Frozen pouches of fruit contain roughly three to four cups of various types of mostly berries. Some of the pouches contain a berry mixture, others focus on just one type of berries. Those I buy most frequently are blueberries, and they're usually wild blueberries. When they're on sale, and they often are, I buy several of the pouches, and then use them when the thought strikes that a blueberry pie would be nice for dinner-dessert.

As I did yesterday. When I extracted the pouch from the refrigerator-freezer section it was like a solid block of ice. I let it sit on the kitchen counter for several hours. Still a brick of ice. So I poured a half-cup of granulated sugar into a cooking pot, added two heaping tablespoons of cornstarch, a quarter cup of cranberry juice, mixed them together to a slurry, dropped the contents of the pouch over the mixture, set the pot on a low simmer, covered it, and went about other business.

Eventually, the block began to melt, and some time later did so entirely, releasing its contents to begin cooking, as was my intention. I raised the heat, stirred the pot contents until it all thickened and transformed into a semi-translucent glaze, a thick and fragrant (and colourful) mixture ready to be used as the filling for a blueberry pie. As it cooled I added a tablespoon of butter and refrained from using almond essence, because my husband asked me to.

I used one and a half cups of all-purpose flour, 1/2 tsp.salt, two-third of a cup Crisco shortening and chopped it into pea-size pieces with a pastry blender, then in went 2 tbsp. lemon juice and about 2 tablespoons of very cold water sprinkled over, and I kneaded it, to prepare the pastry dough. Divided the resulting ball in half, rolled out the bottom crust and placed it into the two-decade-old pottery pie dish our younger son had made for me, spread the filling evenly, rolled out the top crust and used a pastry-wheel to cut strips for a lattice-top pie, then inserted the pie to bake in my little counter-top convection oven at 350F for about 40 minutes.

I also prepared a bread dough and refrigerated it for use later in the week. It's handy to have around in case we want to have a pizza for dinner, or for those times when I've prepared a hearty soup and decide to bake croissants to accompany the soup -- usually cheesy croissants. Then I put a chicken soup on to cook, and finally, after a little light vacuuming, bathroom cleaning and bed-making, I was free to join my husband and our two little dogs for a ravine walk in mid-afternoon.

The panic of Christmas shopping added to the change of weather that brought us sub-zero temperatures once again, albeit under a clear blue sky, has kept us from seeing others walking along the forest trails in the ravine of late. Yesterday was also 'Black Friday', as absurd a shopping phenomenon as any I've ever heard of, so that too convinced people there were things other than hiking along in a forest that better appealed to them.

Just as well. We're trying to keep Jackie calm, not to run wildly about in the forest, so he can properly heal from his injury. Not that he doesn't, from time to time, respond to the presence of squirrels in the forest interior, and then come limping back, needing to be carried. And since on occasion we've found that we did have to carry him for the remainder of the hike, we  haven't been extending our walking circuit as far as we normally do. Having him on leash for the duration of our walks is possible, and it certainly hampers his sudden bursts of frenetic energy in a chase, but it doesn't take much for my resolve to keep him on leash to evaporate when he signals unease at the restraint.

So we release him and he joyfully goes about his usual behaviour, following his sister Jillie for the most part, and sometimes taking on the role of navigator-explorer-extraordinaire reflecting his excitement and happiness at being out in the woods. While we keep hoping that each of the walks will take place without the lure of a swift response carrying him into the forest, enhancing the opportunity for re-injury. Which admittedly results in a brief inconvenience until he shortly recovers, but we'd prefer to avoid these incidents when possible. The best solution, needless to say, is resorting to the leash. Damn!