Weekend Walks: 27 Pictures (or A Pig, a Snowman, a Shadow, Some Hearts. . . .)

That pig just spoke to me.  :)  Fourteen miles walked this weekend and so much beauty seen.  Sunsets this time of year are glorious.  Flowers are crisp and snow-capped and bent in the most striking postures.  Tree branches are black silhouettes against sun and sky.  Snow sparkles and icicles glow warm in the cold sunsets.  If fall walks are my favorites, winter walks are a close second.  While I was taking a picture outside  a local school Friday afternoon, a man sarcastically yelled across the street to me, "Nice weather for that, huh?!" and I called back, "It is, though!  It's so pretty!"  I couldn't help but laugh when he responded, "Yeah, if you're a polar bear!"  I like coming home to the warm apartment, yes, but truly, it is nice weather for this:  Walking with my camera forces me to focus on looking for the good and the beautiful, taking the time to look at--to really see--the good and beautiful, and saying thank You for the good and beautiful.  Anyone can see the beauty in spring or summer or autumn leaves, but to be able to enjoy the brilliance of winter is almost a skill that needs to be learned and relearned for most of us.  Walking in winter when--let's face it--I'd rather be curled up in a chair with a book stretches me in all senses of the word.  Ohh, this is just good for me, body and soul. 

The art on a local shop's side made me smile.  I'd walked past this flock of birds so many times before, but this weekend, against all the snow, it was such an appreciated burst of color.

This card was in a stationery store window.  I'll be going back to buy this one for my parents, who are suffering extreme cabin fever already this winter. 

Hearts appeared in the snow throughout the weekend.

The snowman below, with his eyes at his feet, made me laugh.  

The takeout bag below made me smile too, and its yellow face was a fun burst of color against the snow and pavement.  My personal walker-code dictates that if I take a picture of litter, I throw out the litter too, though, so this smiling face is now in a trash can. 

It was dark by the time I turned around and headed home this evening, and the streetlamps cast such a pretty light onto the sidewalks, as warm and soft as candle-glow. 

Enough light for even a somewhat murky shadow-picture, and I was soon setting my shoes onto newspaper to dry back inside the apartment.  Chili for supper and a night off-work tonight.  "Downton Abbey" tonight too, and a new book to begin.  And another walk tomorrow.  All kinds of winter bliss. 

♥

Return of the Three-Eye Pie

Until last night, it had been twenty years since I first made a cranberry-apple pie, and if Mom and Aunt Laurie could be beside you as you read this, they would fall over themselves laughing as they explained why.  Their memories of my first attempt have grown more exaggerated with each retelling, and now, my poor 1996 effort is simply referred to as "Val's Three-Eye Pie." 

I had saved this recipe from a Good Housekeeping magazine and told Mom I wanted to try it while Aunt Laurie was visiting that fall.  I'd been baking alone since I was ten--and I was nineteen at the time--but this pie foiled me.  And I didn't make the beautiful leaf-crust pictured below.  (How gorgeous is this!) 

For me, it was the pie filling that went awry.  The pie filling!  In the words of Paul Simon, "there were incidents and accidents."  And for someone who hadn't yet made many pies, I learned the hard way how not to make this particular one.  The recipe now strikes me as straightforward, and surely, if I had actually followed it, the pie would have turned out.  It called for the juice of "1 large lemon," but I (apparently hadn't bought or asked for the groceries I needed to make this pie?!  Ah, nineteen-year-old Val!) didn't have any lemons so decided I would instead throw in some lemon extract from the back of Mom's baking cupboard.  When I use the word "throw" to describe how I "measured" the lemon extract. . .yessssssss.  Not knowing anything about the extract-to-real-thing ratio/conversion, I must have used the whole bottle.  And I have still never in my life seen Mom use lemon extract for anything, so who knows where the extract had even come from, let alone how very old it was.  Only two teaspoons of vanilla extract are mentioned in the recipe, and that I had on-hand, but I am now-infamous for assuming that if a little vanilla-flavor is good, a lot must be great!  (That logic became part of my defense soon enough.)  Who knows how much of that went into this pie, as well, then.  Raisins, I see are in the recipe too, but I highly doubt I used any, since I've never liked them.  The pie that went into the oven that afternoon was mostly apples, cranberries, and a huge amount of alcohol-filled extracts.  Alcohol bakes-off, it is said, but when probably a bottle and a half of two different flavors are in one pie and that pie is likely already missing one of its called-for fruits, the baker must be prepared for whatever reaction comes. 

