After yesterday's sun, today is another grim gray day, 16 degrees Farenheit, with a pearlescent sky above the bare trees. This little blackbird paper knife, sent me by my friend Zina in her Christmas card this year, makes a chilly silhouette in the window.
The husband is going off to Washington in the small hours of tomorrow morning with the college students for the annual March for Life. He's staying over tonight and whatever is left of Friday night, by the time they return, at the monastery. So I'll be quietly on my own --- well, Dora and I will be quietly on our own --- for about 36 hours, during which I plan to binge-watch at least one more season of Vera.
We went out last night and had a nice little dinner with much conversation in the bar of my favorite restaurant on the courthouse square, well out of the draft of the front doors. My pet peeve about restaurants generally is that in summer they're over-air-conditioned, so you're freezing, and in winter the door opens and closes continually, letting in the cold air, so you're freezing. The solution so often is to sit in the bar, because it's at the back and away from those fatal doors.
Our pipes seem not to have frozen overnight, though I'm not sure what faucets, if any, we left dripping when we went to bed. Fairly sure the washing machine is still frozen up, though. It's in the enclosed end of our back porch, where there's no heat, and we haven't been bothering to put a space heater in there, so I guess I won't do any laundry today. Not that I really need to. Sheets are clean, dry, and put away for bed-changing on Saturday, and small personal laundry gets hand-washed as it comes off our bodies and hung to dry on the rack, so we're all good here. I moved the drying rack into the study, in front of the gas fire, so that things can dry even faster, since I have that fire on a lot at the moment anyway.
I need to go out today to buy some more dishwasher detergent, so I might pick up a couple more 2-packs of little pyrex food-storage dishes while I'm at it. I bought two packs of these --- four dishes total, with their snap-on lids --- the other day, and gosh, are they great. They're nothing special, just "Better Homes and Gardens" items from Walmart, but they're glass instead of plastic, they snap tightly shut, they stack neatly in the fridge, they hold about 2.5 cups of food which is about right for leftovers, and they're just generally handy. It's easy to see what's in them, and easy to pack the husband's school lunch. I want to have some extras for days when he forgets to bring his lunch things back home, but really I just find them good to have on hand.
Going out this morning to have coffee with a friend --- I'll walk the dog first, then put her away with her breakfast and walk up to the coffee shop on the square.
Wearing on this quite frigid day:
*Wool& Willow dress (M/Long) in Ocean Teal, bought October 2023, last worn January 6. Wears in 2025: 2
*Devold base-layer tee, bought last summer in Norway, crew neckline cut out by me. First year of wear.
*Secondhand Pure teal cashmere cardigan, bought spring 2023, first year of wear.
*Secondhand Allbirds tencel-merino leggings, bought January 2024, entering a second year of wear.
*Devold wool socks, bought summer 2023 in Norway, second year of wear.
*Secondhand Birkenstock Melrose boots in Graphite, bought summer 2023, second season of wear.
Repeating elements of outfits from earlier this week, because why not? I like this teal tee with this teal dress, and I like the cardigan with them both, for a layered tonal effect. I like that these boots have room for my thickest, warmest wool socks. I honestly don't love these leggings with the rest of it, but they're on and have taken on body heat, so I'm not taking them off again. I do like the contrast with my dark boots.
Hair all straight and thin in the cold, but it's still clean from yesterday, so I'm not putting it up yet.
And now to brush my teeth and walk the dog.
AFTERNOON UPDATE:
Just uploaded my last essay for next week, so am taking a break. Man, I don't feel like doing anything productive. I've walked the dog and had a nice coffee with my friend, also walking to and from the coffee shop in the cold, and now I just want to sit here inside and be a vegetable. Maybe I'll be a vegetable who reads Act IV Scene 2 of Richard III, or a chapter of Catherine of Siena, or more of The Soul is a Stranger in This World, my friend Micah Mattix's book of essays on poetry, which I began reading around in yesterday.
