House Guests, a Volcano, and a Serious Discussion

I cannot keep track of the counter numbers on this blog. I don't even know if anybody reads the damned thing. I've thought several times about giving it up, but then I think of something I want to put down here and so it goes.

The pecan pie turned out OK. It didn't taste like my usual pecan pie, but it was devoured so I guess that's a good sign. The boys came and stayed with us for five days, and it really wasn't long enough. They are the easiest house guests in the world, so enthusiastic about everything, and appreciative. They make me really proud.

We took them over to the Capulin Volcano National Monument east of Raton. We hiked down into the crater and back up, which I thought was a hard slog, but I only thought that in the beginning. The rim walk was the real killer. I seriously believed for a while that I would not make it around the rim. It was brutal, and at 8600 plus feet, a real breath taker, and I mean that literally. I my lungs hurt, my heart pounded. The uphill climb was the worst. When we got to the top, finally, I thought I would really enjoy looking down on the lava flows. We'd watched a little movie before embarking on this trek, and it had explained about the pressure waves and lots of other geographic phenomenon characteristic of a volcano like Capulin. Instead, I was so thrilled to be done with the worst of the climb, I just sat on one of the benches they had up there and tried to get my breath, to fight down the vertigo that kept trying to take over, and to quell the nausea. We took some pictures on the way down but I haven't downloaded them from the camera yet.

On Sunday, we took them to the airport in Albuquerque and had a real heart-to-heart on the ride back about selling the place in Texas and making this our permanent home. There are some things that have to happen here for me to be in favor of such a big move, and we began on some of those things this week. We bought some furniture for one thing, and the carpenter we discovered is coming back to do some more work to the place, and to help me paint the bedroom. My SO is going back to Texas tomorrow morning to check on things at the house, and to do some personal errands and make some business calls. He'll be gone a week. When he gets back, the bedroom will be done and all that will really remain is remodeling the kitchen. But that will have to wait until the house in Texas is sold.

It is going to take some real getting used to, living in such a small house again. This house is just barely bigger than the first "starter" home my ex and I bought way back in the early 1980s. I'll have to get rid of half of my "stuff," more than half. But it's just stuff, and I said way way back that I was not going to let "stuff" run my life the way it has done for at least the past 25 or so years. It's not worth it. We'll have a big sale after the house sells, fingers crossed. We have a figure we want to get out of all this which will allow us to become, once and for all, debt free. Both of us are ready for that.

Meanwhile, the cat has taken a real downturn in the last couple of days. Today has been an especially bad day. I tried to go to sleep with the SO at 10:00, but here I am back up with the kitty. I held him for about an hour, and he responded to that. I tried explaining to him that he would feel so much better if he would eat something and drink some water. And that I would take him to the vet in the morning. He turned to press on me the way he has done his entire life, showing me that he loves me, too. And then he got down from my lap and ate some of his can and got a big drink, wandered off to the litter box, and now he is back in the chair he commandeered practically from the first day we moved in here. It's a big old semi-circular 1970s style low back easy chair with rust colored upholstery. I'll be glad to get my good living room stuff here eventually.

Guess it's time to turn in, or try to again. I'll post some more things I've been up to tomorrow.

Onward ....

High Altitude Cooking

I am about to try to make a pecan pie. Pecan pie has always been one of my specialties, but this pecan pie will be made at 7900 feet above sea level, instead of the usual 200 or so feet.

When we first got this place in the mountains, everything I cooked was underdone, or overdone, or squishy in the middle and done on the sides, or just burnt. I'm a fairly decent cook and this was very disheartening to me, after 40+ years in the kitchen. I had seen those high altitude adjustments on the sides of boxes and packages, but it never occurred to me that this was my problem, until I had a conversation with my aunt, who had also had a cabin near here at one time. Ah-ha! Higher altitudes DO make a difference in how ingredients interact with each other.

