Food, Glorious Food

There are some recipes that are worth the time it takes to prepare them. Today I started fixing my French Onion Soup at 9:30 this morning in order to have it ready for a 12:00 lunch.  This recipe is labor intensive and time consuming but that first slurp makes it all worth it. I would type out the recipe below but then I wouldn't have the pleasure of inviting you to my house so you can enjoy my creation and then give me the double pleasure of listening to you praise my soup as you gulped down spoonfuls of beef broth, caramelized onions, Gruyere cheese and toasted bread.

You have no idea of just what you are missing.

RIP Patty Andrews (1918-2013)

Patty Andrews, blonde lead singer, and last surviving Andrews sister died today at age ninety-four. You can read her NY Times obit here.

RIP Leroy Bonner (1943-2013)

His NY Times obit is here.

Beautiful Evening

Internet Quotes

Strong inside but you don't know it
-Madonna

This one has me thinking of my mother.

Love Is Strange

It sure can be.

Mad Men

Season six starts April 7th with a two hour premiere. Read all about it here.

Nesting

I got the last of the moving boxes opened and either unpacked or stored away yesterday. I can not believe what a relieve it is to finally have that part of the move done. Moving into a new house has been more labor intensive that I thought it would be mostly because we had to buy some new furniture as this house is a lot larger than our old one. I do like shopping for new furniture and finding that just right piece, the one you know is perfect, the one you know has just been waiting for you to walk by and discover it. I've been lucky during the last month in that I've found, at different times and different places, what I did not know I was looking for to put in my house. The below photo shows two examples of this phenomenon.

This is one of the corners of my office/study/sanctuary and where I now blog. The dogs claimed that window as their prime "checking out what is going on in the street" spot. At first I had one old dinning chair set there but it was a bit cramped for two dogs when they both got up there together so I brought in another chair and set them facing each other. I knew those chairs could not stay there forever so I went searching for a bench and tripped over this one in the store. Perfect, a lovely bench for the dogs to watch the world from and a place for me to stretch out and read when the dogs are not using it.

The secretary came from my husband's aunt and I had always planned to use it as a desk for my computer but I knew I had to find a chair for it. Days after we move here I went into town and found a second-hand store crammed full of stuff piled on top of other stuff. I wandered around trying to take it all in when I noticed a wooden kitchen chair almost hidden under a pile of  someone else's treasures.  I cleared chair off and looked it over. It was beautiful.

And the seat back had an unusual design.

I liked the look of it and could tell it was well made but was it comfortable to sit in? Surprisingly so. There was a label on the bottom of the seat that read, "Northwest Chair Company Tacoma, Wash." After some research I found out that Northwest went out of business in the late 1940s/early 1950s so this chair has some age on it. I sent a photo of the chair to my sister and she passed it on to a friend who knows about chairs and he wrote this about it:

I can't remember the exact name/style of that particular
chair but am guessing that it is American inspired by a German
original. Looks really sturdy and well made and probably has
some really good kharma.

He got that right, this chair has a good feel to it, nothing like the one I sat in at that antique store in Ocean Beach, California.

So, here I sit this morning in my new chair, at my new blogging spot, in my new office/study/sanctuary, writing this post. Life is good.

Martin Luther King Day

Thank you, Dr. King, for leading the charge to end a caste system that used ingrained customs, unfair laws, ignorant policies, petty procedures, and institutionalized terrorism to oppress a group of American citizens based on their skin color. It is only fitting that President Barack Obama's second inauguration ceremony coincide with your day.

Happy Birthday, Janis

The Mountains Are Calling And I Must Go

-Supposedly said by John Muir, American Naturalist(1838-1914)

Me at Chasm Lake on Longs Peak in 1989. I like this photo of myself even though I was suffering from a killer headache at the time. I always have problems with altitude sickness when I go above 10,000 feet.

Fool Me Once Shame On You....

Written on the back of a bottle of wine I bought the other day:

"Our winemaking tradition dates back to 1847 when Johann Gramp planted his first vineyard on the banks of Jacob's Creek.

A full bodied wine, rich in blackcurrant and plum fruit flavors with smooth tannins. Enjoy with beef fillet or roast leg of lamb."

Sounds tasty, doesn't it? The lesson I learned here is to never, never believe what is written on the back of a six dollar bottle of wine.

Computers, Cell Phones And Books

Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except over technology.
-Unknown

Monday my computer was not connecting to the Internet so my husband, who is my tech support, set about fixing it. It should have gone quickly but instead it took most of the day. In the end everything worked more than noticeably faster but the cost was the loss of some photo files. That was really my fault as I have not backed up any photos since, well, almost never. This morning I called my sister and we could not maintain a solid connection and ended up recalling each other several times before giving up and switching to text. Since I am new to the cell phone game, she texted me these two questions: (1) How many bars did I have? Three. (2)Out of how many? No clue but as I stood there staring at the strength of the signal bars on my phone they bounced from two, to four, to two, to three, and back. I'm still not sure what the maximum number of bars are but whatever it is there is nothing I can do about it here at my house as three is about as good as it gets.

I had better luck with a less aether product this week, books. Yesterday the bookcases we ordered arrived and my husband spent an hour putting them together and I spent most of the afternoon unpacking and shelving books. I never realized how solid a wall of books can be; it gives the family room a nice comfy feeling.

What I Am Reading

I cannot put down The Warmth of Other Suns:The Epic Story of America's Great Migration. It is about the black exodus from the South to the North between 1915 and 1975 told mainly thorough the stories of three people. The fact that these stories are true makes them even more painful, compelling and remarkable.

A View Of Other Mountains

The Never Summer Mountains at eight-forty in the morning.
Over on the other side of that range is North Park, the town of Walden, Colorado and my friends ex-cabin. It passed on to new people so we are never going back there. Looking at those mountains bring back memories of great times up there at the cabin in both summer and winter. Life goes on.

View From The Road 4

Longs Peak at eight-fifteen in the morning. Looks like the storm left a little snow.

The View From The Road 3

Longs Peak eleven-fifteen in the morning. Storm brewing.

The View From The Road 2

Longs Peak at three o'clock in the afternoon.

View From The Main Road Near My House

Longs Peak on a cloudy day.