In a fond farewell to the last day of Chanukah -- the Jewish Festival of Lights commemorating the Maccabbe rebellion in 168 BCE, against a Seleucid occupation when a crucible of oil in the Jerusalem Temple of Solomon (Second Temple era) miraculously remained alight for an unexpected eight days, a happy time of year often coinciding in time with the Christmas holidays, we had potato latkes for dinner last night, a perennial favourite, though they're accessible at any time of year. With a fresh vegetable salad and green grapes for dessert they seemed just perfect for a satisfying meal.

This morning was our weekly grocery shopping day. Traffic was just about nonexistent. Many people likely took the entire holiday week between Christmas and New Year's off work. And likely that was a good thing, because driving was a little hazardous. It would have been more so, without the ice tires we have put on the vehicles every winter. As it was, there were some 'exciting' moments when the car slid on ice underlying the snowy surface, and we were thankful that traffic was so sparse.

At -7C, on a damp December morning it was cold, but not intolerably so. It would seem more like 'intolerable' when we were out later in the afternoon on the forest trails with Jackie and Jillie. Those are the same little pups who resorted to heartrending howls as they watched us struggle into warm winter coats before leaving the house to shop. 

When we arrived at the supermarket it was fairly empty, both the parking lot and the store interior. By the time we left an hour or so later both had filled up. We didn't have to wait long to cash out and that was a good thing. The community Food Bank cage was full to bursting with non-perishable foods that shoppers had deposited for others in the community. Long past time for it to be picked up.

We found a handful of items entirely missing, with bare yawning shelves where the products should be. No Crisco vegetable shortening at all. The large tubs I used to buy for making pastry dough are no longer available, only the bricks now, and they were nowhere in evidence, only lard, and that's something I won't use. There were no tins of tomato paste, none at all. I usually buy the house brand when I'm filling up a bag for the Food Bank; soups, beans, spaghetti, canned meats, and they're getting pretty hard to find now, replaced almost entirely with name brands.

Later in the day we went off to the ravine for our daily hike. We were really late entering the ravine yesterday. It took me so long to finish cleaning the house we weren't able to set out until five o'clock and by then dusk had long departed. The forest was so densely dark that my camera viewer showed a black screen, nothing at all to 'click' on, no landscape at all, just dark, dark, dark. Of course our vision is a little more perceptive than a camera's and we had ample light from the sky bouncing off the snow to enable us to manoeuvre the trails we're so familiar with.

Today, heavily overcast, at three in the afternoon dusk was already hovering. By the time we returned home an hour later it was dark. But while we were in the ravine for the most part, it was light, though not 'bright light'. Jackie and Jillie don't mind this cold atmosphere. As long as they're securely tucked into their warmest winter jackets and boots they do just fine. They skip happily about, look here and there, race ahead, bark at other dogs and though we remonstrate with them, their bad habits are deeply engrained.

 We noted when we were out last night an extraordinary amount of woody detritus on the trails. Directly after the worst of the weekend snowstorm we saw no such thing. But on Sunday and then on Monday we were surprised at all the fallen, broken twigs along with still-lively-green-needled pine boughs. The result of the weight of snow and ice that formed when it was raining, then flash-froze, along with the fierce wind gusts; as good a guess as any.