Snow

Oh, I am so hoping for snow. I went out this afternoon and did some last minute planting and watering and picking up of trash -- a drop in the bucket compared to what needs to be done, but still a better than nothing. I also set 4 more gopher traps in places where I see new digging. I also filled in their tunnels where I couldn't figure out how to set the traps in them.
DH and I finished most of the funeral arrangements other than travel this afternoon. We both feel better. It was nice to go out and get my hands dirty.

We're thinking of you and D.H. I'm glad you got outdoors. Snow would be great! As usual, it looks iffy for Santa Fe. Not sure about Los Alamos. It might be hitting the southern part of the state more.

It felt good to work perhaps for the last time this year in the garden. I am hoping for snow as well. Probability is 80% for Los Alamos tonight. I hate it when they make such a strong prediction because then I get my hopes up. Chance for tomorrow is 60%. All my newly planted plants need some moisture to settle them in.

Suffering through the drizzle in Seattle. Lots of clouds. You I hope get the snow. I too love it. Best of luck!

We got snow yesterday! Which was perfect as it was one of my birthday wishes! Hooray! Also got a job, my BIG birthday wish!

Congratulations, Brenda! On the job and the snow. So happy for you.

Thank you! ^_^

Way to go Brenda! I hope the job isn't shoveling snow. LOL

Yes, congratulations, Brenda! What is your new job? Drizzling and misting rain and very little snow here,continuous from last night. Great! We are making turkey mole!

Hooray Brenda! I hope they treat you well.
Roybird, I'm making cookies. But mole is beyond me. When will it be done?
[Picante starting to search flights to Santa Fe]

I'd love for you to come because our dinner guests cancelled out. Their son got sick. So, we will have plenty! I already promised some to my tai chi teacher , tho! D.H. is out scouting for some kind of chile we ran out of and dried ones are soaking. I forget which is which. There are mulatos, anchos and pasillos. This is Mole Poblano De Guajolote from The Cuisines of Mexico, Diana Kennedy. I was reading that scent makes food taste good as much or more than flavor! There is an article in The New Yorker about food flavoring of processed foods. Food flavoring is tied to real flavor much more than perfume is tied to real scent. Perfume gets quite abstract. If you ask me food flavoring gets pretty abstract, too. D.H. has arrived home triumphant with chiles and a new source for bulk dried chiles! ( Probably not organic. ) Fresh made corn tortillas; I'm eating one now.

The new job is bartending at a local bar, not glamorous, but very welcome. I know two of the owners and they are great guys.

Roybird, I'll bet your mole will be excellent!

Roybird, I have that cookbook! That's really amazing, since I don't have very many cookbooks. (30 dictionaries, 4 cookbooks) Problem is, I gave up trying to cook anything in there because I couldn't find the ingredients.

It's bound to be good. Anyone who would cancel for chicken mole oughta have their head examined.

Brenda, I hope you make mucho tips in addition to being treated well.

Brenda, bar tending can be a lot of fun and good tips! Picante, you have excellent taste. We have umpty jillion cookbooks and maybe 2 dictionaries. If you want to cook from Diana Kennedy we can probably send you ingredients. Just D-mail a list. I'm glad we won't be having a sick child over, to tell you the truth. His mother gets kind of defensive because I have rather undiplomatically mentioned that the child has a runny nose all winter, every winter. He does! He is nine and I love him dearly but the small private school he goes to is a hot bed of disease. One child gets something and it is soon passed to all.

I'm going to take you up on that, Roybird.

I thought all schools were breeding grounds for germly things.

Real mole is one of the most joyous things one can eat. I have that cookbook as well, but that is less surprising in my case, I have probably 1000 cookbooks and probably 100 dictionaries -- I like languages, too, Picante. I will look up that mole recipe. Can't serve all of them around here because lots of them contain peanuts to which DH is allergic. There used to be a very tasty mole available at Trader Joe's, but they discontinued it much to my distress. Haven't found one as good since. Besides I am not eating meat these days. Wonder how mole tofu would taste? Probably delicious. I could make chicken for DH and tofu for moi and put mole over each.
We are very lucky to have many good sources of chiles around here. Roybird, would you copy me on that dmail about your new source of dried chiles? I might get into mole making, myself.
They are right about the scent being at least as important as the flavor. Think of the fragrance of baking bread. It has the ability to relax the body and heighten the sense of security. And then there is the fragrance of coffee brewing -- and garlic and on and on.

The Diana Kennedy recipe takes Forever. Two of us, on and off, all day working on it. Finally all "put together" and will cook for 45 minutes. Quite an undertaking, but my favorite food! The new source of dried chiles is El Paison on Cerrillos Rd. D.H. loves it. So, you know it's gotta be cheap! (grin). Pajarito, did you get snow? Cold as all get out here. Need to get the wood stoves fired up. Seems kind of early, yet.

Yes, we got snow, but no more than Santa Fe. I think it mostly melted. We have been in and out of Santa Fe daily lately, so I had a chance to compare.
I don't think it is all that early. Remember, Taos ski area always had Thanksgiving skiing even before they started making snow. But it was not good skiing. My point being that snow does come around Thanksgiving pretty often, at least in my memory.
I think I have seen El Paison. It is a Mexican grocery if I am remembering the right place. I think I had better check it out.
It will be awhile before I make mole from scratch. DH and I are taking Spanish at night ( I am a ringer -- I just go for a chance to speak Spanish). We will be up to our ears with MIL's funeral in Texas and figuring out what to do with her houseful of stuff.
It is a little cold, but I fear it will get a lot colder soon. Already, Raja doesn't like to go outside. Ah, winter. We need all our defenses to get through it. Glad you have wood stoves to fire up. Do you have other heat as well? Bet the new roof will help you stay warm.
I wish the solar eclipse and chosen winter to happen so I could escape the mountains during the eclipse. Oh well, I am still grateful to be going to Tahiti at all. But why not in January?!?

