December 26, 2011

Wind and snow arriving Christmas Day

Still basking in the glow of Christmas.  Although I shouldn't be just basking, I should be outside walking, hiking and otherwise exercising.  Fortunately we had friends drop by on Friday and Saturday with whom we could share cookies and eggnog, otherwise I'd really be in deep doodoo.  The wind picked up and started blowing the snow in about 1:00 pm on Christmas day, which was so perfect.  Not a lot, but certainly enough to turn the brown spots white.  Fortunately we still had plenty of snow for Santa on Christmas Eve.

We made an unscheduled trip Down There on Friday in order for me to overnight a letter to my Illinois Neighbor.  Her daughter had just e-mailed me that the doctors said she has less than two weeks.  That was the hardest letter I have ever written, and never want to have to do it again. 

We left the dogs at home and weren't really gone all that long, but it seems that Dinga felt she had to be as generous with Jesse as he was with her during the last time we had left them alone.  So when we arrived back home, we discovered that she had climbed up onto the kitchen counter by way of the wood box and my desk.  She had shared to two pieces of cornbread and the loaf of Irish soda bread which JB had baked for me that were sitting on the counter.  The corn bread was completely finished, but apparently the Irish Soda bread wasn't to their liking, fortunately for them.  I know it was Dinga because that were several bites out of their frozen chicken broth that I had left out to defrost.  Jesse does not like ice.  Not sure exactly what we are going to do if we have to leave them alone again. . .

Even though I almost OD'd on them, one of my New Year's resolutions is to bake more cookies.  Not necessarily the rich, buttery refrigerator ones, but oatmeal chocolate chip, which are one of my all-time favorites.  For gluten free baking, I absolutely swear by Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Baking Flour.  We order it off their website in 25 lb bags, along with 25 lb bags of gluten free oats, so it's not much more expensive than buying 10 lb bags of regular wheat flour in the grocery store.  You can substitute it for regular flour in any recipe (except yeast bread) along with a little xanthum gum, and won't be able to tell the difference.  Their website also has gluten free recipes, and the one for yeast bread is perfect!  Actually that bread turns out better than any gluten bread I have made.

So Christmas is over and now we have that week of floating between the two holidays.  Of merging from an almost overwhelming celebration to beginning a new year, with all of its promise and full of all of our plans.  And planning we are.  Have really been thinking about the root cellar, although it won't be an actual cellar like in the crawl space under the house.  Just went down there yesterday to get potatoes and noticed that the metal and joists closest to the outside are weeping.  I guess we really need to insulate the floor if we are going to keep it dry down there.  Oh, goody. . .  That will probably be our second project for the year.  I swear I am going to get our inside walls finished before I do anything else!

Besides Christmas, another great thing about the last several days is that my allergies seem to have disappeared for a while.  I never had allergies as a kid and have only developed them in the past ten years or so.  I thought that moving Up Here would free me of them, but it was not to be.  The winter can be just as bad as the summer, which I thought was really odd.  But the first year we were Up Here, Larry told me that he has a terrible time with snow mold.  Snow mold.  Okay.  My first reaction was that this guy has obviously been living in the mountains too long.  But there really is such a thing.  After the snow has been on the ground for a while, there is a mold that grows under it.  And whenever the snow starts to melt, the mold can really cause the allergies to kick in.

Thought for the Day:  Prayer is the relationship flowing out of love, with another person or persons.  M. Basil Pennington