Week 48

The Thanksgiving food was made and devoured, the Christmas decorations are up, and we are just a month away from saying ta-ta to 2020. I'll save my reflections on the year for Week 52, but this week was a good variation on the overall theme that things could have been a lot worse. My mood varied wildly - feeling down in the dumps, hopeful, energized and exhausted. Fresh air improved everything.

 

I'll just start with the food situation around here. Neither Joel nor I have held strong opinions on the necessity of a bird on a cutting board surrounded by mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing and gravy on Thanksgiving, but we are happy to allude to these things in other forms. Our meal this year was a turkey cassoulet (recipe from the New York Times) - a stewy bean mixture with sausage, turkey and bacon, topped with freshly toasted seasoned bread crumbs; pull-apart sour cream and chive rolls (recipe from Bon Appetit); warm Brussels sprouts salad with citrus vinaigrette (recipe from Joshua McFadden's Six Seasons cookbook); and cranberry hand pies for dessert (recipe from Bon Appetit).

This week brought some nice outdoor excursions, both solo and with the gang. On Wednesday afternoon I took the longer route on the bluff that heads further up the South Hill, and on Saturday afternoon we drove out to Fort Spokane - an old Army outpost at the confluence of the Spokane and Columbia rivers. We had never seen it in all our years of living here.

I also finished my orange raglan sweater  - I even weaved in the ends and blocked it. I'm still not sure if I'll actually wear it, but it was a fun learning process and way to keep my hands busy for several months. 

As for what we're watching -- Joel got me to watch 1917, which was quite something. I was really impressed by it. On Thanksgiving night we watched Holmes & Watson with Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly - the perfect thing for digestion. And after finishing Schitt's Creek, I started on the latest season of the Great British Bake-Off and almost died laughing over the cake busts in the first episode.

What else, what else. Still reading Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which reminds me that I should do my annual book report post. I've read a lot of books this year, until recently. This book isn't really hooking me but I'm enjoying it enough to continue.

My goals for this next week are to finish my book, start an embroidery project (I have a kit coming in the mail) and to find some extremely basic but good recipes for the week to use up the stuff we have and freeze the rest. We still have a lot of leftover cassoulet...

Cheers to another week!