Mrs Bale's 7 pm report

Right now we have seventeen inches and it is still coming down! They've already called at least a two-hour school delay for tomorrow. Here are some more photos from today.

Crunchy Oatmeal Pie

Before baking


After baking


I got this recipe years ago from an online cooking list. It is fantastic! Today I added some chocolate chips on top in honor of St. Valentine's Day.

Crunchy Oatmeal Pie

3/4 cup rolled oats
1 cup flour
1/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup softened butter

Mix all together, and leave in a cold place for an hour. Press it out into a greased pie pan.

Place on top:

1 Tablespoon cornstarch
1 cup (or a 10 oz. package) frozen or fresh strawberries
2 Tablespoons sugar

Bake for 30 minutes in a 400º F. oven.

Days lyrics

Last month I chose this song as a "today's video" showing the Kinks singing it a long time ago, and Ray Davies singing it more recently. I thought I'd post the words for those who may never have heard or read them. Beautiful, and very,very moving. And as I wrote to a person who commented, it is meaningful for all kinds of love on this day devoted to love. Although the stores try to push the romantic angle, I like to think of St. Valentine's Day as a time for celebrating love between people in all kinds of relationships.

Days
Ray Davies

Thank you for the days,
Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me.
I'm thinking of the days,
I won't forget a single day, believe me.

I bless the light,
I bless the light that shines on you believe me.
And though you're gone,
You're with me every single day, believe me.

Days I'll remember all my life,
Days when you can't see wrong from right.
You took my life,
But then I knew that very soon you'd leave me,
But it's all right,
Now I'm not frightened of this world, believe me.

I wish today could be tomorrow,
The night is dark,
It just brings sorrow, let it wait.

Thank you for the days,
Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me.
I'm thinking of the days,
I won't forget a single day, believe me.

Days I'll remember all my life,
Days when you can't see wrong from right.
You took my life,
But then I knew that very soon you'd leave me,
But it's all right,
Now I'm not frightened of this world, believe me.
Days.

Thank you for the days,
Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me.
I'm thinking of the days,
I won't forget a single day, believe me.

I bless the light,
I bless the light that shines on you believe me.
And though you're gone,
You're with me every single day, believe me.
Days.

February TBR Challenge book review

My February book in the 2007 TBR Challenge is A Right To Die by Rex Stout. This is a 1964 entry in the great oeuvre of Nero Wolfe detective stories. The tales are told to the reader by his assistant, Archie Goodwin. I delight in these books, and view each one as another slice of life in the old brownstone on West 35th Street in NYC. I enjoy hearing the old familiar details, like how many steps up to that brownstone, how Wolfe hates to leave his home, all the descriptions of meals - he is a gourmand, Archie and his love of milk and pretty girls, Wolfe's mistrust of machines, Archie's walks all over the city, the books Wolfe is reading, and how reluctantly Wolfe accepts new cases. He does so only to support his two passions, food and orchids.

A few quotes:

Wolfe is convinced that when real trouble comes the first thing to do is eat.

...a guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality.

A client tells Archie he lied to the police, and Archie says, "If I had a dime for every lie I've told them I'd be on my yacht in the Caribbean."

My morning fog begins to let little streaks of light through as I sip my orange juice, and with my second cup of coffee, it's all clear.

There was a hint of feeling in his look and voice as he greeted me, as there always is when I return safe and sound from a trip in long-distance machines.

It doesn't really matter to me what the case is about. The joy comes in seeing how Wolfe, who describes himself as "merely a genius," solves it, and reading about how beautifully Wolfe and Archie work together. Archie brings many abilities to this partnership, not the least being his gift for recalling every word of a conversation. I like some books/cases better than others, but am never disappointed in the two men. Along with P.G. Wodehouse and John Mortimer, Rex Stout is one of my holy trinity of writers. I am happy each time I enter the worlds they have created. I gave this book an A-.

Mrs Bale reports on the white stuff 2/14/07

We are in the midst of the St. Valentine's Day blizzard of aught seven. We've gotten ten inches already, and there's no sign of it slowing down at all. The wind is now picking up. Mrs Bale will try and stop by later with a further report.

New books

I made a little deal with myself. As I was driving down Main St., I thought, if there is a parking place in front of the bookstore, I'll go in. Well, there was, and I ended up buying three new books!