What I have been doing is reading silly articles about various trends for 2025 --- clothing, kitchen cabinet colors, etc. They're silly chiefly in that they have no real bearing on anything I might choose to do, but I find them entertaining anyway. I have been gratified to learn, for example that green is in for kitchens this year, which completely validates my not replacing the 1997-vintage laminate counters and backsplashes in my kitchen all these years. Next year I'm sure it'll all be out again, but I'm glad I didn't have the funds or the wherewithal to put in subway tile when I might have succumbed to that temptation. Not that laminate is ever really in, because it's way too cheap and practical, but for this brief shining moment when green kitchens are in the spotlight, I can rejoice in having a kitchen with undeniable overtones of green.
Suddenly leggings are back, too. Not that they really ever went away, but out of nowhere it's actually okay to wear them again, like with boots and a long sweater, exactly as if it were . . . whatever year it was when people last wore leggings with boots and long sweaters. Like 2009, maybe? Anyway, that's where we are. I'm not especially a member of the leggings-as-trousers club, but I wouldn't not wear them with a long top --- a big button shirt, an oversized sweater, etc. And I have boots. I could be chic. It could happen. The leggings in my closet could become . . . actual outfits, and I would look so on trend that people would be blinded by my dazzling trendiness . . .
Or I could get a grip. Anyway, yeah, I have leggings, and possibly I will plan some leggings outfits that don't involve a dress on top. Living on the edge, that's me.
EVENING UPDATE:
Read several scenes of RIII Act IV. Read some of Micah Mattix's essay on Milton in the book noted above. Played ball in the house with Dora. Did some dishes.
Making
these garlic baked oysters for supper, because I still have a lot of canned oysters on hand. Oysters are a food I like that the husband emphatically does not, so now seemed like a good time. Oysters are a good protein and iron source, and I should really remember to eat them more often when it's just me --- for lunch anytime, for dinner when the husband is away.
Tweaks to the recipe as written:
*I didn't have panko bread crumbs, so I roughly crumbled a slice of sourdough for the topping. It's more like croutons than a panko crust, but that sounded good to me. I just topped my little baking dish (actually one of my new 2.3-cup pyrex storage dishes) with these chunks of bread once I'd spread in the oyster filling, then drizzled olive oil over and sprinkled with parmesan.
*I added some Neufchatel cream cheese for a little less-caloric creaminess in the filling. The oyster pie/scalloped oysters I make for Christmas have heavy cream, and that's delicious, but I don't think I need that much heaviness all the time (the leftover chicken I ate for lunch was in a sauce with a couple of tablespoons of cream, and that feels like enough for one day).
These little pyrex dishes make perfect 1-person bakers. This isn't a meal I necessarily want to eat for days, so I decided that I'd limit myself to however many oysters (1 8-oz. can) would fit with room for the rest of the recipe. It'll be a generous serving, but not overmuch --- I don't think. If I get full, I can just put the lid on the baking dish and have the rest for Friday lunch.
I'll make some kind of vegetable side --- maybe air-fry some frozen diced sweet potatoes with salt. That might actually be really good with this dish. I can just eat the baked oysters right out of the baking dish, with a little bowl for the sweet potatoes, which will give me minimal cleanup.
I don't think there's any way to make this dish vegetarian. You could of course bake chickpeas with the same preparation: Cajun spices, garlic, bread crumbs/croutons mixed with parmesan and drizzled with olive oil for topping, a little cream cheese if you so desire. That would actually be quite good, but it would not be this dish. Which, if you're vegetarian, you probably won't mind. I was thinking tofu, but chickpeas seem like the best thing to use in a preparation like this. Totally not a substitute for oysters, but good in their own right.
I am trying to eat more seafood, and not just on Fridays. In fact, lately we've been leaning toward beans on Friday, with salmon and other fish during the week. Just depends. One of my great triumphs is that I have converted the husband to fish-eating --- he never liked fish much, unless it was fried, and certainly not salmon. Now he will order salmon in a restaurant, even when it's not Friday. Last night he had ahi tuna, while I had beef short ribs, which is a total reversal of what we used to order in restaurants.
I do eat fish when out, too, with much delight, but last night I was in the mood for this particular restaurant's particular beef recipe. It comes in a nice big bowl with mashed potatoes and other root vegetables --- great comfort food for a cold night. We had a brown ale and then some red wine, and it was all lovely, just what I was in the mood for.
Anyway, here's my dinner all made.
Air-fried sweet-potato chunks look a little dingy, but they'll be fine. I'm going to eat my supper, watch an episode of Vera, and enjoy my quiet evening.
