I've had a lot of company in the kitchen this week. Our youngest son takes quite an interest in matters culinary as he does with all kinds of endeavours. He has introduced me to some new ingredients and with them, somewhat exotic tastes. He's a fan of East Indian cooking. And his kitchen enterprise has inspired his father, as well. Irving decided he would return to baking bread again on occasion. So he hauled out his old breadmaking machine and busied himself making a whole-wheat bread and added lots of sunflower seeds. 

 

 

That divine fragrance soon flooded the house, overwhelming in fact, the mouth-watering smells of Jordan's baked treats that kept us busy eating after we had our dinner of a fresh vegetable salad, baked salmon and oven-baked potato chips. Jordan made one of his oatmeal crusts, slathered it with sour cream, added well-chopped onion, shallots and green onion, topped it with shredded fresh dill, and finally sprinkled globs of goat cheese over. It came out beautifully crisp and pungently delicious. We plan to try the ingredients on a pizza for tonight.

 

 

Jordan and I top off each evening before bed with a rollicking game of Pictionary. He's a far better cartoonist than I could ever hope to be. But you get caught up in the game, and do your best to depict a word or a phrase or an action, or a place with a drawing sufficiently accurate, albeit notional, to spur your adversary's imagination to identify what it must be. I laugh harder playing that game than anything else I can recall.

 

 

We did the grocery shopping as usual this morning. And even though Jordan was at home with Jackie and Jillie they still went into paroxysms of grief at our departure from the house. Compensating at the other end, when we arrived back home, with chest-high leaps and pirouettes informing us how glad they were that we decided to return at all. The donations for the Food Bank at the grocery store were brimming, hard to find place where to deposit additional items. A reflection of hard times for all too many people.

 

The early morning fog that has greeted us most of the week was no longer in evidence t his morning. It still felt damp, around 0C, but the big change was that it wasn't raining. We went off for our daily spin through the forest trails in mid-afternoon, three adults and two little dogs. Jordan hauls a backpack along, filled with books from our library, and it weighs a ton. He burns more energy that way, to keep warm. He's accustomed to striding along at more robust pace than we can manage, particularly on the uphills.

 

Our pace is much slower naturally than his. There's about 26 years between us in age, but at age 86 we are now a lot slower getting through the trails than we once were. Walking at our pace means the ambient cold penetrates his layers of winter gear. Our pace takes relatively little effort for him, and hauling along a 50-lb backpack generates more of an energy-expenditure to keep him warm.

 

Whatever snow now remains after the higher temperatures we've had accompanied by heavy rain, is now freezing back up again. In the last few days we were paddling through puddles of snowmelt. It is now frozen again, and will freeze even more tonight when the temperature drops to -4C, and finally snow is forecasted for tomorrow.

We didn't see too many other people out today. Yesterday brought out far more people and their dogs. We had also seen a young woman struggling up one of the hills as we descended, pulling along behind her  an oversized stroller with a baby fast asleep inside. The stroller was actually on gliders and they would have worked just fine if the snow hadn't been so inundated with rainwater to turn it to heavy slush. But she was cheerful and she managed and her canine companion was overjoyed to be out in the ravine.