Today's poem - The Last Uncle by Linda Pastan

The Last Uncle
by Linda Pastan

The last uncle is pushing off
in his funeral skiff (the usual
black limo) having locked
the doors behind him
on a whole generation.

And look, we are the elders now
with our torn scraps
of history, alone
on the mapless shore
of this raw, new century.

Mrs Bale reports 2/13/07

Very, very cold at 7:30 this morning, but bright and sunny. We're supposed to have a big storm starting in the wee hours of tomorrow morning. They're saying up to a foot of snow. We'll see. Sometimes those forecasts are completely wrong.

Quote du jour/Douglas MacArthur

I promise to keep on living as though I expected to live forever. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul.
Douglas MacArthur

Today's cd/Sacred/Today's video My Way

Los Lonely Boys/Sacred/2006

I love these guys! This is the second album.

Quote du jour/Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day - like writing a poem, or saying a prayer.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh


Some of the leaves in the February flowers began to wilt. When I removed them, the flowers no longer fit well in the pitcher so I made two bouquets from the one. There's a metaphor for life in this small activity. The flowers were lovely on Friday, but a change occurred which forced me to rearrange. The result is different from the original, but equally beautiful.

Piece o' cake

Ah, the power of suggestion! This morning I was reading some blogs, and came across Cornflower's photo of a piece of chocolate cake. Suddenly, I knew what I wanted to do today. I had been going in many different directions, not knowing which one to settle on. But once I saw that cake, baking was the order of the day.


Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Cream together well in an electric mixer:
1 cup very soft butter
3 cups sugar

Add 1/2 cup cocoa
Add 4 eggs
and mix well.

Add 3 cups grated zucchini (including the skin)
and continue mixing.

In a separate bowl mix:
3 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

Then add the above to the mixture at a lower speed.
Pour into greased 15 x 10 pan, and bake about an hour at 350 F.
Cool completely on a cooling rack.

Sour Cream Frosting

1/4 cup soft butter
1/3 cup sour cream
3/4 teaspoon vanilla
pinch of salt, if desired
2 1/2 cups confectioners sugar

Beat well, and frost.

Return of the dear deer

Around 8 o'clock this morning, the mother and two babies came walking out of the woods, down the hill.

February flowers

Quote du jour/P.G. Wodehouse

To continue with yesterday's telephone theme:

To ignore a ringing telephone is one of the few feats of which humanity has so far proved incapable.
P.G. Wodehouse, Hot Water

Things look different in black and white

I love the old black and white photos at Keep The Coffee Coming. There's a quality that just doesn't come through in color pictures. Same with old movies. Casablanca and Notorious wouldn't be the same in color.

All the black & whites on this entry were taken by my son over the years. He'll often choose b&w or sepia for photographs. I really must get brave and try more. So be on the lookout for a new look, at least once in a while. Not for flowers, though. :<)

You can't judge a book by its cover

I get a thrill when I see a book like this on the library shelf. I'm old enough to remember the days before beautiful book covers. Some books had covers but many, many looked just like this. I have enjoyed hours and hours of blissful reading holding a book that had nothing special on the outside.

Now, most books have wonderful, evocative covers. But they disappoint me over and over again. I've bought or borrowed way too many books that promised lovely writing, great stories, lasting treasures inside, but failed, and failed miserably to live up to that promise. The design people seem to be the stars of books, rather than the writers.

But still, once in a while, I am delighted to find that the words are equal to the cover.

Quote du jour/Anne Tyler

Some days were telephone days and other days were not. Did it work that way for everyone? Some days Rebecca's phone rang non-stop, one caller tumbling over the heels of another, and other days you wouldn't know she owned a phone.
Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups

Today's cds/ Tim and Jeff Buckley

Two albums, 25 years apart. This could have been something wondrous; a father and a son, both excellent artists, each album a tremendous musical achievement, but no. The whole story is just so sad, so tragic that if it were a piece of fiction a reader might think it was too improbable.

