Musings
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Tuesday Thoughts
Ted and I have recently found a delicious Chinese restaurant in our neighboring town, Sichuan Fortune House (Link is to Yelp, they don’t have a website). It’s not really a place to go with Maya, because she is more a fan of sweet and sour chicken and pot stickers and steamed pork buns, and this place has really delicious dry cooked (spicy) green beans, a wonderful mushroom dish, yummy hot and sour soup, really nice cod, etc. All things that are delicious and not up her ally. I mean, they DO have sweet and sour pork (no chicken, but maybe they would make it for her?) and pot stickers, but…
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Where we are now
Here we are, at the beginning of the first full week of February, and it’s going to be 75 degrees today. The birds are chirping merrily, the flowering trees are full of flowers, the sun is bright and warm. It would be lovely if only it weren’t so ominous, that this is going to be another drought year. Already, parts of Southern California are in drought. Up here, we’re getting there, again. There is still, surely, a lot of water in our reservoirs from last year’s deluge, but I do wish mightily that our snow pack were deeper. It’s not too late. We could have a wet LATE February (the…
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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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Chicken with Wine and Shallots
I came across this recipe, I think on Facebook, which should be evidence that Facebook is not entirely useless. You can find the recipe (and picture) here. I made this for dinner one night, and it is delicious. I generally read comments on online recipes, and one person in the comments said they added peas at the end. That sounded good to me, so I added a bunch of peas at the end, when you add the cherry tomatoes. Really good. I buy bone-in, skin on thighs, because I think they give flavor to the dish. I cook with the skin, and then remove it when we eat it. Give…
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Throwback Thursday
I have a friend and she comes from the high plains Wise as the hills and fresh as the rains I have a friend and she taught me daring Threw back the windows and let the air in For all she knows Bless my blue moon rose I have a friend and we talk about books She comes around and she drinks while I cook Took me an atlas to find her town And to realise that the world was round For all she knows Bless my blue moon rose ~ Everything But the Girl My darling friend Rosemary and me, above, in Old Town Sacramento, probably early 1984. We…
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I Hate Appliances
Specifically, I hate modern appliances. Why? Because one tiny thing breaks and it ends up costing a ton of money. For example, our stove, which we bought a long time ago, only lasted one year (just past the warranty) before some tiny piece of plastic inside the doohickey behind one of the knobs broke, and suddenly you couldn’t turn off one of the burners. It was always on. Thankfully it was a back burner, and Maya wasn’t a little child, and we would just turn off the power to the stove when we weren’t using it, but yeah, not good. The fridge has had myriad issues. The door compartment, where…
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Save the Titans
Near the California/Oregon border, near Crescent City, is Redwood National Park. Within this beautiful park (which I have not personally visited), there is a small grove of giant redwoods, discovered in the 1990s, nicknamed the “Grove of Titans”. The biggest two are the fourth and fifth largest known coastal redwoods in the world, and they are surely magnificent. There was a story in today’s paper about the grove, talking about how secret it used to be, but how popular it now is, which is dangerous for the very trees that people are trekking in to see. Redwood trees have very shallow roots, and are sensitive to people walking on the…
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Bad Sunrise Photos
This whole trying to post EVERY DAY in November is tapping my creativity. I think I have an idea for a post, and then I look, and I realize that I already wrote about it, so I have to try to come up with something else. So, what you get today is bad pictures of the beautiful sunrise this morning. Had I realized it was going to be such a lovely sunrise, I would have gone to Heather Farm for our morning walk, and gotten some great pics. But I didn’t know. So we took a shorter walk down the trail near our house, which follows the old path of…
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Spotlight Saturday
Spotlighting an exhibit that I saw back in September, that was based on the Milliner’s trade, mostly Degas, but not all Degas. The painting above is Renoir, called, ‘At the Milliner’s’. I liked this painting a lot. Art can be subjective, so I will tell you what I see…I see women, tired at the end of a hard days work. Work that they may or may not enjoy, work that they can take pleasure in a job well done. But tired. There is a certain dignity in that, again, whether or not they have enjoyed their job.
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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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Turkey Day
Wishing you and yours a very happy Thanksgiving, with all of your favorite things to eat, with all of your favorite people. While Mulder and I were out on our walk the other morning, I heard a story about the Turkey Pardon, where the sitting President of the US Pardons the turkeys that are sent to him for his table. Apparently, they used to get eaten, but now they do not. Kinda interesting. If you’re so inclined, here are a couple of things for you to read, some via NPR, some not. The Strange History of the Turkey Pardon, from 2015 Obama’s Dad Jokes about the Turkey Pardon, from 2016…
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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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Lazy Sunday
Here’s a picture of a redwood tree in our neighborhood, for Nance, who says they are one of her favorite trees. They are beautiful, though of course these are not the Giant Redwoods that you can see a couple of hours from here. They look a lot like pine trees, but so much prettier. Today is a lazy-ish day, because I’m plopped down on the sofa writing a blog post. I have my library book nearby, which is due on Wednesday, so I need to get going on that. I’m a little over 1/2 way though, and it’s a pretty quick read, so I think I will make it. After…
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Scenic Saturday
Mulder and I have changed our morning walking route lately. At least for now, the sun is coming up early enough that we can go for an hour before I have to be at work. One of the many benefits of working from home is that I can walk in the door from my walk at 7:58, and be at work at 8:00. I thought about editing the chain out of the picture, but decided against it. I can even take my laptop downstairs, boot it up, and eat breakfast while looking over emails and easing into my day. There is a city park near us called Heather Farm, and…
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Throwback Thursday
Aimee was my best friend in Fairbanks during the years we lived downtown. She lived kitty corner from us. I think she went to Montessori with me, actually, though I don’t remember for sure. She and I found each other on Facebook a couple of years ago, and she told me that when she first saw me, she thought I was a boy, because I had short hair. My mother was an atheist, and Aimee’s parents were very religious. I scandalized the neighborhood when, after checking the facts with my mom, I yelled across the street to her (in front of the people coming out of the church, and the…