When It's Cold...

... I make stuff.  And it was zero when I checked at about 8 o'clock.  See how nice it looks out there?  Well, it's bitter cold but, like the nice person I am, I went out and filled the feeders and cast a bit of seed on the ground so that the backyard denizens had something to eat on such a cold day. On my way home from the chiropractor this morning I stopped for the broth I forgot yesterday and a few other things because when do you ever go into a grocery store and only get one thing?  



When I made breakfast this morning I noticed that I'm getting low on granola and remembered that I'd printed off a recipe for WW granola so when I got home I fired up the oven and made it.  I had everything but the slivered almonds on hand but I did have hazelnuts so I chopped up the same amount and substituted them for the almonds.  The recipe calls for ground ginger.  I've never thought of putting ginger in granola; I'm looking forward to trying it out tomorrow.  I'll report.








In today's Green Bay Bird Report, a Chickadee enjoyed the seed wreath around lunch time and Mr. Cardinal came in to the platform feeder for a snack.  Last time I went to the birdseed store I bought a bag of dried mealworms and I put a handful on there along with some suet pellets that I cover with seeds.  I figure that the birds need extra protein to stay warm when it's so darned cold.










 
This afternoon I whipped up a cauldron of chicken veg soup.  I promised my brothers that I'd make soup for lunch when they come over on Saturday so we can finally sort through Mom's photos and we all know that soup improves with age.  Plus I can have a cup or two for lunches and there'll still be plenty left for when the boys come over.



After supper I went downstairs and finally found the remnants of the tweed yarns that I used to make some flip-top mittens last winter so that I could darn the thumb of one of them.  I noticed that it was worn thin when I gripped the steering wheel last Thursday and felt the sting of cold where there should have been warm wool.  It took me until today to find it because I hadn't put the yarn back where it belonged and it was only by chance that I found it.



Also when I was down there I fished out one of the "onsies" kits of single skeins of yarn packaged up with a pattern that I made a few years back because I realized that the only projects I have OTN right now are two socks and those are longer term projects knitted on smallish needles with skinny yarn.  I like to have a variety of things on the go so that if I feel like working on something where I can see visible progress I've got it handy or if I feel like working on something long term I've got that too.  So I cast on a one-skein beanie in this lovely Keltic yarn.  I'm thinking that I'll end up putting it into the Christmas at Sea bin because it's mostly acrylic with a bit of wool which means it'll be machine wash- and dry-able.

21 January--Tropical Obsession.  (F.Y.I.--this afternoon I found a file where I'd worked on making all these disparate pieces into a cohesive story, read part of it, and changed Mona's name to Nola because it started with the same letter as Manning, not that you'd get them confused but... anyway I like Nola better.)

Sunlight sparkled through the clear water in the pool behind the villa. When they had arrived a few weeks ago Nola had wondered why anyone would go to the trouble and expense of blasting out a pool when the ocean was right there, just down the stairs at the end of the dock. Now she loved the pool; Henkel, the pool man, cleaned it every day and there was a beautiful big angelfish made of tiles in the bottom. She idly trailed a finger in the blood-warm water. Lying on the baking tiles of the pool deck made her sympathize with how a sub sandwich must feel toasting on a grill. Jack had left her early this morning; he kissed her shoulder in the dim cool morning telling her he had a meeting. She vaguely remembered hearing the door close and the distant sound of the car driving away. That was hours ago. The maid, Maria, had come, cleaned and cooked, and gone. Maria had made her a bowl of ceviche from fresh-caught fish from the local fishermen, limes and tomatoes from La Portugesa, and big sweet onions from the Venezuelan fruit temple across from the Town Pier, and had even made Johnny cakes to eat it with. Jack would have loved it. He should have been back for a late lunch, he said he would be back, but he hadn't returned. She had made a pitcher of planter's punch after Maria left, and drunk nearly half of it when she realized she was lying on the tiles telling her troubles to the pretty blue and yellow fish on the pool bottom. But where was Jack?

The temperature's supposed to rocket into the mid- and upper-20s for the next few days which also opens the door for snow, 1-3" of snow they're saying, before Friday when the temperature's supposed to top out at a nice round zero for the weekend.  Yippee.  Yep, definitely going to dig out my long johns.  And it started snowing just a little this evening.  *sigh*
--Barbara