Little Things

We did manage to spend a few hours celebrating Christmas with our Grandbabies, at Terra and Lare’s house. Luna drove to Terra’s house to visit her for a few days after Christmas, and we were invited for a Turkey Dinner. We had a lovely time, and the Grandbabies enjoyed the modest gifts we had for them.

My daughters are good mothers, the Grandbabies are such wonderful little people! Willow (5 months old) slept in my arms the whole time we were there. We see them so seldom that they change a lot between visits, Imp is insightful, Elf is full of technical information, Tink is imaginative, Sunny loves to repeat any word you can utter aloud, Sky loves trucks, and Willow is cuddly.

The first day of 2019 was blissfully uneventful.

I baked all day.

I baked muffins, which were almost a disaster, but not quite. I forgot the sugar. The recipe only calls for two tablespoons of sugar, so little that you hardly notice when it isn’t included. But I do notice. These muffins are for Attila’s lunches on workdays, so I feel bad when I forget the sugar. This isn’t the first time either, I have forgotten the sugar many times. I am so focused on reducing sugar in my diet that it has become habitual to leave it out of recipes. But it is not appropriate to leave it out of Attila’s muffins!

Two measures were taken as a result of the forgotten sugar. The first was in the batch being baked. They were just put into the oven when I remembered I hadn’t added the sugar. So out they came immediately. Using a teaspoon I made a little hole in the middle of the batter for each muffin, and dropped a half a teaspoon of sugar into each hole. Then I returned them to the oven to bake. When they were baked and cooled, I tried one. Not bad, but still not quite as good as they would have been had I remembered to add the sugar to the batter itself.

The second measure was to move the sugar canister from its relatively obscure location beside the back door, to a more prominent location on the kitchen counter. Hopefully the in-my-face location of the sugar canister will remind me to add the sugar next time I bake muffins for Attila.

I baked Mincemeat Squares for dessert for New Year’s Day. I used my home canned Green Tomato Mincemeat. Oh my it was good!

I am on a special diet this week, starting today, no roughage. That means no whole wheat bread, seeds, nuts, vegetable peels, red meats, whole grains of any kind, that sort of thing. I can no longer tolerate store bought white bread. I just can’t eat it. All of the bread we buy is whole grain or rye, so that would not do. The solution was to bake a loaf of white bread. Oh my it is good!

Our New Year’s Dinner consisted of Roast Pork, Oven Roasted Potatoes, Blue Hubbard Squash, and corn. The Pork Roast was done in the Instant Pot. Oh my it was good! It is Attila’s all-time favourite meal.

Attila had a busy first day of the year as well. He continues to work on the garage. The wiring for the lights is now complete, and includes an electrical outlet for his power tools. It is now possible for him to work in the garage, rather than in the back yard on the grass as he has been doing since 2010. He also cleared the workbench, which has been piled to the ceiling with spare wood. Trim was installed around the eaves of the garage, where the winter wind was whistling through. There was even time to work on expanding the garden, using plain cardboard as mulch, topped with leaves.

Attila made Turkey Soup yesterday. It was his second batch. He made a batch last week with the carcass from our Christmas Turkey. Yesterday he made a batch from the turkey carcass leftover from Terra’s Christmas Turkey. Terra and Lares do not eat leftovers. They are very different from us.

This is our first winter with the new windows installed, and the additional insulation in the attic, and new roof on the garage. These changes have
altered the microclimate in the house. The old windows were far from airtight, particularly in the basement. One of the old windows in the basement had no glass, just nailed on boards, with a lot of gaps. When the furnace operated, the gap around the filter drew in fresh air, which entered unfettered around the basement windows. Fresh air can no longer freely enter the basement via the windows. As a result the gap at the filter was drawing air from the basement itself, we could smell the slightly musty aroma of the basement concrete floor every time the heat came on.

The air feeding the furnace needs to come to the furnace through the cold air return, not through the gap by the furnace filter. Our system has not been functioning as best it could. But until this winter the situation had not come to our attention. It would have eventually, but we have been busy with other projects here at Mist Cottage. However, this winter the smell has arrested our attention.

The solution, we hope, was to construct a duct tape flap over the gap around the furnace filter. When the furnace draws fresh air, the flap is suctioned tight to the gap, which in turn forces the furnace to draw fresh air from the cold air return ducts from the main floor of the house. It seems to be working well. It might even reduce our electricity bills (all of our heat is electric when the temperature is above -7C), and hopefully maintain a higher humidity on the main floor of the house during the winter months. By spring we will know if these benefits have been realize.

Worldly

Weather

-12°C
Date: 10:00 AM EST Wednesday 2 January 2019
Condition: Partly Cloudy
Pressure: 103.0 kPa
Tendency: Rising
Temperature: -11.7°C
Dew point: -17.0°C
Humidity: 65%
Wind: NE 13 km/h
Wind Chill: -18
Visibility: 24 km

Quote

“A harbor, even if it is a little harbor, is a good thing… It takes something from the world, and has something to give in return.”
Sarah Orne Jewett
1849 – 1909