Holidays
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Wordless Wednesday
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Giving Thanks
As always, there is much to be thankful for. (For which to be thankful…better grammar, but sounds awkward). For those of us in California this year, we are thankful for the mixed blessing of rain. Mostly good, because look at the difference in our air quality from last Saturday to today. I’ve never spent so much time looking at air quality indexes before. At some point the air quality was over 300, which is extremely hazardous. In the picture above, it is likely about 185 or so. The lower picture was good air quality, maybe around 20. It felt so good to go out and take our first long…
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Ode to Sancerre
I adore California Chardonnay, and haven’t found a lot of French Chardonnay that I enjoy. I wish this were not true, because I feel less sophisticated for preferring a big oakey wine to one that is more subtle. But I live in California, and buttery and oakey wines are very popular here. While we were in France this summer, I decided to steer away from French Chardonnays, and instead went with a lovely Sauvignon Blanc, Sancerre. When we came home and found ourselves longing for France, we stated looking for Sancerre around here. You can find fairly decent selections of wine at your local Safeway, and even CVS and…
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Paris
Oh Paris, why did we shortchange you? When planning our trip, we were tight on time. We only had so much vacation saved up, only so much $$ to spend, and we wanted to go when we wanted to go. We wanted to see more of France than just Paris, and of course, we wanted to see Jean-Marc, which meant the long drive to the West Coast. I do not regret any of it, but I do wish very much that we had had 3 or 4 more days in Paris. When you’re looking at your calendar and planning, you don’t really realize how much time gets spent getting from…
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Normandy
After we left Brittany, we drove slowly back toward Paris, with a few stops along the way. On our way out to the coast, we had noticed that we could see Mont-Saint-Michel, which is pretty amazing. You’re just driving along, and then you glance over and see what looks like a medieval fortress that looks like it’s floating. Well, it’s not floating, and it doesn’t look that way when you are close, but from the freeway it appeared that way to me. So we decided to stop and at least look at it on our way to Normandy. Mont-Saint-Michel is an island right off the coast of Normandy (where Normandy…
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Wordless Wednesday
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Our Time in France – Part 2
Our first day of touring France, aka, not driving 8 hours from Paris to the West Coast of Brittany, Ted’s friend Jean-Marc took us to visit the medieval town of Locronan. As with any village or town in the area, there is a lovely church, St. Ronan. St. Ronan was an Irish pilgrim whose relics were housed for a time in the church. Most of the street signs in Brittany are in two languages, French and Breton. There is a movement to bring back the Breton language, and there are quite a few immersion schools for children to learn Breton. Surprisingly, this was illegal until somewhat recently. Anyway, we drove…
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Good Eats / Birthday Weekend / Bloody Mary recipe
Thursday was Maya’s birthday, and we celebrated by going to our favorite Dim Sum restaurant in San Francisco, then we did some shopping near Union Square with her gift cards. At some Dim Sum restaurants, you order off of a menu (like the place we went last year). At others, the staff bring food around to the tables, either on carts or on trays, and you say yes or no to each item as they bring it around. So they come by and say, “shrimp dumplings?” and you say yes or no, and if you say yes, they give you the shrimp dumplings and mark your check to show that…
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Catching Up
Sorry for the long silence. My stupid keyboard broke, the little Bluetooth one that I use with my iPad Mini. A few keys still worked properly, but some did not work at all, and some would spit out completely different characters. I went onto some user forums to see if there was a way to fix it, and there was, but it did not work. Rats. Sure, I could have borrowed Ted’s laptop, or written on our regular computer, but somehow it just never happened. I like writing on my iPad, but I can’t stand the stupid touchpad. When Christmas came around, I thought maybe I would get a new…
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Friday Recap
Thanksgiving is over, and it was a lovely day. Mulder and I went for a very long walk in the morning, much longer than usual, and we were tired when we got home. Too bad, because I still had some cooking to do. Thankfully I had started the day before, or I wouldn’t have gotten it done in time. We had all of the family favorites, which means there was way too much food and not everyone ate everything, but we all ate what we wanted. Some ate turkey, some didn’t. Some ate potatoes, some didn’t. Some ate cranberry sauce, some didn’t. The salad I made with Brussels sprouts, pomegranates,…
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Meatless Monday
Photo and recipe from Ambitious Kitchen I was talking to our next door neighbor the other day, and the conversation turned to Thanksgiving. These neighbors are vegetarian, but their family that will be in town visiting are not, so I asked what she is planning to make. She said they would make a turkey for the meat eaters, and she was thinking about a recipe she saw online, for stuffed acorn squash. We have Thanksgiving with Ted’s family, and his mother is vegetarian (really, pescatarian), so I thought perhaps I would look at this recipe and see if it seemed like something she would enjoy. The neighbor sent me the…
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Dia de Difuntos
Dia de Muertos is a time to pray for and remember friends and family who have died. It is traditionally a Mexican holiday, and a Catholic one. I’ve never really paid any attention to it before, but the bright orange flowers reminded me of my Dad, and my Grandma died last year in November, so it made sense to me to buy some flowers and make a small alter with some pictures of Dad, Mom, and Grandma. There are too many others that I could easily include…my Uncle Forrest, my Grandma Wells, my Grandpa Ward, etc. For today, I’m keeping it to these three, the most difficult losses I have…
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Catching Up
It’s been a busy time, since last I stopped by here. The entire month of December is gone, and we’re a week into a New Year. So what’s going on? I went to Portland for a long weekend in early December. It was my step-mom’s 70th birthday, and I went up to help her celebrate. Ted didn’t come with me, mostly because of his cat allergies, which means he can’t come inside (or at least not for long) most of the houses for our family. That can work fine in summer, we sleep at a hotel or house sit for neighbors, and we eat dinner in my parents’ back yard.…
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Happy New Year – Friday Randomness
Hey There Party People, what’s shakin’? December was a good combination of busy and lazy, and somehow in amongst the lazy I did not post even once. That’s pathetic. In line with catching you up a bit, life here has been good, not crazy, not too different than it was before. We’ve had another month with dog-boy, Mulder, and he’s settling in so very well. We all adore him so much. He’s playful and loving and wonderful. He’s learning a bit of manners, learning to walk better on a leash, etc. He doesn’t jump on the furniture as much anymore. He doesn’t bark nearly as much anymore. He’s only vomited…
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Giving Thanks for Cranberry Sauce
I’ve spoken here before about Thanksgiving, about how as a child, it was my least favorite holiday of the year. (I should clarify that I am only talking about the years when I was in California…I don’t remember much about Thanksgiving in Alaska, but I’m sure it was lovely and fine.) My entire family (on my mom’s side) is obsessed with weight. My grandmother decided at a young age that she was NOT going to be fat like her parents and aunts, and pretty much has been on a diet ever since. To the point where now, at age 92 and weighing in at about 88 lbs, she will still…