Strange email

If you get a strange email from me...

I swear I didn't send it!
What's this thing about cats squatting on your stuff?!

Heat wave

Some really mild air moved in overnight.

Saturday 11 January 3:30 pm
But I wouldn't say it was a very nice day.

Pond or puddle? 2" of rain!
It rained buckets! And I have one, well, no, two, really crabby horses in the barn. One of them is just always crabby.

It's not going to stay near 60 but the forecast is for unseasonably mild weather all week. L is going to need a good ride.

A certain charm

Even I have to admit that, as much as I hate winter, and nobody hates it more than I, it has a certain charm sometimes. Undisturbed freshly fallen snow is very pretty. This is a classic New England scene.

Barn driveway, 4 January
And then there's these little curiosities.

Little snowball trails
Now how exactly did those little snowballs leave the dotted trails behind? I really don't think they bounced along. And they couldn't possibly have rolled along that soft powdery snow without making a mark. It's a mystery!

And the rabbit tracks! The barn property is lousy with rabbits. There are rabbits *everywhere*.

Wabbit tracks!
The rabbits aren't scared of you when you're on a horse. So the rest of the year they mostly just sit and watch you ride by.

And...there's really nothing quite like getting out on a good horse in this stuff.

It was clear and cold all day. With some wind in the afternoon. Branches sound like gunshots when they break in this cold.

We saw all kinds of tracks in the snow but L and I didn't see another living thing out there all afternoon.

Solitude
I had a really good time and L? Well. She thinks she's in Florida.

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And here's this gem from my archives. The winter of 1980/1981 was very cold. As a matter of fact the local news reported the record cold for this past Friday night was set in 1981 (-4°F in Boston). That's very cold for Boston. Boston takes its weather data from the airport which extends into the harbor where it's warmer than the surrounding areas.

Here's Plymouth Harbor Massachusetts. Frozen solid in January 1981.

If I recall correctly Nantucket Sound froze that season. I can only recall that happening twice in my lifetime.

Looks like winter

Courtesy of a New Year's Nor'easter.

We're close enough to the coast to have Nor'easters give us the occasional blizzard but we're spared the coastal flooding. We got snow. This is New England. It snows here in the wintertime. I mean really, the way the local news carries on you'd think we never saw snow before. And the way people drive. Don't get me started! I don't recall when the thought first occurred to me but there must be a lot of people here came from someplace else.

And when did this bread and milk thing start?! They forecast snow and the supermarket's are out of bread and milk within minutes. And cold cuts! A few years ago I watched in amazement as people lined up at the deli counter buying cheese and cold cuts 2 and 3 pounds at a time. I won't go anywhere near a supermarket when there's a storm in the forecast!

From my office window. 3 January 10:00 am.
I really don't mind the snow so much. What I *really* hate is the cold.

The cold?

The cold! 4 January 7:00 am. -4° F
I absolutely *hate* the cold and some serious cold came in behind this last storm. I do pretty good even down into the single digits but I'm seriously miserable when it goes below 0. This is about as cold as we've had in 3 years or so. *Everything* is hard in the cold. I grow less tolerant of the cold every year.

But remember. Yankees don't move. Not real ones anyway. I think I better go get some soup started.

Raspberries

When L gets mad she makes raspberries. It's hilarious!

Here she wants her hay.

Turn up the sound!
I really wish I could get her to do that on command. But she only does it when she's mad.

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Speaking of raspberries. Stuff some chocolate chips inside fresh raspberries sometime. They're a great treat.

Bison

Up until last night I would have said these salmon fish sticks were the best thing I've had to eat this year. They're delicious. Loving salmon and growing up on Mrs Paul's, finding salmon inside my fish stick is crazy good.

I surf the web looking for recipes all the time. I try to have something new every week. Which is easy enough when you first start playing that game but becomes more challenging as time passes. I came across a grilled bison steak recipe that set the wheels turning. I've had bison but it was so long ago I don't remember whether I liked it or not. I've seen it at the local supermarket but the thought just never occurred to me to buy it.

Because bison has almost no fat it cooks quickly and overcooks easily. You want to sear it but you want less heat than you'd use for beef. These bison medallions are pretty widely available so that's what I decided I'd have.

I marinated my bison medallion (basically it's a loin section) in a chimichurri all day, dried it, seasoned it, skewered it and put it under a broiler suspended across a cast iron pan. Like this:

Skewered, under a broiler, over a cast iron pan
I expected it would be about 3 minutes each side. I probably should have preheated my broiler longer. Ended up taking 6 or 7 minutes each side.

Hands down the *best* thing I've had to eat this year
It was moist and flavorful. A little bit chewy. I like chewy. I was never a fan of really tender beef. Those are little red potatoes roasted in duck fat alongside and chimichurri spooned over the top.

I had a French Pinot Noir with it
I think a Cabernet Sauvignon would have been just fine and I read somewhere that the Presidential Inaugural Luncheon's second course served a California Merlot.

Time flies...

This year seems to have gone by very quickly. I was shopping for some holiday beer. I really felt as though I was doing the same thing just the other day and I realized - no, that was last year! Last year I got some Goose Island Christmas Ale and while I wasn't crazy about it I thought it was pretty good. I felt it was a little expensive for what it was.

What I was actually looking for was Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale. I look forward to Celebration Ale every year. I think it's excellent beer. In all my life I've only tasted a couple of beers I didn't like. Mostly I just like some more than others. As an adult I discovered I like ales and I tend to favor pale ales although this time of year I like lagers now and then. They didn't have any Celebration Ale!

So I got:

And I like it a lot. I'm becoming increasingly fond of canned beer. There's all kinds of really good beer in cans out there and I really had no idea.

I should do a year in review. Highlights. Lowlights. New things. I have so much on my mind these days I hardly know where to begin.

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Between the solar power plant a half mile away...

And this business with the neighbors...

One sign isn't enough? And I still wonder what's up with this?

The world seems like it's changed more this year than it has in years past.