Their dates say so much:

Tim Buckley 1947-1975
Jeff Buckley 1966-1997

My husband and I loved Tim Buckley from the first time we heard him. What a voice! And the songs were so different, so very special. Our first apartment had a big poster of him up on the wall. He died of a heroin overdose.

http://www.answers.com/topic/tim-buckley

I was late coming to Jeff's music, but now that I know it, I love it. He drowned in the Mississippi River.

http://www.jeffbuckley.com/bio.asp

It says online he met his father just once, when he was eight years old. By the time Jeff was nine, Tim Buckley was dead

The Cookie Jar

You may talk about your vases,
Just how beautiful they are,
but to me there's nothing nicer,
than a well-filled cookie jar.
Elsie Duncan Yale





Chocolate Crackles

Makes about 3 1/2 dozen cookies.

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 t. baking powder
1/8 t. salt
10 T. (1 1/4 sticks) softened butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 t. vanilla extract
6 oz. bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled slightly (I use Ghiradelli)
Sifted confectioners' sugar, for coating

1. Preheat oven to 350º F. Lightly grease baking sheets.
2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.
3. In a large bowl (I used the KitchenAid mixer), beat the butter and granulated sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla.
Add the melted chocolate. On low speed, add the flour mixture.
4. Shape into balls, and roll in confectioners' sugar.
5. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until tops are cracked and cookies are just set. Cool a bit on baking sheets and transfer to cooling racks.

My notes:
Excellent cookies! I made some with and some without the confectioners' sugar. Great both ways.

Quote du jour/LOST

In honor of LOST starting up again this evening, here's an exchange I put in my quote book.

Locke: I used to get angry all the time; frustrated, too.

Sun: You are not frustrated anymore?

Locke: I'm not lost anymore.

Sun: How did you do that?

Locke: Same way anything lost gets found - I stopped looking.

Today's poem - A Country Boy in Winter by Sarah Orne Jewett

A Country Boy in Winter

By Sarah Orne Jewett

The wind may blow the snow about,
For all I care, says Jack,
And I don’t mind how cold it grows,
For then the ice won’t crack.
Old folks may shiver all day long,
But I shall never freeze;
What cares a jolly boy like me
For winter days like these?

Far down the long snow-covered hills
It is such fun to coast,
So clear the road! the fastest sled
There is in school I boast.
The paint is pretty well worn off,
But then I take the lead;
A dandy sled’s a loiterer,
And I go in for speed.

When I go home at supper-time,
Ki! but my cheeks are red!
They burn and sting like anything;
I’m cross until I’m fed.
You ought to see the biscuit go,
I am so hungry then;
And old Aunt Polly says that boys
Eat twice as much as men.

There’s always something I can do
To pass the time away;
The dark comes quick in winter-time—
A short and stormy day
And when I give my mind to it,
It’s just as father says,
I almost do a man’s work now,
And help him many ways.

I shall be glad when I grow up
And get all through with school,
I’ll show them by-and-by that I
Was not meant for a fool.
I’ll take the crops off this old farm,
I’ll do the best I can.
A jolly boy like me won’t be
A dolt when he’s a man.

I like to hear the old horse neigh
Just as I come in sight,
The oxen poke me with their horns
To get their hay at night.
Somehow the creatures seem like friends,
And like to see me come.
Some fellows talk about New York,
But I shall stay at home.

Sister desks?

I told Les over at her blog that I would post a photo of my desk. She did an entry on her desk, and I was amazed at how alike our desks are. Well, not too amazed. This kind of thing happens to us quite often. :<)

Seven minus one

I'm subtracting one of my favorite tv shows:

I'm giving up on 24. Every year, since the first season, I start off with high hopes and great interest, and then poof, I don't care anymore, and even actively don't like it. Maybe "12" would be a better show for me. Not so long. Not so many betrayals, not so much torture. Last night, my husband gave up on it too, because he figured out what was going to happen. Never a good thing in a mystery book or a tv show. So that Sunday seven post is now a Sunday six.

Pommes Frites

Served with plenty of salt, a tall glass of milk, and a big salad. Perfection.

Mrs Bale reports 2/5/07 Windchill

The thermometer reads 0º, but the wind makes it feel much, much colder.



The plastic on the woodpile is flipped up.



If you look carefully over by the barn, you can see the snow blowing around.

Today's cd/Straight, No Chaser

Thelonious Monk/Straight, No Chaser/1966/re-release 1996

A great, great album.

