seasons because it sits so nicely above all that ledgerock, and it has the chutzpah to keep growing!


Then Hollydog and I walked along the penstock and I took my "artsy-f_rtsy" shots. The little isolated weeds that managed to stay above the snow, even though their stems are only about 1/8" in diameter, never cease to amaze me.



Sturdy little buggers, eh? I'm always impressed at their hardiness, their determination NOT to be done in by something as inconsequential as 18" of snow. (That 10" powder I mentioned above is only the top layer.)

So it was a good day today. Stan came to the mall to treat me to a soda after my draining stint wrapping and we had a nice dinner of spaghetti (whole wheat, of course) and baby veggies. I'll be out snowshoe-ing again tomorrow. What fun.

The "Big Storm"

So we got the "big storm" over the weekend. Really, it wasn't as devastating as the forecast seemed to be. We got about 12 inches of snow--measured before and after with a yardstick on our patio table, which is not overshadowed by trees and is a pretty good fall-where-it-lies location for measuring. However, I didn't measure last night because I would have had to wade through about a foot of snow just to walk out to the table, so Stan measured this morning. Meanwhile the wind had picked up considerably and I'd guess we lost 1-2 inches to that. The excitement around here is that Peru, NY, made the national news because it got 18 inches, apparently a big deal (to everyone else) in this nor'easter. So while it's a bit blurry, here's what the pretty front yard tree looks like--note that the snow is right up to and a little over the bottom branches as compared to the earlier shot.


Tonight it's very cold, expected to be around 0 in Plattsburgh and you can usually minus 5-10 degrees from that at our (very modest) elevation. Just say cold. I'm sentenced to my treadmill: I don't go walking when it's below 10, especially if there's a wind.

I'm going to staff the Christmas Bureau's wrapping station at the mall on Wednesday, and I'm actually pretty excited about that. I love to wrap presents and will do the best I can. I don't plan to be Martha-y at this, just do the job. But I really do love to wrap so this will be fun. And I think I'm pretty good at gently asking people to pay for the service. I'll try to remember to post my results.

I'm revving up to do my workshop in Philly in January. This is one I'm really looking forward to. It's more creative than most, with me doing a "bad teacher/good teacher" and "bad presenter/good presenter" (to faculty) acting job and juggling questions/attitudes from my audience. This should be a lot of fun. REALLY fun. I've not done improv like this before and it's something I can add to my brochure if it's successful.

I hid the rest of the cookies I baked last week; Stan was going through them at a rate that meant none for Christmas. I did Spritz, Pecan Fingers and Peanut Blossoms. I like the first two and can definitely live w/o the peanut-butter ones. I'll bring them out Christmas Eve and hope they last till New Year's!

Butter? What butter?

PiLady is right, when you cook heavy cream the butter rises to the top. I know this because I've beaten whipping cream a second or two too long and it turns into butter before your very eyes. Amazing.

That dessert must be one that was eaten after a delightful and sense-ational meal of lutefisk and lefse. Lefse I like, or at least I never minded it. I never took the chance on lutefisk; fish jello does not pique my senses!

I'm starting to get into the holiday mood, earlier this year than last. That's probably because the weather is a lot more wintry this year. I think I remember Christmas being "unseasonably warm" last year. That isn't the case now, with temps in the 20s for the last week and week ahead. Not too much snow; just enough to look passably good. Here's our front yard at night.


(It's blurry because I used no flash resulting in a slow shutter.) We also have a spiral lighted "tree" in green that we have inside our porch. It looks pretty nice from the street. And I'm beginning to get out my snowmen. It's fun because I rarely put them where they were last year ... except for the big ones that mostly go on top of the TV.

Speaking of TVs I should mention that Stan & I have joined the LCD flat screen generation. Ours is a small but completely satisfactory 26" screen; we looked at a 32" but decided we didn't need anything that big. I watch TV pretty much every night but we're not devoted to it. It's cool except that I won't pay my cable company ANOTHER $10.00 for HD channels. So we spent an extra $60 and have rabbit ears to pick up the local HDs. All 3 major networks are available and so is PBS. So it's pretty neat.

I baked cookies all day and packed them to send to daughters & step-daughters. That was really fun. But I'm tired so I'm going to go watch said TV and I'll try to write again soon.

So glad I'm not Norwegian

I was looking in my 1979 You Asked for It cookbook (from St. Olaf Lutheran Church, Austin, MN) for a potato-leek soup recipe. I found it eventually in my companion cookbook, More Cooking from Minnesota, but that's not the point of beginning this blog. While paging through the St. Olaf cookbook, I came across a dessert that made me glad I'm not Norwegian, because if I were and I ate stuff like this, I'd have died of cholesterol-clogged arteries causing heart failure at a very early age. Listen to this:

This dish is called Romegrot (umlauts over both Os).

1 quart (QUART!!!) whipping cream
3/4 cup flour
1 quart milk, boiled
Salt, brown sugar, cinnamon, raisins

Boil cream 15 minutes. Add flour slowly, stirring constantly. Keep stirring and keep pouring of BUTTER; save butter. Add boiled milk. Let simmer until thick. Add salt. Put into a serving dish. Pour butter over; sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon. Dot with raisins which have been soaked in water.

This was contributed by 3 women; apparently they all submitted the same recipe. Why do I think they're probably all among the departed roughly 30 yrs. later?

I just had to share that recipe. What a hoot. It doesn't even have any sugar! Boiled milk with butter & raisins. Yum.

Nothing else to say right now. I think I'll go get some raisins, just plain, without milk and butter thankyouverymuch.