The sun rose to the left of the pine tree behind which it rose yesterday!
Nice bit of montage for solar-holiday fans here
Next year I shall make the low-carb, high-protein biscotti for Dick with more bean flour. The gluten flour made one of the toughest giant cookies I have ever encountered; it was neat to feel the difference cutting those biscotti from cutting the ones I made for me (gluten-free). And think it will be bulletproof.
The pudding recipe from NPR makes more than they say it does. More than I would need for FOUR Christmases. There is no mixing bowl in the world (outside of restaurant supply) big enough for this recipe.I managed to break a nail down to the quick; although it would have made a change from coins, rings, beans, horseshoes, etc, but I did not include it. I used butter instead of suet, and real fruit instead of candied peel, and gluten-free breadcrumbs and flour. And more spice. They are steaming on the stove; the recipe suggests 9 hours. I am suggesting it will be lucky to get a few 2 hour sessions.
I am forcing one of them on Doug and his Florida-based New York Jewish girlfriend; now they have relaxed the airline safety precautions, he should be able to take it on the plane (New Year's at Disney). I'll let you know if it's edible. I'm frightened.
My thumb is no worse. I am almost done with one socks and the other is over half, so my father's feet will not be cold all winter.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Monday, December 19, 2005
IT, only not much
The Christmas knit-frenzy is impeded this year by tendonitis in my left thumb. Maybe a transplant? Actually, knitting only hurts a little, as opposed, apparently, to spinning (damn) and reading a paperback with one hand free (double damn). And washing dishes. Washing dishes is fatal.
So my father has been warned he may one get one and a half socks.
It snowed two Fridays in a row. Doug walked around looking out all the windows in the house and found a turkey sitting about 30 feet up, eating bittersweeet, in a tree.
much enhanced
It was snowing rather hard. A cardinal came and sat nearby, hoping to make a panorama worthy of Art Wolfe, but it was a pathetic effort.
pretty much the way it looked
The icicles outside my bathroom window, however, are giving it their All.
Sabre-toothed ice tiger teeth
Work is not a bad place. The Council of Churches in NH is one of the more liberal in the US, so I am happy there. Except that my computer needs more memory and an attitude adjustment, of which I suppose the same might be said of me.
So my father has been warned he may one get one and a half socks.
It snowed two Fridays in a row. Doug walked around looking out all the windows in the house and found a turkey sitting about 30 feet up, eating bittersweeet, in a tree.
much enhancedIt was snowing rather hard. A cardinal came and sat nearby, hoping to make a panorama worthy of Art Wolfe, but it was a pathetic effort.
pretty much the way it looked
The icicles outside my bathroom window, however, are giving it their All.
Sabre-toothed ice tiger teethWork is not a bad place. The Council of Churches in NH is one of the more liberal in the US, so I am happy there. Except that my computer needs more memory and an attitude adjustment, of which I suppose the same might be said of me.
Fruitcakes of the world, unite!
I actually like fruitcake. They are an excuse to eat sweetened slightly roasted nuts, and dried fruit infused with bourbon. Mine do not last for months unless they are refrigerated, although they will survive first-class mail, at least they seem to -- my recipients are still alive. Since I am my father and daughter are gluten intolerant (I get offended if you don't tell me to have a WHEAT-FREE holiday... well actually, not, but the "tolerance/intolerance" thing seems like it could be fun.) I make a wheat-free cake, which is nut enchanced. I like it. I wish it would be a little more consistent, since I am _virtually_ certain I performed the recipe exactly the same way last night as I did last week and the batter was runnier.
(Click here for a fine-looking nut-free version.)
To make 2 dozen cupcakes and 4 of those little 3"x6" loaflets:
Do not stint in greasing your pans. You might like to put a sort of rectangular bedsheet in the loaf pans, so you can run a knife along the ends and lift the cakes out by the edges of tinfoil, which of course overlaps the pan edges so there's enough to grab. Cupcake papers are a great invention.
Heat oven to 300 degrees
2 pounds mixed chopped dried fruit: Raisins, currants, dates (yum), dried cherries, apricots, cranberries, figs, APRICOTS (I find I need a little break in the sweetness of it all), crystalized ginger... I hate candied peel, but you may like it.
1 can of concentrated apple juice, plus two or three cans of water (after yesterday, I'd go with 2 and have the third if you need it)
(some bourbon or vodka, to loosen up the spices)
1 or more T cinnamon, and ginger if you haven't used the crystalized form;
1 or more t each cloves, cardamom,some nutmeg, maybe some of that dried grated orange peel
No garlic. Probably onion would be okay.
