Today marks the winter solstice – the beginning of the story-telling season, the time when the earth’s northern hemisphere is at its maximum axial tilt away from the sun, the day when your noontime shadow is the longest it is going to be all year. So break out your cakes and ale, light some sparklers, and call back the sun!
Because it is tattoo Tuesday – here is one I liked . . .
There are more interesting solstice mandalas over at deviant art.
Did you miss it? Yesterday was Fruitcake Day.
Now I know what you are thinking, but not all fruitcakes are the same. There are some that should never see the inside of an oven.
But if you like fruit and you like cake, you can make a good one. Just don’t put in any yucky stuff (citron).
This is a recipe for Stained Glass Fruitcake that I like very much that I found in Sunset magazine many years ago. I use dried apricots, pears, peaches, cherries and a mixture of different types of raisins, but use what you like. The orange juice adds brightness to the cake. I bake it in mini loaf pans, and it is so good, the cakes don’t stay around for long. Make them early and cover with brandy soaked cheesecloth, if you like. I like them just the way they come out of the oven.
If you don’t have an oven, check out the delicious fruitcake made by the nuns at the Transfiguration Hermitage in Windsor, Maine.
Here’s the recipe:
Cream the butter and sugar; add the eggs; mix the baking powder and salt with the flour; add dry ingredients alternating with the orange juice. Then add the nuts and fruit. Grease and flour the pan or pans. Bake at 300 degrees (low and slow) for 2 1/2 to 3 hours. If you are using small pans, check the cakes sooner because they will bake faster than a large loaf. When a wooden skewer or toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean, it is done. Cool on a rack, but turn out of the pans when the cake is still warm, but not hot.
“Books breathe as trees breathe. When all the books have gone our mental climate will have changed. It’s a question whether we’ll survive. Technology cannot replace a book. No matter that I can quickly find a digital version of a novel I’m looking for, I still fly into a rage when I discover I no longer have it, and remember who borrowed and didn’t return it, five, 10, 20 years ago. For it is irreplaceable. It has my scribblings in it. The marginal expletives. The turned-down pages. The bus ticket or taxi receipt or even billet doux employed as a bookmark – not just the marginalia of an intellectual life but the detritus of the heart. And that you don’t get on a Kindle, or a free e-book courtesy of Project Gutenberg. What you can’t bend or throw or write on isn’t, in the end, literature.”
Howard Jacobson. More at BBC
Here’s a little ditty to get you in the mood for the holiday season.
Cmdr. Vimes got a new basket. Thank you, Robb!
Sam is a Maine Coon cat, so you can imagine the size of the basket.
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Firearms, fibers, any news or behaviors that make me say, "hmm, let me take another look at this."
I still miss my man, but my aim is getting better.
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