There's always some point during these cold winter months when the weather pattern trends briefly backward. But that time doesn't usually arrive for us until January, when the snowpack has accumulated to great depths and the anomalous warmer period of up to a week creates a thaw, diminishing the depth of the snowpack. In this instance, where we're still in November, not much of a snowpack has accumulated, and it's fast melting under the onslaught of several days of below-zero temperatures giving us freezing rain and rain rather than snow.

On the cusp of freezing, it still feels pretty cold, given wind and the dampness that comes with heavily overcast days like today. Jackie and Jillie are less likely to balk at going out to the backyard when it's snowing than they are with rain. So there's always their sentiments to contend with. This morning when they went out before breakfast we'd had a night of -3C, some freezing rain followed by rain, and the backyard was sopping, though still carrying snow.

I decided I'd bake light and airy cupcakes today, coconut cupcakes, one of our favourites. They're topped with raspberry jam and coconut so they're quite temptingly colourful on presentation.  The pairing of coconut and raspberry jam is irresistible, in any event, supported by its lovely fragrance. I love it when Irving passes through the kitchen, inhales the fragrances and aromas wafting through, expresses his anticipation and hugs me.

When we were both finished with our shared housework it was time to head out to the ravine. Although there's still snow and ice left on the forest floor, we can see the soil in places and it's clear that by the time this weekend will have passed, so too will the snow. But it's early days yet in this winter season and it'll all be quickly replaced. It's just that, in the interim, we're confronted with slick, slippery clay in some trail areas.

One of our hiking friends told us he'd been out earlier in the day for a first early hike, and although he was wearing cleats over his boots he had a devil of a time ascending and descending the hills, unable to get good grips because the transition between the overnight freeze and the milder incoming temperatures had created an ice rink in there. By the time we were on the trails they had become firmly slushy, and our grip on that surface was fine with our cleats. We even saw Jackie and Jillie slipping about on the hillsides. They make no complaints about anything.

When we arrived back home it was to the aroma of a chicken soup simmering on the stove. Last night we'd had salmon and oven-baked potato chips, along with a vegetable salad prefacing the main course. Dessert yesterday was pomegranate seeds scattered over a layer of plain  yoghurt, to more or less 'cleanse our palates'.

Tonight features the same-old, same-old (with some variations on the theme) chicken dinner for
Friday night. In the tradition of Jewish cuisine, a cultural playbook that is timeless whether  you're secular or a religious Jew, we tend to fall back on the familiar; what our mothers and their mothers before them prepared for their families on Friday evenings.