We're all different, all of us endowed with our very own idiosyncratic personalities and tastes, and nowhere are those tastes more quixotic than in the food department. Irving and I mostly enjoy the same foods; but for my emphasis on fresh vegetables and his tolerance for them. Yet he likes some vegetables that I can live without. Take, for example, his appreciation for spaghetti squash. I prefer acorn squash as an accompaniment to a main meal. Irving, on the other hand, thinks spaghetti squash makes for a great main course.

Which is fine, except for the fact that he likes his baked and finished with butter and brown sugar. For something different, that would please him, we bought a large spaghetti squash when we did the food shopping, and we had it for dinner yesterday. Mine was baked with tomato slices and herbs, and spaghettied with grated Parmesan. It would barely squeak past a thumbs-up for me.

Irving, on the other hand, relished his, the long fibres enmeshed with brown sugar and butter. For dinner. My only consolation was that he had a nice fresh vegetable salad beforehand and blueberries for dessert. On the other hand, when I asked what he would prefer for tonight, a beef stew or a ground-beef pie, he chose the pie. So that's what we're having. Lean ground beef stirred into olive oil, chopped jalapeno pepper, garlic and onion, gravied with beef broth, and stuffed between lower and upper pie crusts, along with green peas.

 

Not that it's terribly cold out and we need comfort food necessarily. But of necessity needing something aromatic and good-tasting after yesterday's !meh! dinner. We'll also have Frenched green beans and strawberries to finish off.

Before that, we were out in the ravine with Jackie and Jillie. And we and they kept coming across so many people out with their dogs, thanks to the mild weather, it took a bit longer than usual to do our circuit, for stopping and chatting. One woman we'd never seen before had two huge dogs, Bouvier des Flandres, and they were both intimidated by the barking fits that Jackie and Jillie indulge in. One of her dogs had been groomed, the other was resplendent in its long silky haircoat, an amazing contrast. 

 

This has been an extraordinarily mild day of 3C by afternoon, overcast and windless. All the snow that had fallen yesterday morning and plastered the trees heavily, is now on the forest floor. Wind and melt of the milder weather relieved the trees of their burden. The forest creek is running wider and deeper than usual thanks to the snowmelt of the past several days. 

 

While the snow cover is still fresh in appearance, as it begins seriously melting toward the end of March, it will begin to look truly unpleasant, but for now it's beautiful. And there is a lot of it. The season's usual accumulated snowpack has been met this year, and there's still plenty of time left for additional snowstorms. Around mid-April we can be fairly well assured we'll have seen the last of snow for this winter season.