Mrs Bale reports in pictures 2/3/07

Cocktail hour

In the introduction to Hemingway & Bailey's Bartending Guide to Great American Writers , the authors Edward Hemingway (Ernest's grandson) and Mark Bailey write:

This book grew out of a simple observation: writers like to drink. Not all writers, of course, but most. Or at least they used to. The writers in this book, for example, forty-three great men and women of American letters. From James Agee to Thomas Wolfe, the list includes five Nobel Laureates and fifteen Pulitzer Prize winners, Academy Award winners, and just plain best-sellers. It's a who's who of our nation's most accomplished novelists, short-story writers, poets, playwrights, journalists, and critics. And they all loved their liquor.

They go on to say:

The two of us were talking about this one snowy night a few years ago. We were at a Christmas party in a bar in Greenwich Village, sitting on barstools drinking beers and feeling a touch nostalgic. The night had not started out that way. For any number of reasons (the cheer of the holiday season, the beauty of snow falling in New York, the pleasure of an open bar), we had been looking forward to a pretty serious bender. Yet to our surprise, the party was not with us. There we were, in a bar filled with writers, and the crowd could not have been more tame.

In the good old days, we imagined, things would have been very different. In the good old days, the myth of the hard-drinking writer was not just a myth. But clearly that world had disappeared long ago.

When asked about writers and their affinity for alcohol, Truman Capote quoted Irish playwright Brendan Behan, "We are drinkers with writing problems." It was a confession of sorts, that the scales had tipped for him. Maybe they tipped for other writers in this book too. Why did they drink so much? Did alcohol help or hurt their writing? These are worthwhile questions and there are no easy answers. But then this is, after all, a bartending guide, and who are we to say.

One thing is clear: however pickled these writers may have been, they left an extraordinary body of literature behind for us.

The book contains wonderful, wonderful drawings, a quote, a drinking story, a little biographical information, a cocktail recipe, and a literary excerpt for each of the writers. A writer gets two pages. The book is beautifully designed. Here is a view of one of my very favorites, Robert Benchley.



Have you noticed in the past few years that there has been an increased interest in cocktails and the cocktail culture? From Oprah's Pomegranate Martini to the Sex and the City Cosmopolitan, to the Pottery Barn's Mojito Mix cd, to the appeal of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, right through to this new book. It's an interesting cultural phenomenon.

Mrs Bale reports on Groundhog Day

As you can see from the photo, it was cloudy today so the groundhog didn't see his shadow, hence spring is coming soon!! And Punxsutawney Phil didn't see his either.

Candlemas Day

"Half the wood and half the hay, you should have on Candlemas Day."

We have a little less than half left, but, in my husband's words, "that's usual for us because it's colder in November and December than it is in March and April, the ending months of the cold season. It would be more important, I would think, to have half your hay because animals eat the same amount whether it's warm or cold out." We buy our hay weekly rather than store it at the farm.

Song of the day/Property

I have a young friend going through the turmoil of a divorce right now, and it reminds me of the very best song about breaking up that I've ever heard. It was written by Ray Davies, and was performed by The Kinks on their State of Confusion album.


My bags are packed, I guess it's time for me to go.
I can't say where I'm headed, 'cause I just don't know.
When I think of what I'll be losing,
It's hard to move along,
But it's harder just to stay here,
Knowing that I don't belong.

I'll be in touch, don't worry, I'll be calling you.
I've got no plans, I'm not sure where I'm going to.
It's hard to keep from crying,
After all that we've been through.
I've taken everything I need,
Now all that's left belongs to you.

You take the photographs, the ones of you and me,
When we both posed and laughed to please the family.
Nobody noticed then we wanted to be free,
And now there's no more love,
It's just the property.

It's hard to keep from crying,
After all that we've been through.

Now that it's all over, now that you and I are free,
Now there's nothing left except the bit of property.
Started off with nothing, started off just you and me,
Now that it's all over you can keep the property.

And all the little gifts we thought we'd throw away,
The useless souvenirs bought on a holiday.
We put them on a shelf, now they're collecting dust.
We never needed them, but they outlasted us.

My February TBR Challenge choice

http://cafe-books.blogspot.com/2006/10/i-challenge-you.html




For the February TBR Challenge book, I've chosen A Right To Die by Rex Stout.