1/4 c oil, probably not anything strongly flavored.
Put all this in a big bowl and microwave it till the raisins are plump. Or leave to sit overnight.
Meanwhile, whir your Cuisinart through a pound or so of almonds; you want 4 cups of meal, not as fine as cormeal, something like coarse builder's sand.
1 cup of four -- I use a gluten-free mix, and I have to say you can get by with just another cup of almond meal.
1 T baking powder
Salt, perhaps.
Stir up. Let the fruit cool enough that you can add
2 eggs, or maybe three.
Stir everything together. The batter should be goopy, more than say for scones, less than for regular cake. Yet it should flow. And add at least a cup of chopped walnuts or pecans. Spoon into baking containers and top with glacé cherries or more nuts.
Bake about 20 minutes for the cupcakes, until tops are browner, edges pull away from the sides of the loaf pans (another 10 minutes) and things are not too gooey in the middle. Let cool on racks. It's fun to put about a half t of bourbon, or brandy, or whathaveyou (Amaretto or Grand Marnier are good, too) on the cupcakes while they're still in the pan, as it hisses and smells nice.
[Doug and I had a bourbon-tasting last week. Wild Turkey is as rough as Hunter Thompson could have wished, and not a waste on fruitcake (speaking of which, Truman Capote's Christmas Memory is charming, and recommended reading for any fruitcake baker); I like Knob Creek for sipping and Doug preferred the Woodford Reserve. It was a little drier and less orchestrated, more of a chamber music to Knob Creek's lush, but tidy, symphony.]
(Click here for a fine-looking nut-free version.)
To make 2 dozen cupcakes and 4 of those little 3"x6" loaflets:
Do not stint in greasing your pans. You might like to put a sort of rectangular bedsheet in the loaf pans, so you can run a knife along the ends and lift the cakes out by the edges of tinfoil, which of course overlaps the pan edges so there's enough to grab. Cupcake papers are a great invention.
Heat oven to 300 degrees
2 pounds mixed chopped dried fruit: Raisins, currants, dates (yum), dried cherries, apricots, cranberries, figs, APRICOTS (I find I need a little break in the sweetness of it all), crystalized ginger... I hate candied peel, but you may like it.
1 can of concentrated apple juice, plus two or three cans of water (after yesterday, I'd go with 2 and have the third if you need it)
(some bourbon or vodka, to loosen up the spices)
1 or more T cinnamon, and ginger if you haven't used the crystalized form;
1 or more t each cloves, cardamom,some nutmeg, maybe some of that dried grated orange peel
No garlic. Probably onion would be okay.
1/4 c oil, probably not anything strongly flavored.
Put all this in a big bowl and microwave it till the raisins are plump. Or leave to sit overnight.
Meanwhile, whir your Cuisinart through a pound or so of almonds; you want 4 cups of meal, not as fine as cormeal, something like coarse builder's sand.
1 cup of four -- I use a gluten-free mix, and I have to say you can get by with just another cup of almond meal.
1 T baking powder
Salt, perhaps.
Stir up. Let the fruit cool enough that you can add
2 eggs, or maybe three.
Stir everything together. The batter should be goopy, more than say for scones, less than for regular cake. Yet it should flow. And add at least a cup of chopped walnuts or pecans. Spoon into baking containers and top with glacé cherries or more nuts.
Bake about 20 minutes for the cupcakes, until tops are browner, edges pull away from the sides of the loaf pans (another 10 minutes) and things are not too gooey in the middle. Let cool on racks. It's fun to put about a half t of bourbon, or brandy, or whathaveyou (Amaretto or Grand Marnier are good, too) on the cupcakes while they're still in the pan, as it hisses and smells nice.
[Doug and I had a bourbon-tasting last week. Wild Turkey is as rough as Hunter Thompson could have wished, and not a waste on fruitcake (speaking of which, Truman Capote's Christmas Memory is charming, and recommended reading for any fruitcake baker); I like Knob Creek for sipping and Doug preferred the Woodford Reserve. It was a little drier and less orchestrated, more of a chamber music to Knob Creek's lush, but tidy, symphony.]
