We've enjoyed making pizza on Saturday night together for years. A kind of ritual between us. Enjoyable in the preparation, and anticipatory in the consumption of the pizzas that contain some basic toppings that we enjoy. We're big on tomatoes, mushrooms, bell pepper and mozzarella cheese with Parmesan sprinkled over. Sometimes adding pepperoni, or smoked mussels or anchovies. I always prepare the dough a day ahead, when I'm busy in the kitchen baking anyway. 

Just lately we started looking around for something else for a change for Saturday night treats. Not that we don't appreciate pizza; we were alternating between pizza and panzerotto. It occurred to us we haven't had tacos in quite a while. About as long as our younger son's absence, because it's one of the dishes he enjoys preparing when he visits with us. Those visits suspended from British Columbia to Ontario during this time of the coronavirus pandemic.

So we bought some floppy tortillas and black beans. And began making tacos for a change. Spreading tomato paste on the warmed tacos, then lightly fried garlic and onion and chopped bell pepper. A pile of black beans on each shell, then the garlic/onion/pepper followed by grated old cheddar cheese. Folded and baked until everything is hot and the cheese melted. With a small fresh vegetable salad and grapes for dessert, it makes a pleasant and satisfying meal.

Yesterday's all-day heavy rain kept us indoors for the day. The rain was so heavy at times even Jackie balked at going out to the backyard even when one of us accompanied him. During one of these forays I stood in the rain, and both puppies stood under the deck on the patio stones where it was nice and dry but they adamantly refused to do anything. They went from noon to five in the evening before they'd agree it was time to relax their full bladders.

Today dawned clear and cold. Really cold and windy, despite the full sun. As usual when it was my turn to accompany them outside I moseyed about the garden hopeful I'd see something exciting. As if. It's just much too early here. I did see that the corkscrew hazel is sporting its catkins, but not much else. Japanese spurge is green and crisp and a few other rock garden plants are coming back to life, but it'll be a while before things begin to fill in.

In the afternoon, after house-cleaning was done with we went out for our  hike through the ravine's trails. We knew that there would still be some remaining snow and ice. And we knew also that because of the icy temperature whatever remained of the snow and ice would be frozen solid and slippery. And we were right. Even with our cleats there were areas going downhill that were pretty dicey, so we took our time and wherever we could evade the ice, we did.

We saw none of the regular hikers, though we did see separately, one young woman gingerly treading the ice with running shoes and slipping now and again with whom we exchanged a few mutually sympathetic comments. And there was also a boy and a girl, a pair in their late teens. Both were wearing winter jackets, but his legs were bare and it just left us shaking our heads internally. They were going in the reverse direction to us, so that the area we had just descended, they began to ascend.

When we reached the top of yet another long hill and looked down, we could see they had abandoned the intention to mount the hill we'd come down from, and began to return in the direction they had originally come from. His silly choice of shorts on such a day remedied by the sensible decision not to challenge a slippery slope.

The municipality is already figuring that they'll be in the black this year for snow removal costs, light on the budget for 2020/21. That's because even though it's quite early in December there have been no heavy snowfalls yet save for two fairly modest snowstorms leaving about ten cm of snow on each occasion. And the short- and long-range forecasts courtesy of Environment Canada appears to signal a milder-than-normal winter in the offing. By the time most normal winters end, the municipal budget for snow removal has gone deep in the red; not this year, it seems.

As though to emphasize those conditions, we're in another day of constant rain. It's zip-out quickly to the backyard, then flip-around and zip right back in for Jackie and Jillie. It seems to me the only reasons they aren't characteristically balking at going out is that one of us goes out with them, they're going out because their bladders are ready to burst, and they know when they come back in they'll get a good towelling rub-down, which they both love.

The only comfort in this kind of weather where we're lucky if the rain stops giving us the opportunity to break loose, or lightens up briefly to enable us to get out to the ravine for a muddy trek through the forest trails is the food we're now eating with meals geared toward comfort. We found that comfort in a fresh vegetable salad yesterday, and then the main course of a baked salmon side served alongside oven-fried potato chips. Oh, and a still-warm pear compote, fragrant with cloves.

I had to break the news to Jackie and Jillie that we won't be getting out this afternoon for our usual circuit through the forest. They weren't exactly glum, they demand their due of a little wrestling and belly rubs from us before settling back down again to snooze the afternoon away. They had followed me upstairs as they usually do, when I change from my 'work' clothes into day-wear, to sniff my clothing and trail expectantly after me.

I trailed them to try to get them to pose for a photograph, but they never turn out too well, unfortunately. The lighting in our bedroom isn't geared to producing good photographs for one thing, and they aren't given to posing, for another. Any time I think 'gotcha!', it's too late, they've moved on. But while I was there, in our bedroom my eyes are always captured by memory-holding objects, like paintings my husband did many years ago, one with our son up in Gatineau accompanying us on a hike, another of a fall pond landscape.

I even snapped a photo of me, as a memento of the way I look at 83, a few weeks before my 84th birthday. I do a lot of wincing, looking at myself in the mirror now. Best not to. But there are mirrors everywhere and we humans have a tendency to view ourselves, usually to see that everything is in order. Everything, increasingly, takes on a grim tone, in fact. It happens gradually, but you still find it difficult to remember how you once appeared, and are amazed to discover how you look now is an amazing resemblance to your mother. 

I had baked a gingerbread cake today for something different. My husband had recalled gingerbread cakes baked when our children were young, and just happened to mention that it might be nice to revisit that as an after-dinner treat. I asked him to save a cup of his morning coffee rather than spill out the leftover, and I used it in the cake batter, along with sour cream, an egg, and molasses, cinnamon, ginger and cloves. I hate to use baking soda, much preferring baking powder, but its levitation powers are superior with this kind of combination so baking soda it was.

And though my husband preferred not to have any frosting on the cake, I've got a sweet tooth and made a frosting with cream cheese, butter, icing sugar and vanilla. If it turns out to be too sweet for my husband's liking -- though I held back on the icing sugar -- it's easy enough to scrape off the top of the cake. Actually, it was a shame to cover the cake top, since it had such an attractive pattern. I had used an old cake pan with a fluted pattern that I've had for many, many years, just for that pattern. 

While I was busy in the kitchen, my husband was busy in his workshop, starting his new project consisting of two new stained glass windows to be inserted into a pair of shutters he made in preparation for the project. The preparation stage seems to take forever. It must be at least a month that's required just to produce the cartoon drawing he visualizes for the windows -- and that's after he's built and installed the shutters themselves to await inserting of the windows. It's a project that will likely take him through the winter.