This trip I've had better luck with things. Last week, I made a cake that turned out all right. It was kind of crumbly but I was using only ingredients I had on hand. The icing resembled penuche fudge, but it was OK, too. But this time, I'm making a pie for my son who is arriving tomorrow, and I want it to be as close to perfect as I can make it. So we will see how this pie project turns out.

From what I read, you have to adjust the sugar down, the fat up, and the oven temperature either up or down -- this seems to be a matter of opinion. When I've used the oven for various meal dishes, I have been adjusting up by 25 degrees, and this has been working pretty well. One variation on this whole affair was addressed by a cook in Denver, who adjusts up for a while during the baking time on the pie, then adjusts down toward the end. Might try that method. However, we are a good bit higher here than Denver, and every thousand or so feet seems to make a difference.

OK, I'm off to the kitchen to see how it goes. Will report back in a future post.

Onward ....

Christmas Eve Morning

A cold steel gray dawn, with chipping sparrows at the feeder. My SO had a hard night, snorting fits, sniffly, stuffy nose. Cedar fever. So early this year. He won't admit it's allergies, but I recognize all the signs. He keeps saying he's never had allergies so why would they start harassing him now? I have a theory about that. I consider myself a semi-scholar on the subject of allergies, having done battle with them for most of my life. I think in his case radiation damage has caused his nasal passages, indeed all of his sinuses, to become more receptive to histamine production. A leftover from the throat cancer that laid him low seven years ago. He has more leftovers than just this one. Another subject for another day. He managed to get back to sleep. I crept out of the room a little before six.

It's Christmas Eve. A blustery norther is set to arrive, as are my oldest son and his partner. In an ideal world their plane will arrive at 3:30 this afternoon, and then they'll face a three hour drive in a rental car to get here. Fingers are crossed that all goes as planned. But it's Christmas Eve, and half the country is buried under a blizzard, so we shall see how their travel proceeds. We think if they can get to and out of Baltimore, things should go well from there.

The anticipation of this day has left me feeling somewhat subdued now that it's here. I think the big Sunday we had, full of people and food, and laughter and noise, has made everything else about the holidays somewhat anti-climatic. But my son is such a pleasure to be around -- I say that not just as a proud mother -- but as someone who has observed him for these long 38 years, and it hasn't gone unnoticed that he has an abundance of friends, both old and new, and an aptitude for making things fun and meaningful. He is and has always been a bit of an amazement to me. Even as a baby, an old soul in a tiny body, somehow wiser than he should have been, witty and wonderfully sensitive to the needs of those around him. I am awed that I should have -- could have -- raised such a person, although he never needed much "raising" in the strictest sense. It's been five months since I have seen him, and so I will tick off the hours until the two of them arrive.

We'll save the big Christmas celebration for tomorrow, an oddity for our family. We've always tended to do the most celebrating on Christmas Eve. But travel days are throw-away days, and we'll wait it out until tomorrow, with everyone refreshed. Daddy and his dog will be here, and we plan to cook steaks, weather permitting. No provincial stuffed turkey for this bunch. We're having rib eyes, corn pudding, and baked bread. My only nod to tradition will be the green bean casserole, or should I say, THE green bean casserole, because it's different, more substantial and better, than the one everyone else makes. Ours has bacon and cheese and bread crumbs and sauteed onions included, and no one can eat this particular green bean casserole and ever look again at the one the rest of the world prepares with anything but contempt. Yes, we are smug about our green bean casserole.

My son has requested pecan pie. I don't think they make many pecan pies up in the DC area. Or else, as he says, they "f" it up with raisins or some other silly ingredient. So I'll make that today, and maybe the time will go by a bit faster.

I hear my SO stirring in the other room. The cat at my feet has also stretched and wakened. The sky is lighter than it was when I began this. Sun a big butterscotch wafer rising over the oak trees lining the creek below our place. Time to get the day started.

Merry Christmas to all!

Onward ....