I decided to use hot smoked paprika, along with sweet paprika yesterday when I prepared the mushroom sauce that the chicken breast cubes would be simmered in for dinner, and it was a good move. Mind, while a teaspoon of sweet paprika works fine, the hot smoked version must be much reduced by at least a quarter. Bur we ended up with a really flavourful gravy at dinnertime, to be accompanied by long grain rice, not the short-grain sticky-type I usually use. That's what's so interesting about experimenting in the kitchen.

 

We look forward to enjoying our meals. Breakfasts are a little special, along with the preparation of foods we enjoy and look forward to at that most important meal of the day, we also enjoy reading the morning newspapers. One of the first things Irving does when we come down for breakfast is fetch the newspapers from their hook beside the mailbox over the porch. And there was nothing there this morning. Breakfast without a newspaper ... unheard of!

 

When he called the newspaper office responsible for delivering both the local and the national papers we subscribe to there was a message to subscribers that the print run would be delayed. Evidently a problem with production. This isn't the first time this year we've had a message like that. The newspapers would be delivered 'sometime' during the day... or in some areas, Sunday, a day neither paper publishes a print edition.

 

That's when you get a real-life inkling of just what a precarious publishing position well-established newspapers find themselves in. I'd much rather have a hard copy print edition than view the news online. But since there is so much news available online it seems that the number of subscribers has diminished significantly and so has the advertising, both moving toward the Internet. It leaves us guessing that with straitened finances, newspapers are re-investing less in the machinery required to produce hard copy.

 

This has been a temperature-mild day relatively speaking, but chilly regardless. When we went out to the ravine this early afternoon with Jackie and Jillie there was a rollicking icy wind that made the atmosphere much colder than it should have been, helped enormously by the icy air radiating from the enormous snowpack winter dumped in successive large snowfalls.

 

The creek at the bottom of the ravine is swollen and fast-running with the amount of meltwater, adding to yesterday's all-day rain. The rain didn't do an awful lot to reduce the level of the snowpack, we'll need much warmer weather than a mere 4C to tackle that. But the snow is denaturizing, taking on that icy-marble appearance of snow beginning to realize its time is past. And the footing is a little dicey, ascending and descending hills with all the slip-backs.

 

Not many people going through the forest trails today, but we were hailed on a few occasions by hounds familiar with our presence and the likely prospect of cookie handouts; we're their friends and they're our friends. One of our particularly lovable friends has been fitted with a muzzle. It's horribly upsetting to see him like that, and even more so when he's expecting his usual treat and we cannot accommodate him. His human tells us that it's an effort to keep him from relishing rotting old dog feces. 

 

We're familiar with that problem and once considered putting those horrible muzzles on our pups, but vetoed it as cruel and unusual punishment. Instead we have to keep an eagle out for them and continue admonishing them in a sharp 'no'. They're perfectly aware that this is forbidden and it's not hard to see them guiltily slinking away led by their noses, so we can't always intervene successfully. It's a bit of a stalemate.

 

In three days' time calendar spring will officially arrive. Hard to believe on the evidence of the snowpack. As hard and firm and deeply established as it is in the ravine, it isn't much different out on the street where piles of snow loom large on lawns. There is at least three to four feet of snow packed down over the gardens. Under the weight of all that snow lie perennials anxious to see the light and feel the warmth of spring.