And reaction was swift, but the stories have been exaggerated, I tell you!  Mom still likes to imitate how my cousin Amy mysteriously began hiccuping after soldiering through her slice of the finished pie.  She always includes the part about how "poor Amy" soon thereafter bid us all an early goodnight and elaborated that she didn't feel so good.  Aunt Laurie's favorite part of the Three-Eye Pie story--besides the fact that "Three-Eye Pie" immediately became the name for her niece's dessert--is how Uncle Warren's eyebrows instantly shot way up onto the top of his forehead upon tasting his first bite.  On and on the stories go.  We all laughed so much during that visit over that pie.  ("Of course we did," Mom would point out if she were reading over your shoulder right now.  "Val's pie got us all drunk.")  In 2011, a full fifteen years after I had made the pie, Mom included the note and drawing below in a recipe book she gave me for Christmas.  She has drawn that three-eyed girl a few other times over the years too, I should add.  Oh, the hilarity.  :) 

And just last month when I unwrapped my Christmas presents from Aunt Laurie, I oohed and ahhed over a tiny green bag inside which my name was peeking out on a slip of paper.  I tugged out a box of bottled vanilla, momentarily--and naively--thinking she had simply sent me vanilla as a baking supply, since she tends to give me muffin papers, pot holders, and other baking-related gifts at Christmas, but then I read the note that accompanied it.  And notice the three-eyed snowman underneath!  Comediennes, these two.  :) 

I've baked enough now to have a better idea of what I can and can't substitute and how much of what I can add or take away from a pie, and last night's was just fine, thank you, and I even added snowflake-shaped pie crust pieces to the edge and to the streusel topping, so there.  ;)  There is no point telling my mom or aunt, though.  The Three-Eye Pie story has become one of their favorite family classics, and they're still just having waaaaay too much with it. 

Wednesday's Walk

What began as a walk in flurries today ended in a slippery trek home in actual snow, and I'd have worn shoes with better traction had I expected it.  But oh! The woods were so blissfully silent and still in the snow, with only a woman crunching her way over half-frozen leaves as she ran past when I first started out and a man walking with his dog at another point.  We exchanged hellos and continued on, and the dog didn't even bark:  An unspoken understanding between us all, I always think when I encounter other solitary walkers and runners, of the value of this peace and quiet. 

From A Winter Past

I found this sweet shot of Stuffed with other saved photos and can't imagine why I didn't share it before.  It is from February 2012.  He looks like a kitten here but was around thirteen years old at the time.  Could he be any more adorable!?!  I can't imagine how he could have been any cuter when he actually was a kitten.  ♥  (He was a few years old already when Mike saw him for the first time, and he was around eight when I met him.)

Ohhh, my heart, he's the dearest, sweetest thing. 

'Love, love, love this little puffball.  The perfectly-curled tufts of white fur that stick out of his ears!  The half-black/half-white face!  He's perfectly designed, a work-of-art of an animal. 

The alternating black-white-black-white of his body!  And that he holds himself like this while he sleeps!  ♥ 

Truly like a favorite stuffed animal come-to-life, he's just such a precious little soul.  (And the pink toes. . . !  Gah!)  Sweet Stuffed.  ♥

Today's Walk

I have been breaking in a pair of new shoes today, with five-and-a-half miles walked and a couple blocks run.  After a completely unimpressive pair of Nikes about six years ago, I gave them another chance and treated myself to their "Air Zoom Pegasus" shoes today.  And woo hoo!  These are some of the most comfortable shoes I've ever worn.  I love them.  LOVE them.  After a morning walk in pouring rain, this afternoon's was only dry and brisk, evidence of this past weeks' snowfall all but gone, the sky a cliché January blah above me, and the pink of my shoes the only color on the road below me.  I found not the usual heart, but instead a smile, during my brief trial run too, brightening the day a bit more. 

If You're Ever Sad, Just Remember. . . .

A New York Times commenter by the name of Méz responded Monday to the news of David Bowie's death by eloquently advising, "If you're ever sad, just remember the world is 4.543 billion years old and you somehow managed to exist at the same time as David Bowie or Springsteen or Paul Simon, Mick Jagger. . . ."  Oh, yes.  We would each personalize our own lists, of course, but theses thoughts--and that they were shared in response to an artist's passing--touched me and likely resonate with all of us who have loved so deeply.  

