Still Winter

So the week here starts with shoveling at least 6" of lake effect snow today and some good snowshoeing tomorrow.

It seems whenever I try to focus on planning the garden and finishing the seed orders, we get hit with another snow storm. That and the fact that I feel like I just finished putting up last season's harvest.

Genie's Bluebird

Little Stinker

I'm at the kitchen sink looking out the window. I see a little dark something in the snow covering the driveway, about a foot from the edge of the asphalt. It's the head of a chipmunk. It's eyes are blinking, blinking, blinking, adjusting to the sunlight. Finally it emerges from it's tunnel which now apparently will serve to further the deterioration of the driveway. Great.

The Kitchen Sink

Other than trips to the park, my life these days is pretty much played out on graph paper planning changes in the kitchen and the garden plantings. I love graph paper. I wonder who invented it.

It took a long time but I've finally come up with a way to use almost all of the old kitchen cabinetry including the 42"hanging cupboard currently stored in the attic. We'll only need a few new pieces on which we'll be using old doors and an old drawer.

The sink base has some water damage but I'm going to make due with a stainless tray for the bottom. Since the 20 pound Kohler faucet I bought over fifteen years ago has never been installed, all I need now is the new sink and a new countertop and we should be able to get the messiest, most pressing project done before it's time to set out the tomatoes.


I was really, really lucky that this house had such handsome kitchen cabinetry and so much of it. The cabinets were installed in 1965 and in the more than twenty years that I've lived with them I've never tired of them. The design is perfectly timeless (or would be if I chose to change the hardware) and Wood-Mode will still make it even though it's not considered a current style.

White Winged Crossbills

First I saw a female. I'd heard reports that some birds were dropping further south presumably because of the unusually cold temperatures so I'd been keeping an eye out for siskins, grosbeaks and such. When I got my binoculars I knew this bird wasn't one I'd seen before and I actually had to pull out a field book to identify the small flock as white winged crossbills.

I couldn't get any decent photos myself because (#1) they were moving around so much, (#2) it was 13 freakin' degrees and (#3) I still don't really know how to use the camera. Thank you Cornell Lab; they didn't stay long so I'm glad to have access to these photos.

A More Positive Note

I made my first marshmallows yesterday while listening to mvyradio and I don't think I've had so much fun in the kitchen in a long time. I can't believe I've spent so much money on handmade marshmallows over the past few years when they're so easy to make. Actually I've made one really big marshmallow; I have yet to cut 'em...

Dug Out

We're momentarily dug out. Maybe if I'm lucky, no snow shoveling today and instead a chance to snowshoe at the park.

Digging Out

John Berry / The Syracuse Post-Standard

Lisette

January used to be a big birthday month in my family. We used to avoid any potential holiday letdown by anticipating one big party for all the family & friends who had January birthdays beginning with Lisette on the 1st and ending with my dad on the 31st. My dad's been gone for ten birthdays now but this is the first without Lisette.

Lisette would have been my godmother if my family had gone in for that sort of thing. She was a very pretty Belgian war bride who married one of the men in my parents' army unit and she laughed more than anyone at her language mix-ups. She was also the 'craftiest' person I've ever known and she made, among many things I treasure, my favorite throw.

Onion Goggles!

Brilliant.
And more attractive than the vapor mask I sometimes resort to.

The Payoffs

After bitching and moaning the past several weeks about the computers and the television, I feel compelled to come clean about the pleasures I've derived from the changes.

For one thing I've been transfixed, on more than one occasion, by the amazing clarity of some of the television images we've gotten with the digital signals, even on our old analog TV. Although I have no real interest in American football, the game where a foot rarely touches a ball, I watched a good part of a game on Sunday (I can't even remember who was playing–no, wait, was it Tennessee and Baltimore?) just because the picture was so incredibly clear and detailed.

But the real treat I'm getting with DTV is a new channel from our PBS station. It's almost ironic but last week I watched a couple of delightful Jacque Pépin programs that made me painfully nostalgic for the time when people valued simplicity.

As for the new computer, I found a little perk that's made the whole business a lot less frustrating. When I installed the new version of Firefox I took some time to look at the add-ons and discovered "Foxmarks" which I immediately downloaded. I was then able to do the same thing on the iMac and presto! all my bookmarks (I'm not admitting how many) are synchronized between the two computers and even with my account on The Mister's PowerBook.

