Sometimes I really have to wrack my menu-storage brain to come up with something different and interesting for dinner. Our extremely unexpected late-October icy weather is still continuing. We enjoyed quite hearty meals the last few evenings, and I wanted something a little lighter but still to be wedged into the comfort food category and I thought of latkes. The kind of meal that my husband always enjoys. In the same category as cheese blintzes. So, latkes it would be.

Easy to prepare, and that was certainly in its favour. All it takes is potatoes, onion, eggs, salt and flour. And olive oil to cook the potato pancakes in. I used three quite large potatoes, a large onion (we like onion to introduce itself with assertive gusto), salt, pepper, two large eggs, and a scant quarter-cup whole-wheat flour. I served a robust vegetable salad of lettuce, cucumber bell pepper, snap peas, carrots and tomatoes to preface the meal. Which my husband dutifully ate, (slipping a few choice bits of bell pepper to Jackie and Jillie under the table which I of course didn't 'notice', he thought, despite that they'd already had their own little salad after their meal).

When we'd come downstairs first thing this morning to take charge of the day, it was only to discover that the day had already taken charge of itself and us while it was at the process, informing us that we'd better get used to its new aggressive attitude. In this instance, a hard frost once again, with the remnants of a light snow that had fallen while we were still snoozing. Oh, and a dreary, black-cloud-ribboned sky. But it wasn't raining, either. And the forecast in the newspaper for today's weather said that 8C would be the high this afternoon, a bit of cheerful news after yesterday's high of 2C and high wind. The wind tamed its instinct for excess today.

So we were both busy after breakfast, me with some house cleaning, my husband finishing up the installation of one of his project upstairs and we were cheered to see that the house had brightened considerably because the sun came out for a brief visit. We invited it to stay around for a few hours but it demurred, obviously had a prior appointment elsewhere.

Off we headed to the ravine guided enthusiastically by Jackie and Jillie wearing their winter halters. I'd washed and put away their summer halters for the season, and ditto for their lighter sweaters. They were dressed today in Christmas colours which people always like to remark on. We'd bought those sweaters years ago for two reasons: 1) they are warm and woolly, and 2) they were on sale post-Christmas season. 

The fallen foliage covering the trails is now fully tramped and dark and slippery, an uneven pathway of disintegrating cellulose. On either side of which the forest floor remains steeped in still-faintly-colourful foliage fast turning crisp and degrading, but far more attractive than their trail-tromped counterparts. Last night's frost had temporarily frozen the wet mucky mess of clay-and-leaves, but rising temperatures (all the way to 8C! today) had melted those ice crystals and created a slippery slurry that warned, take care! when ascending hills. And so we did.

It's a tamed, forlorn-looking forest now. Sightlines in the absence of the foliage is greater and at the margins of the forest where the trails loop closer to its outer edge, the form of houses on streets surrounding the forest can be seen, dispelling the imaginary notion that we're in a wilderness area. We'll just have to put up with that for now. Just as well we leave that well behind for most of our circuit which takes place a distance from those streets and where the bush is wider and deeper.

Plenty of squirrels about, chasing one another, curious about our presence on occasion, and busily engaged in securing anything edible that can be stored against winter. Sometimes Jackie and Jillie stare at them with curiosity, occasionally they make as though to leap after one, but unlike in their puppy years barely make the effort. Birds that remain in the boreal forest throughout the winter months, like nuthatches and chickadees and woodpeckers, are seen and heard now and again.

As we trundle along, my husband and I, we discuss between ourselves impressions we take away from reading the morning newspapers. We subscribe to two, a local and a national newspaper. Sometimes our impressions and takeaways converge and sometimes they don't, and then a lively discussion can ensue, each of us expressing our individual opinions, the reasons for same, and rarely moving the other to agreement. It's a satisfying exercise in the art of the debate.