Balsamic Roasted Carrots

Tonight I tried this recipe from Kim over at "Cravings of a Lunatic."  Oh!  So good!  So good!  The sweetness of the carrots with the tartness of the vinegar. . .  .I roasted these for about an hour, and they were perfection.  I've never really liked the taste of cooked carrots, but I eat them anyway, but these--these!--roasted--are truly good.  Thank you, Kim.  :)

Nut Roll

'Not the most appetizing picture, I'm thinking, but since I didn't think to take one after the nut roll was baked, this is the only shot I have of it.  Mom loves nut rolls but hadn't had one in a few years since going gluten-free in 2011 for various health issues, so I decided I'd bake her a gluten-free one and "Priority Mail" it to her for her birthday this week.  It reached her about twenty-two hours after I'd taken it out of the oven, which was the best I could have hoped for, and she loved it, but may I just say what a messy process this was!  I used this recipe but with a different gluten-free flour mixture, and while it did taste quite good, it seemed like surely, this was twice the amount of filling needed?!  I was smart enough, at least, to have decided from the start the other day to divide the dough and filling into three nut rolls, considering the first my trial one and whichever was the best of the other two the one I'd send Mom.  'So glad I did it that way--three cheers for thinking ahead, yes--because the filling I added to the first roll seeped through the dough and stuck to the baking pan I used.  The nut roll I ended up mailing with Mom's other birthday gifts was not messy-looking, but even though I'd spread a little less filling into that one and tried to wrap it more tightly than the first, and even though I'd rolled the dough between sheets of parchment paper too, the dough remained so sticky (as gluten-free dough always seems to be), it just didn't roll up into the beautiful log I'd envisioned.  (And by the time I baked the third roll, I hardly cared, since Mike doesn't eat many sweets and still had Christmas morning cinnamon rolls here anyway and I'm not a fanatic about these the way Mom is.)  Mom loved it, regardless, and was tickled with the tea pot address labels and stickers I'd included with it, as well, so all's well that ends well, and happy birthday, Mom.  :)  Of course, a few days after I'd made and mailed it, I found a magazine article that suggested using ready-made gluten-free pie crust and the same walnut filling to make gluten-free rugelach, which tastes--to me, at least--just like this nut roll did anyway, and yesssss, that will likely be the way I do this next time.  Given the large amount of dough that this recipe makes and the cost of the gluten-free flour mixture, and since it's a just-at-Christmas treat for (really) just one person anyway, going the easier route may be the way to do it next time.

For My Ballet Teacher

Winging its way across the state in today's mail are a letter and photos for my former ballet teacher.  One contact led to another a few months ago, and I finally learned the last name of the beautiful lady who taught ballet in my elementary school cafeteria thirty-four years ago.  Now that the kind and lovely Karen of my kindergarten memories had a last name and then an address, I was able to put words to paper finally and thank her for this sweet part of my childhood.  After school however-many days a week in 1982, my classmates and I would meet in the school cafeteria in our most basic workout clothes and ballet shoes and dance in a circle around ever-smiling Karen.  She is one of a number of people who graced my life as a child who was just undeniably Meant to Work with Children.  She was just so good with us--and you can see it in her face in these pictures. 

I still remember the basic ballet positions, although the classes now seem to have been at least as much a time for us all to run around the circle giggling and performing Disney soundtrack-accompanied "Mousercize" as they were an opportunity to learn to dance.  We thought we were all prima ballerinas, though, I'm sure, especially after all the lessons in long-sleeve t-shirts and sweatpants culminated that winter in our donning pink and silver satin sequinned leotards and tutus for our holiday performance at the high school.  My ballet shoes got lost in the shuffle at some point, but I still have my leotard and tutu--and they smell and feel exactly as they did when I first received them, I noticed while sorting some things at my parents' house this past fall.  There is nothing about me that will have made me memorable to Karen--she owned a dance studio in addition to offering these introductory classes in the schools, so I am just one of the hundreds of people who have enjoyed her teaching and sweetness over the years--but she and the joy of her after-school lessons have been fondly remembered by me --and by my mom, who also thought my instructor was fantastic ("Just to be able to coral all you girls, let alone teach you to dance. . . !")--all this time, so Karen will soon be receiving a thank you card and these pictures.  And I hope they find her well. 

♥