The real benefit of all this however, has been the distraction it has provided me as I've been trying to avoid the news these past weeks. Between the destruction of Gaza and Obama filling his administration with Clinton right-of-center retreads, I might otherwise have thrown myself in front of a bus by now.

Keepin' Warm

On the outside, silk thermals. On the inside, the cognac.
Twelve hours @ 58º, twelve @ 64º. It's the best I can do.

The Tyranny of Technology

Beautiful, sunny but bitterly cold, 6º/-15º, not the best morning to be sitting here at the desk on the drafty porch, making my first blog entry on the new MacMini with the new display. I love the porch windows but right now I'd rather be looking at the wall and the heat register in front of my desk in the kitchen where I still have my iMac.

The past month has been dominated by the tyranny of technology. I love my 6-year-old iMac and it works just fine but it's no longer supported by Apple and the list of things I can't do with it keeps growing. As I was trying to decide about something new before the end of '08, Mozilla informed me that they were no longer supporting my version of Firefox so I took that as a sign.

I still can't believe Apple can't/won't rebuild my iMac and that they generate so much e-waste but at least I've been able to avoid another integrated machine this time with the MacMini. That still however has lead to more decisions about a display, keyboard & mouse, speakers and an inordinate amount of time on the phone upgrading & reorganizing the phone & DSL service.

Meanwhile there's been the digital television rigamaroll: the coupons, the converter boxes, the discovery that the antenna has to be on the other side of the living room in order to get the fragile, finicky signals and then there's no way to record anything on the VCR because all the channels are now three digit numbers! All this so we can get the same lousy programming plus three or four versions of weather radar.

A Slow Fade

It occurs to me that if I did as much injury to another person as I do to myself I'd be behind bars.

A Small Loss

She hit the window at the kitchen sink which I've never known a bird to do in the twenty years I've been here. I suspect she was fleeing one of the hawks. I wasn't home when it happened; I saw a trickle of blood on the window when I got back from the park yesterday.

I had a bit of a meltdown. I'm practically labile these days. On the surface life around me seems to continue unchanged and people seem blithely unconcerned about the things that leave me paralyzed for longer and longer chunks of time.

Climate Change On A Dime

So many things seem to conspire to keep me off balance these days, including the weather. In the past week we've gone from digging out on a daily basis, sometimes more than once a day, to freakishly warm weather and a complete melt-off of all but the piled snow. This morning we woke to heavy lake effect snow and so for now at least it's back to snowshoeing out to the compost bins and the bird feeders, the way it should be in central New York in winter.

It's All About the Sausage

Portuguese Kale Soup

1 lb Portuguese linguiça or the spicier chourico
2 cups chopped onion
4 cups stock
4 cups water
2 cups dry red wine
8-10 oz chopped kale
4 cups diced potatoes
3 cups cooked kidney beans

I usually start off by washing the kale.

I slice the sausage and render some of the fat before I add the onion and cook it until transparent. I add the stock, water and wine and let it simmer while I chop the kale which then cooks while I prep the potatoes. When the potatoes are almost tender I add the beans and cook the soup for about another 15 minutes.

If I'm using linguiça I add some cayenne but otherwise I don't add any seasoning because the salt and the seasoning from the sausage is sufficient.

North Country Smokehouse

Fire and Ice

I would be enjoying this frigid, sun-dazzled winter morning but for the more than a million people without power. Some of our family and friends have been affected but they all have some way to heat with wood so they're in better shape than a lot of people.

No Tree This Year

An overcast but beautiful snowy morning here in CNY. I've already done a bit of shoveling and put out seed. There's close to a foot so far but it's tapering off.

Less than two weeks to Christmas and I have almost no holiday spirit. Like someone with bipolar disorder I seem to vacillate wildly between questioning every dollar I spend and thinking I might as well buy all the oysters, caviar and Amarone I can because it could well be our last.

Bobolink Dairy

Seasonal Chef

I'm adding the last few things to the larder including cheese from Bobolink Dairy. I buy cheeses made closer to home but none of them compare to Bobolink raw milk cave-ripened cheddar or their Foret-washed farmstead cheese so twice a year I go a little further afield, just over the state line to New Jersey. Some cheese lovers might protest but I find the cheese keeps beautifully when I vacuum seal it and then let it breathe or bloom after I open it.