No ice is good news and food happens

 An older person's view of the weather forecast

No ice! This is big.

Lately I've been cooking good meals but not photogenic ones. Ground turkey with cannellini beans, that kind of good stuff, and my food designer never turned up, again, so you didn't get the benefit.

Yesterday I did make something to show you, very simple, not up to anything elaborate at the moment, a tired time of year.

Broccoli/tomato sauce with penne and a lot of Serrano peppers diced in, big grind of long red pepper.  Enough for three meals, always a plus, that I can heat and eat.

This probably has an Italian name, penne primavera or something. 

Yesterday saw a bit of free cycling, lights which I've had around for ages, wrong size for outside, my original intent, wouldn't charge adequately indoors, my backup plan, too late for a return for refund, my backup backup plan. 

So they went to the first of a horde of requesters, within a couple of hours of posting. Even without pictures, sometimes the site won't, though when that happens I offer to email them.

And, the Izzy dolls moving right along, I did send for a different shade of possible face-colored yarn, and this arrived

Looking like clay or something, and at first I didn't realize what it was, since the package was so shrunken you couldn't read the words. I did find "yarn" and all became clear. Vacuum packed! After I managed to find a way in without cutting the yarn, it sprang to life

 

Made in Turkey, like a lot of yarns. It seems to be a  thriving Turkish industry.

Happy day, everyone, whatever mysterious packages it holds for you. Like the surprise big Izzy, the result of picking up the wrong, too big, needles, but what's a manufacturing glitch between friends?

Food, aboriginal art, and fog

Yesterday's promised tornadoes and huge hail didn't materialize here, just rain. But I think I need to cover my seedlings for shade today, because

I live in the middle of that red bit. Meanwhile overnight there was fog.

I live in that grey bit. And, this really cracked me up, in case we didn't know what fog looked like, the weather service posted this picture of it

So that made it all perfectly clear..

Yesterday when I got home in pouring rain from my knitting group, my Misfits box had arrived. No picture of it on the step on account of rain.

This morning, great timing, Krista Tippett had a guest on her podcast, a psychologist and nutritionist with the reminder that we are indeed what we eat. 

She discussed how the brain takes on nutrition before the rest of the body, needs a lot of it and can not function with a poor diet. All pretty self evident but worth revisiting. 

She's written a book on it, and it Tippett herself has a podcast on spiritual issues,  well worth tracking down, thoughtful and balanced. I used to catch her on radio years ago, lost track and now thank Chris for reminding me of her.

But eating well is not just attending to needs. It's also such a pleasure. It can be seen as a spiritual duty, too, if you're inclined to that interpretation. Me, I think it's fun.

And here's a piece of aboriginal art which speaks to me so profoundly, that I hope you take the meaning I get from it, too.

Very serious around here today! Happy day everyone, eat well, feel fine.

Weather, tea, butter

This sounds like a spartan approach to posting, or maybe my Brit roots are showing.

Anyway the local weather people have been all excited and losing their cool, firing off loud alarms on my phone, all over social media, and getting all carried away. None of the severe things happened here.

And then when the forecast is warm, they have to drag in the bad news. Otherwise there's no drama. I mean, who's going to pay them to forecast a few lovely mild days?

Meanwhile, packages began to arrive. My tea, a real luxury, came,  new supplier, and they included a couple of samples, too.

This is the tea I'm coming to the end of

It's fine, just thought I'd keep looking anyway.

And, separately, the butter aka heavy cream powder. Along with my regular whole milk powder.

So I was having pasta for dinner with roast chicken, and suddenly thought Alfredo! The sauce, that is, which I make by just tossing butter and shredded parmesan into the pasta.

So I thought ah, first experiment with the butter powder, I'll mix with a drop of water to a paste, stir in the parmesan, then dress the pasta with that and see if I like it. Bottom line, I did. Nice buttery taste.

I tried the idea of mixing in some turmeric, to get a golden buttery color, and here's a comparison with my Vermont butter. The taste is comparable, too. Turmeric doesn't have a pronounced flavor, so it just gave color and didn't change the taste.

So, that worked nicely. Tomorrow I'll see about making butter. I like the idea of just making the amount I need. Similarly to using milk powder. I never run out of milk, and make small amounts as needed. I keep the powder in the freezer.

And art happened today, here in the mail

Complete with stamp celebrating ny namesake's jubilee, whatever number she's up to now.

Textiles and Tea was Alice Schlein,  a nice lady, well known among weavers, not very visual, more technical talk which escaped me. 

But for Joanne here's some napkins, she loves making towels and napkins from her samples.

And here are her current looms

Forthcoming attraction: I haven't had a Saturday movie night for ages, but finally found something when I get to the library to pick it up

This is not the HBO streamed fictional series, about which I have heard various opinions, but it's outside my budget anyway. 

This one is a PBS production, a doc of the age. I'm hoping for genuine old footage, too. We'll see.

In between all these activities, I've been signing up a storm and trying to get more sigs, to force Justice  Thomas to recuse himself from any January 6 cases. Also to resign, though that's a tougher one. Common Cause and MoveOn are very active. 

Onward! The Emmet Till Anti Lynching law is finally a federal statute. Great shame it took so long, but anyway it's done. Signed today.

And Ukraine still needs our help and support however we can give it.

Just grumbling. But there's the horoscope..

It's been hot and humid here. Like a lot of other places. This evening before going to check the mail and do some recycling, I checked the weather, as you do. Feels like 99, huh? I've been feeling like 99 for ages. The sun's down and it still feels like 99.

And after getting those few tasks done, looked ahead

That bright hot pink (!) area? I live right there in the middle of it. 

But there's always the horoscope. Today is about the best flowers to buy for your sign

I like horoscopes because they're not full of Ten Ways You're Ruining Your Life type of writing. The Five Mistakes Older Women Make in Fashion, Thirty one Foods You Should Never Eat. And so on.

Instead horoscopes tend to be encouraging and optimistic. I read them for practically every sign, just to cover everyone I know. 

There was a move a few years ago to reorganize the horoscope listing, dumping Sagittarius and moving other signs up to fill in, except for a couple of weeks assigned to something unpronounceable. I haven't heard anything about it lately. I felt really unnerved about it. It felt personal.

But then, us Sags don't believe in astrology.

Zero to Twenty. Ah, it's Spring! 6WS

Astonishing how relative everything is.  Yesterday with windchills at 20 below F, and today in the upper 20s F the contrast is as if spring has come.

Went out without a hat, even, got errands at bank and PO and shop done, before the snows return. And the rain and the subsequent expected freeze and ice.

But my beloved 16 year old beater Honda still started up first turn of the key even after sitting out in the cold for days at a time.

No idea if my snowdrops are out, since they're buried.

 
 Under yar be snowdrops.

Last year they bloomed and faded all under the snow.  Found the little limp stems after it thawed. Same with the pansies, who knows.