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Posts Tagged ‘winter’

  1. Craving Bread

    December 27, 2011 by The Yum Yum

    And now, today, I feel worse than I did yesterday. What gives? Maybe it’s the weather?

    I do apologize for turning Holy Poached Eggs into my own personal blog for talking about Christmas illnesses. Oy! This was not my intention.

     

    So, New Year’s is coming up, and with the New Year comes resolutions (which I will likely make none) and also various New Year’s traditions.

     

    However, we’ll deal with those particular traditions later on. I will make an update about New Year’s in Japan, as that’s the biggest holiday over there (at least according to Van Tilden.)

    I’ll also post a blog about our traditions here in the USA!

     

    And then there will be the information about my own personal traditions I’ve tried to start for New Year’s because of how tacky I find some of the USA’s traditions.

     

    Lately, I’ve been craving bread. I want to make bread that’s flavored with honey or make a kind of cinnamon-sugar bread. I’m not sure exactly how to go about doing this, but I think it could actually be easily done with self-rising flour, eggs, and milk. You know, like making a cake, only not as…cake-like.

     

    I made some toasted cheese sandwiches last night like Ms. Alice used to make, except I had shredded cheese at my disposal and ended up not putting enough cheese on the sandwiches. Sad day. But the good news is that I used Caleb’s trick of adding a squirt of lemon juice to the cheese and also added garlic powder (a trick of my own), and the cheese’s flavors absolutely popped!

    Lemon does a great job bringing out flavors. The acidity gives a hint of life and flavor to the food.

    And now, the weather’s turning cold again, ack! Winter’s finally arrived, and it’s going to try to destroy me as it did last year. I am SO not down for that.

    Also, 2012, the Year the World Will End, is rapidly approaching us. The set date for Doomsday is December 21, 2012. So this coming year, I will constantly be writing about the Doomsday and will even supply a wonderful set of “last meal” recipes.

     

    Have an EGG-cellent day, everyone!

     

    Beaux

     

     

     

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  2. Rosemary Go Round and Other News

    December 2, 2011 by The Yum Yum

    So, I discovered only a little while ago that here at Hickory Shade, the central heating and air has gone out.

     

    This is a brand-new system that we had installed earlier in the year when our 25-year-old system went out. The new system cooled (and has heated) our house much better, but that also had to do with the pipes underneath the house having huge, gaping holes in them that had basically been cooling the outdoors.

    So much for Bapaw’s fussing about things.

    Also, I’ve had a slight sinus headache for about a week now, GO ME! I’m a survivor for making it past and through and above and beyond it! But it would be nice if it went away!

    I’m quite lucky to have a space heater in my room that I’ll most likely be using tonight. I prefer electric heaters to gas heaters any day.

    I do miss my old Vornado, though. It eventually just died, and so I stopped using it. The Vornado could be set at a particular temperature, and if the room became colder than that temperature, it would would simply turn off the heating element.

    Not so this other contraption that, while looking nice, is stupid and just turns off completely once heating the room up to a specific temperature- unless you turn it “stay on” mode where the heat will constantly be blowing. The problem with the heating constantly blowing, though, is that these machines turn off automatically if they tip over or overheat, so “stay on” mode will inevitably lead to the Le Dink’s overheating.

    C’est la vie.

    In other news, I’ll be posting my yearly exposition of Japanese Christmas traditions and how foreign they seem to Americans, especially when you consider that they imported Christmas from America. I think.

    Also, Veggie Table has a new computer that she’s named “Theo,” and according to her blog, she actually has suffered many of the same “bad computer” experiences as I. Please give the girl some love by checking on blog roll at the right-hand side of the screen.

    And the Onyx Plate has reached 20,000 views of her blog! Congratulations! I feel especially proud since I helped make that happen. Shameless self-promotion by yours truly, anyone?

    Our cooking styles are all very different, too. The Onyx Plate goes into fond memories of her childhood and shows connection to her family while creating some very lovely recipes that are also highly photogenic. She reviews, at times, various food products and restaurants. Tillamook cheese has stuck in my head forever.

    Veggie Table turns into a ninja and dodges her doggy Salvador’s being underfoot and her husband’s carnivorous nature, all while catering and working and petting a dog named Bill Cosby. She also refers to the best vegetarian-friendly items on various menus around the area.

    And as for me? Well, my cooking style is dumping everything in a pot or skillet and praying to the Virgin Mother of God that whatever results won’t put me or anyone else in the hospital.

    Also, I will tell you how well I like a server at a restaurant.

    In other words, I have the excitability of an old lady. But then I do love little old ladies, especially nuns.

    This means that the Rosemary Go Round (and I meant to create a badge for us but failed miserably at that experiment) must look very interesting to other people.

    So…that being said…have an EGG-cellent day!

     

    Beaux

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  3. Winter Solstice

    December 23, 2010 by The Yum Yum

    Somehow, I managed to not blog about the solstice and official beginning of Winter. Tyler and I both have been sick as of late, so my blogging hasn’t been as up to speed as I would like for it to be.