PJ, I'm tempted to go in January and stay until June! But first I need to get a laptop so I can work. Hey, I'm glad I'm not the only dictionary junkie around here. Do you have a Spanish-French one? Which is your favorite?

Oh dear, how to choose a favorite? Sorry, I don't have a Spanish-French one, my dictionaries are mostly anglo-centric -- except El Dicionario de la Academia Real de Espana, a massive and beautifully bound tome. We have a decent but not impressive collection of English language dictionaires, plus 2 or 3 each of English to language x in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Turkish and Thai. I went upstairs and checked but I did not find Slovenian and/or Croation dictionaries, but I think those might be in our travel box. I know we have a dictionary of Japanese terms related to manners and several books on written Japanese which might be considered dictionaries, maybe more language instruction books.. We also have a dictionary of colloquial French, but it is probably 40 years old it is probably outdated by now. And then we have some specialty dictionaries, particularly in Spanish -- one is of Mexican improper language. (of course those of us who have studied linguistics know there is no such thing as bad language. There is only inappropriate for the situation language.).
And this doesn't include computer language books in C, C++, Fortran, Perl, C-Shell, Python and others.These are not properly dictionaries though because in computer languages, you don't learn much vocabulary, just how to say certain things to the computer in way it can understand. It is more like learning language in sentences, rather than by individual words.
As a high school teacher in predominantly Hispanic schools I learned a great deal of "bad" Spanish, but I didn't have any idea what some of it meant. DH's book on "inappropriate" Spanish: is the first chance I have had to learn what some of that language meant. I used to ask some of the male Hispanic teachers what word X might mean and they simply turned red and said, I can't tell you. The book tells me. DH and I laugh and laugh at some of the colorful language of Mexico which does spill over into New Mexico.
So who knows if we really have 100? But we do have a bunch.

Well, it sounds like a fabulous collection to me. You & I seem to be birds of a feather, pajarito.

It seems to be time for a multicultural joke:
Q: How do the English clear their palate?

A: They go to France.

Heaven is where:
The cops are English
The cooks are French
The scientists are German
The lovers are Italian
The organizers are Swiss

Hell is where:
The cops are German
The cooks are English
The scientists are French
The lovers are Swiss
The organizers are Italian

We used to have a dictionary of Northern New Mexico Spanish but can't seem to find it these days. It was very useful, too. In answer to your questions, Paj, yes, we also have two natural gas burning wall type heaters plus several electrical recirculating oil heaters that we use at night sometimes. Our new roof actually seems to make the house cooler because of the white color. They are supposedly the most energy efficient but I forget why. I didn't know the funeral would be in Texas, that makes it harder. Good luck with all that. El Paison is indeed a Mexican grocery store. (The mole was Superb!)

Congrats on the job bsavage. Right now I think it is very good just to be employed.

Mole is on my list of things to cook when I have more time to do such things. I did try buying some mole sauce and came to the conclusion that you can't buy it. At least I know an authentic Mexican restaurant that serves a delicious chicken mole.

Congrats on the new job Brenda!

Thank you, thank you, it is a blessing. I can't wait to start!

Yes, picante, I do think we are birds of a feather. Both DH and I love languages. DH wants to take every language class offered locally. In fact, he has only taken Spanish and is decent at it but doesn't think so. What is it about the way we teach languages in the US? I have had many college hours in languages but blunder through all of them. Spanish is my best, but I feel I need mas practica!

Curlaceous drifts through which I wade
to fill the feeder in the shade
and then there plops upon my head
a bank of snow from off the shed.
Do I shiver? Do I quake?
Notst because in my snowful wake
there be a flick of Chick and Dee
who left their roost to laugh at me.
'YOU CADS!' I cry and shake my fist,
'how dare you laugh when I am just
a snowbank made, all flakes and dust?'
But twitter they do and call my bluff
cuz I am joyful in the whitish stuff.
I wave them back to sheltered pine
and then I quickly stop, recline
and make a snow angel ^_^



This message was edited Dec 7, 2009 7:45 PM

Oh golly, that is so delightful, Dahlia!

Thanks everso dear picante. I call that a dahliaku.

I just stopped and sat upon the floor,
Only to read that verse once more,
That moment you so beautifully penned,
Shall at my home never come to an end,
as the "Night before Christmas"
My grand children shall wittness,
Grandpa outside with snowman so grand
His jacket, his smile, and snow ball in hand.

Eager seedlings watch as Grampa frowns,
turns and chucks, then gasps with sound
and drops; kersmashed by youngling throw
and buried now deep in the snow,
the seedlings stop and carefully near
"O Grampa did we kill you dear?"
A burst of drift, a grab so snug
the giggles then erupt in hugs.

Merry Christmas dear Sof to you and your seedlings ^_^

Lovely poetry all!
All this snow poetry is wonderful as the snow falls on us here tonight. I am not a big fan of winter but I love these luscious snow falls such as we are having right now!

Dahlia merry Christmas to you and yours. May we become blessed with the snow that you have up a wee bit north. Very little here since October.

Dahlianut and Soferdig,
what very lovely lines you sing.
Winter fairies and angels in snow...
you show the path where I must go.
Its funny because I just said
to Dear Husband who scratched his head
Our tasks tomorrow must include
snow angels, snowballs, hot cocoa, mmmm, good!

Can't believe you didn't get some of this dump Sof. Holy TX even Houston got some this go round!

We're in a snowhole. It's too cold to snow.

Snowball fights are the best dear Brenda. Kersmash him when he least spects it. Go ahead. Then run away really fast ^_^