The eggplant casserole we had last night was so good we'll be having it more often this winter. I like to play around with ingredients. It's not as though I haven't made such casseroles before that we've enjoyed, but this time the ingredients combination was just perfect. Irving liked it enough to eat it all, and that's unusual for him. I did the same. He surprised me even further by having his blueberries within a bed of yogurt. Yogurt au naturel, no less. I always find fresh blueberries sweet even though they do have a slightly sour tang. He tastes the sour and not the sweet, but somehow the combination hit the mark for him last night.

 

I'll keep on experimenting with other combinations, since it's so interesting and most often as rewarding as it's interesting, but I'll retain that combination in my mind. What we're having tonight is also a kind of meal-in-a-casserole, it's a dish I've made often before, and a common one. But this time, the ingredients for the Shepherd's Pie will include leftover roast beef sliced into small strips to go along with the ground beef in the filling. I cooked the potatoes for the mashed top with a garlic clove, added parsley and chopped green onion along with salt and pepper.

There's some frozen green peas in with the filling, but we'll still have steamed green beans on the side. We bought California persimmons yesterday during our shopping, so peeled and sliced, they'll make the perfect dessert to accompany the Shepherd's Pie. It didn't take me quite as long to put together today's dinner as it did yesterday's but that's fine, I have the time and the inclination for it all.

 

These are the kinds of comfort food we really need these cold days. Today in particular. Overnight snow began falling ... and falling ... and falling. It's been cold, well below freezing, but ground frost hasn't yet set in very deeply, so this snow will melt. We likely had altogether about 10 cm. It was wet snow, so shovelfuls of it are heavy. And that's what Irving was doing, before breakfast, shovelling the deck and the backyard walkways for Jackie and Jillie. They remember, and they enjoy wading through the snow.

They were ravenous for breakfast this morning; they need comfort food too in this weather. Snow stopped falling about two in the afternoon. It looks like another world now. Gone the dry, drab appearance of the outdoors. Covered by that first blanket of snow everything looks pristine and clean. Because the snow was wet it clings to trees and branches in clumps. The landscape looks beautiful, compensation for the cold, damp atmosphere.

 

We didn't bother hauling out our winter boots. That amount of snow is negligible to our experience. And nor did Jackie and Jillie need boots either, yet. They can withstand the cold up to around -6C after which they need boots, all the more so when there's snow down. Our hiking boots did just fine, they've got deep  treads. A bit of slipping on the snow and wet roots is inevitable, we just needed to exercise a little caution.

 

It is a feast for the eyes, however, to see everything covered with snow. It's like an enchanted fairyland. Even under a dense, grey cloud cover the snow crystals, wet though they were, managed to sparkle. The puppies were curious, though comfortable with the transition, it's familiar enough to them since they've been through eight of these winters. They quite enjoy the snow, although not to the extent that some dogs do, rolling in it, and lapping it up.

Tomorrow, Irving will haul out the heavy rubberized-bottom winter carpets we keep at our house entranceways. And it's where we'll begin leaving our winter boots as well. There's also boxes of toques and mittens, leggings and heavy socks to haul up from the basement. As well as the boot cleats that we'll be strapping on to the winter boots and relying on once the snow flies regularly and the ground has been thoroughly frost-permeated.