    The Winter Solstice brought with it an interesting a event- a full moon lunar eclipse. According to some sources online, the last time a full moon lunar eclipse occurred on the solstice was 400 or so years ago, and the even won’t repeat again for another 400 years.

    Some of my friends made a remark about how the event had great significance, showing the various kinds of change that are to come. True, a lot of change did happen all at once, mostly a huge wave of negativity, but sometimes the greatest happiness and good are foretold through the seemingly most negative events.

    It’s Christmas Eve Eve. Outside, the weather is cold, and there’s a foretelling of possible snow to come on Christmas Day, something that hasn’t happened in Alabama in a century or so.

    Times are harder than normal, financially speaking, for most people these past several years, but then money isn’t everything.

    The New Year is rapidly approaching, and with it will come all kinds of novelty. What will it come of it? Hopefully, I pray, a solution to the fundamental problems of the human soul on a massive scale.

    Things are going to happen, and happen soon. May God guide us to peace and joy in all moments.

    Beaux


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  4. Cold Feet and Being Cold: A Family Thing

    December 16, 2010 by The Yum Yum

    I’ve heard stories about my paternal grandfather always complaining about his feet being cold. Even though I personally don’t remember this, I have no reason to doubt it, and even more reason to actually repeat the same account.

    After he passed away, while his body was still in the hospital, they had him covered- except for his feet. One of my relatives (I can’t remember whom) covered his feet up for him because of the same constant complaint about his feet being cold.

    My maternal grandmother was always cold. Even if the rest of us were burning up, she would complain about being cold- I remember well being at her house one summer with one window unit air conditioner and a scorching hot house, and how even running it for a little while would render her cold.

    When I was young, I was predominantly “hot-natured” in the sense that I stayed hot most of the time. It was rare that I would get cold. I also hated wearing socks when I was a kid, and I can remember teachers at school being shocked that I refused to wear socks even on super-cold winter days.

    To be fair, I honestly didn’t need them- it didn’t take much for me to get hot, and I was almost always guaranteed to get warmed up after moving around even a little.

    Somewhere around high school, this all changed for me. I began to feel the cold much more substantially, and these days, I would definitely say that I’m “cold-natured” like my grandmother.

    And guess which parts of my body stay the coldest?

    My hands and feet!

    I’ve walked through Tyler’s house on below-freezing nights without socks in the unheated rooms and almost literally had to thaw my feet when I returned to the bedroom. It’s a weird feeling to have, and it makes me feel way older than I actually am. But hey, feeling older than I am isn’t anything new to me, either.

    Typically, I’m happiest when the temperature is in the low 80s or so. That makes me feel like I’m in a warm blanket, and I don’t freeze to death. I can handle the 70s, but once I deal with temperatures below that, I feel like a human popsicle!

    Has anyone else experienced a shift from hot- to cold-natured?

    Beaux


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  5. Winter Draws Near

    December 1, 2010 by The Yum Yum

    As predicted, in accordance with the first day of December, I’m remarking how I treat today as the “official” first day of Winter despite the Solstice not being for a few more weeks. The weather gladly obliged my strange and child-like observation by raining heavily on November 30th and making the air quite chilly for December 1st.

    November 28th marked the beginning of Advent. For those of you who are not part of the Catholic traditions, Advent is the First Season of the Church’s Liturgical Year and culminates on Christmas. Now that the cold weather is arriving, Advent and the coming of Christmas all seem to work together to create a depth of the Winter that I have yet to see before.

    Winter brings with it a kind of excitement, perhaps memories long ago of childhood and waiting for Christmas morning. But even walking outside and looking into the night sky, seeing the sparkling stars and feeling the whip of the wintry winds against my phase, there is a wonder and a majesty in it all that causes my heart to praise God, to sing the joy of the Creation, a mystery that inspires love in my heart for all of humanity and a renewed hope that things can indeed be redeemed.

    Believe it or not, Alabama does get uncomfortably cold, largely thanks to the amount of humidity we receive from the Gulf of Mexico.

    One of the fun things in my own experience of Winter is staying in a large, old house that’s difficult to keep warm and having to avoid certain rooms that are filled with a chill. This may not be as much fun to other people, but there’s something familiar and exciting about having that one really warm room as opposed to all the cold rooms that no one is using.

    Winter brings with it immense amounts of cooking- the preparation of soups and stews to help keep warm, the baking of pies, cakes, and cookies to celebrate Christmas, the making of hot chocolate, eggnog, and hot apple cider with cinnamon. Many other treats are prepared this time of year, all of them reminding us that Winter is here!

    Winter also brings with it the houses lit with Christmas lights, the comforting glow of candles in the dark, the hope of snow (which is rare in this part of Alabama), and the parting with an old year and embracing a brand new one, a new chapter in each of our lives.

    So here’s to frosty frolicking in Winter!

    Beaux


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