Meat doesn't comprise a large proportion of our diet, and the meat we tend to have most often is chicken. But on Monday I decided to do a small sirloin tip roast for dinner for a change. It was good, nicely tender, but we ended up with too much leftovers. The kind of leftovers we can't share with the puppies. Red meat doesn't impact on Jillie, but Jackie is sensitive to it, and has an allergic reaction that can put him off eating altogether, he feels that ill afterward. 

 

I thought the leftovers would do well in a meat pie, so that's what I put together on Wednesday evening. Starting out with chopped onions and garlic cloves simmered in olive oil, adding sliced mushrooms, then flour and beef stock to make a thick gravy into which went rosemary and thyme, salt and pepper, paprika and then the beef, followed by frozen green peas. While the filling cooled off, I prepared the pastry crust, then baked the pie to a nice, crisp crust with a moist interior. 

 

The fragrance wafted through the kitchen, through the family room, and whetted the puppies' appetites, but though they thought the filling would make a nice treat, we knew differently. They had to make do with their own kibble, plus cooked chicken followed up by their appetite-voracious salad of cauliflower, bell pepper, cherry tomatoes. Their main meal to them is optional, the follow-up salad is a necessity.

When we went up to bed last night snow was falling. When the pups came into the house from their last foray to the backyard before sleep they looked like two little snowpups. When we came down for breakfast this morning, morning snow was just winding up. Leaving us with some snow down, but not much. We knew it wouldn't last on the ground beyond a few hours since the temperature had already nudged up past zero.

 

Later, when we entered the ravine for our afternoon hike through the trails, not much was left of that newfallen snow. The rise in temperature had also taken away much of the starter-snowpack and ice that have lingered all week in the forest. Where in the last few days the ground had felt solidly frosted, today it felt thawed out and the result of the snow plus the thawing left the clay underfoot fairly mucky.

With muck comes slippery conditions on the hillsides. A problem without adequate footgear, but we were still wearing cleats over our boots, which meant no problems negotiating the inclines. Although dusk always arrives earlier within the forest than it does outside its precincts, it never ceases to surprise us when it arrives and all too soon darkness begins to hug the landscape.