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.