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Sometimes it snows really hard
We got 15.25 inches of light and fluffy here. The driving to work was not good, but the drive from work, when the boss sent me home at 12:30, was the worst I have EVER been scared driving in snow. My wipers got ice all over them, leaving a nice random deposit of opaque icy patches. I could not see even well enough, really, to pull over. The back window misted over. Other people were driving carefully or I would be a smashed statistic.
Fortunately I had not passed beyond the relatively near exit, where I drove into a 2-foot drift. But no one else was headed there, so I could clean off the wipers, chip the other ice off around the windshield and catch my breath. I pulled out of the snow drift with some patience and rocking, and drove around Terra Incognita (I thought that was in Indiana...), NH, with the air conditioner _and_ the defroster _and_ the heater on full blast. I finally found a person to ask the direction for the main roads. Whereupon it stopped snowing completely and I drove home. Paul the contractor,who plows my driveway, was having trouble with his brakes, so I drove up the driveway in his tire tracks (only maybe 10" deep. I love my Subaru). He finished fixing the brakes and the sun came out and I took the picture.
It was so lovely, with the sun out.
I have spent today knitting and putting off working on fruitcakes. And Christmas cards. I know I bought some....
Laura, chastened and tired and home in one piece
Fortunately I had not passed beyond the relatively near exit, where I drove into a 2-foot drift. But no one else was headed there, so I could clean off the wipers, chip the other ice off around the windshield and catch my breath. I pulled out of the snow drift with some patience and rocking, and drove around Terra Incognita (I thought that was in Indiana...), NH, with the air conditioner _and_ the defroster _and_ the heater on full blast. I finally found a person to ask the direction for the main roads. Whereupon it stopped snowing completely and I drove home. Paul the contractor,who plows my driveway, was having trouble with his brakes, so I drove up the driveway in his tire tracks (only maybe 10" deep. I love my Subaru). He finished fixing the brakes and the sun came out and I took the picture.
It was so lovely, with the sun out.
I have spent today knitting and putting off working on fruitcakes. And Christmas cards. I know I bought some....
Laura, chastened and tired and home in one piece
Sometimes it snows really hard
We got 15.25 inches of light and fluffy here. The driving to work was not good, but the drive from work, when the boss sent me home at 12:30, was the worst I have EVER been scared driving in snow. My wipers got ice all over them, leaving a nice random deposit of opaque icy patches. I could not see even well enough, really, to pull over. The back window misted over. Other people were driving carefully or I would be a smashed statistic.
Fortunately I had not passed beyond the relatively near exit, where I drove into a 2-foot drift. But no one else was headed there, so I could clean off the wipers, chip the other ice off around the windshield and catch my breath. I pulled out of the snow drift with some patience and rocking, and drove around Terra Incognita (I thought that was in Indiana...), NH, with the air conditioner _and_ the defroster _and_ the heater on full blast. I finally found a person to ask the direction for the main roads. Whereupon it stopped snowing completely and I drove home. Paul the contractor,who plows my driveway, was having trouble with his brakes, so I drove up the driveway in his tire tracks (only maybe 10" deep. I love my Subaru). He finished fixing the brakes and the sun came out and I took the picture.
It was so lovely, with the sun out.
I have spent today knitting and putting off working on fruitcakes. And Christmas cards. I know i bought some....
Laura, chastened and tired and home in one piece
Fortunately I had not passed beyond the relatively near exit, where I drove into a 2-foot drift. But no one else was headed there, so I could clean off the wipers, chip the other ice off around the windshield and catch my breath. I pulled out of the snow drift with some patience and rocking, and drove around Terra Incognita (I thought that was in Indiana...), NH, with the air conditioner _and_ the defroster _and_ the heater on full blast. I finally found a person to ask the direction for the main roads. Whereupon it stopped snowing completely and I drove home. Paul the contractor,who plows my driveway, was having trouble with his brakes, so I drove up the driveway in his tire tracks (only maybe 10" deep. I love my Subaru). He finished fixing the brakes and the sun came out and I took the picture.
It was so lovely, with the sun out.
I have spent today knitting and putting off working on fruitcakes. And Christmas cards. I know i bought some....
Laura, chastened and tired and home in one piece
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Uneasy times
Matt K. wrecked his car day before yesterday, on I-93. He is fine, which cannot be said of his aging Volvo.
Tanya who works across the hall from Dick lost her mother in a car wreck the same day before yesterday. Her father was badly injured but seems to be stable. Tanya and her husband have a relatively new baby (his first Christmas).
