More snow, after drifting flakes came down all day yesterday. A trip to the store is in order, and also the bookstore, the beleagured Border's, for last minute gifts. Books make great personalized gifts. So hie thee to a bookstore with the remainder of your shopping list.
Yesterday, another marathon of baking. Some cookies with pine nuts and cardamon, a great Christmas spice, then more of Martha Stewart's cranberry short bread and the one disaster of the season, the granola bars. First, they stuck to the (so-called) non-stick pan, then they crumbled. Actually I have a dozen in individually wrapped plastic. The problem is, they are way too sticky (did someone say treacle?) to eat in the car, which is what I like them for. So---scrap that idea. The bars do taste delish, and I rounded up all the little crumbles to sprinkle on our cereal. So the bars have been more or less salvaged, but I won't make them again.
We ate more leftovers from the company that didn't come last night and tonight, too. Then it's on to something else to eat. I still have a meal to freeze. Criminy, I did get carried away with extra portions.
Mostly now, I have a case of the holiday blahs, which will maybe dissipate when the rest of the family arrives. One hopes. Right now, each upcoming meal seems like a high hurdle, and the impossibility of catering to people who don't like meat, cheese or fish has me under a cook's cloud. I mean, how many meals of potato pancakes can you fix? They're delicious but they destroy the kitchen and have to be cooked at the last minute.
So this is my bah, humbug post. And I think I have a stomach virus. Or I've been eating too much raw egg in the various batters. Or sticking myself with the cat's insulin needle has not been a cool idea. Or I haven't written a word for a week. That's probably it. Ya gotta write.
Here's a New Year's Eve poem that I wrote a few year's back. It's bleakness cheers me.
Yesterday, another marathon of baking. Some cookies with pine nuts and cardamon, a great Christmas spice, then more of Martha Stewart's cranberry short bread and the one disaster of the season, the granola bars. First, they stuck to the (so-called) non-stick pan, then they crumbled. Actually I have a dozen in individually wrapped plastic. The problem is, they are way too sticky (did someone say treacle?) to eat in the car, which is what I like them for. So---scrap that idea. The bars do taste delish, and I rounded up all the little crumbles to sprinkle on our cereal. So the bars have been more or less salvaged, but I won't make them again.
We ate more leftovers from the company that didn't come last night and tonight, too. Then it's on to something else to eat. I still have a meal to freeze. Criminy, I did get carried away with extra portions.
Mostly now, I have a case of the holiday blahs, which will maybe dissipate when the rest of the family arrives. One hopes. Right now, each upcoming meal seems like a high hurdle, and the impossibility of catering to people who don't like meat, cheese or fish has me under a cook's cloud. I mean, how many meals of potato pancakes can you fix? They're delicious but they destroy the kitchen and have to be cooked at the last minute.
So this is my bah, humbug post. And I think I have a stomach virus. Or I've been eating too much raw egg in the various batters. Or sticking myself with the cat's insulin needle has not been a cool idea. Or I haven't written a word for a week. That's probably it. Ya gotta write.
Here's a New Year's Eve poem that I wrote a few year's back. It's bleakness cheers me.
The Ramblin’ Rose
New Year's Eve and the Ramblin' Rose
Churns up and down the Inland Waterway
Delray Beach to Boca and back.
Buffet, booze, and other accoutrements
of First Night included.
The heron skulks in silence,
Roosting on her lone piling as we
Glide through manatee mating grounds
Imagining the churn and roil of water
Docile fat bodies thrashing and thrusting.
Stage curtain clouds part to reveal
A sober late December moon.
Diamond-belted Orion arches his bow
Toward apathetic stars.
Indifference is our guide.
This Last Night, no nymphs or dryads
Cavort inside the glitzy glass-facaded palaces
That line our watery road.
Captains of industry and cocaine conquistadors
Gone forth to hidden revels.
Cleopatra dazzling the Nile
Ahab chasing his white whale
Huck and Jim rafting broad river
Kurtz plunging toward the heart of darkness
Dreamt and dared upon the water.
Our placid eve's cocooned in make-believe
Of paddle-wheels. Sustained by party hats
And plastic leis, a slosh in margaritas,
Our pilgrimage to nowhere drifts across the night.
New Year's Eve and the Ramblin' Rose
Churns up and down the Inland Waterway
Delray Beach to Boca and back.
Buffet, booze, and other accoutrements
of First Night included.
The heron skulks in silence,
Roosting on her lone piling as we
Glide through manatee mating grounds
Imagining the churn and roil of water
Docile fat bodies thrashing and thrusting.
Stage curtain clouds part to reveal
A sober late December moon.
Diamond-belted Orion arches his bow
Toward apathetic stars.
Indifference is our guide.
This Last Night, no nymphs or dryads
Cavort inside the glitzy glass-facaded palaces
That line our watery road.
Captains of industry and cocaine conquistadors
Gone forth to hidden revels.
Cleopatra dazzling the Nile
Ahab chasing his white whale
Huck and Jim rafting broad river
Kurtz plunging toward the heart of darkness
Dreamt and dared upon the water.
Our placid eve's cocooned in make-believe
Of paddle-wheels. Sustained by party hats
And plastic leis, a slosh in margaritas,
Our pilgrimage to nowhere drifts across the night.
©
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