Next summer's field school will be in Colebrook, NH, on the outskirts of town. We will be camping at a state park sort of nearby. The site is mixed Archaic and Paleo; Edna found it in her past life as a contract archaeologist.
Drive carefully.
Tanya who works across the hall from Dick lost her mother in a car wreck the same day before yesterday. Her father was badly injured but seems to be stable. Tanya and her husband have a relatively new baby (his first Christmas).
Next summer's field school will be in Colebrook, NH, on the outskirts of town. We will be camping at a state park sort of nearby. The site is mixed Archaic and Paleo; Edna found it in her past life as a contract archaeologist.
Drive carefully.
Be nice to your mothers
A fairly distant connection (colleague and friend of a colleague and friend) and her husband just adopted a baby last summer. Day before yesterday, her mother and father were in a bad car crash; her mother was killed and her father badly hurt. I find I am sad this little baby will not know his grandma, and his mom will have one less helper.
Another friend's mom is getting 'further tests' for a possible mass with extra outlying spots on her brain.
My mom and dad are fine. I checked.
Another friend's mom is getting 'further tests' for a possible mass with extra outlying spots on her brain.
My mom and dad are fine. I checked.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Linda has a belfry OR, Home Is Where You Hang Your Batts
Yesterday, which was a cold day full of amazing limpid sunlight, Doug and I set out to see Linda Diak's new storefront/studio, in Vermont about an hour and a half from here. It was a very pretty ride, except for the drive through Alstead. This was the town that took the worst damage from the October storm. Parts of it are still pretty. Part of it has been bulldozed. There are big patches of freshly trap-rocked ditching and new tarmac. The small, pretty river runs close to the road and dips suddenly into deep, narrow gorges -- unusual for around here -- that probably added to the acceleration of the waters. Other places it flows on the surface and you can see a forty- or fifty-foot wide swath of brush that was overrun, apparently deeply, with good-sized trees either bent over or torn up altogther. And patches of fields with a new litter of bushel-basket sized cobbles. It was sobering.
Saxton's River is not far from Bellows Falls. The area has a lot of nicely preserved older buildings, including a dime store (now housing a Starbucks). Linda's storefront is on the main street near the church (and a crafts coop)and next to a good unpretentious restaurant that does a fine taco.
Carolyn and the lovely Julia Rose appeared, as did NH State Rep Claudia Chase, known to her friends also as Mirrix Looms. I hadn't seen Carolyn for years (we compared college-aged kids) and Claudia Chase was the most encouraging political item I have encountered in a long time. Enthusiasm. She was elected by a plurality of four votes a year ago, showing once again that one person's vote can matter.
And she spins.
We also got to see Tom and all three of their sons, who were affable. Now I'll be able to keep them mentally separate from Helen's two sons.
Linda was happy and perhaps a little tired. She and her husband had been setting up the place until far too late for much too long. She figured the contents of this spacious shop had been crammed into a (not yet fully unpacked) room about a third the size. Now she should actually be able to see all of her stash.
I came home with three batts and a spindle. Doug behaved very badly; he has two more spindles and an elegant rack, as well as more batts.
I am never going to get my father's socks finished. Knitting for Christmas is not for the faint of heart. And I keep stopping to spin a rich and lovely purple Diak.
Saxton's River is not far from Bellows Falls. The area has a lot of nicely preserved older buildings, including a dime store (now housing a Starbucks). Linda's storefront is on the main street near the church (and a crafts coop)and next to a good unpretentious restaurant that does a fine taco.
Carolyn and the lovely Julia Rose appeared, as did NH State Rep Claudia Chase, known to her friends also as Mirrix Looms. I hadn't seen Carolyn for years (we compared college-aged kids) and Claudia Chase was the most encouraging political item I have encountered in a long time. Enthusiasm. She was elected by a plurality of four votes a year ago, showing once again that one person's vote can matter.
And she spins.
We also got to see Tom and all three of their sons, who were affable. Now I'll be able to keep them mentally separate from Helen's two sons.
Linda was happy and perhaps a little tired. She and her husband had been setting up the place until far too late for much too long. She figured the contents of this spacious shop had been crammed into a (not yet fully unpacked) room about a third the size. Now she should actually be able to see all of her stash.
I came home with three batts and a spindle. Doug behaved very badly; he has two more spindles and an elegant rack, as well as more batts.
I am never going to get my father's socks finished. Knitting for Christmas is not for the faint of heart. And I keep stopping to spin a rich and lovely purple Diak.
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