Snugglepile of two

Made a Guinness cake. Tasty!

I have a bit of that going on too! Here for example are 400 cookbooks my mom accumulated over the years. I have some vague idea of doing a project or blog with them.

My new bathroom wall cabinet is waiting to be assembled, and I’m very excited — love putting this kind of thing together. Best Valentine’s Day gift to myself!

Kitty nap

This is from 1973 or so. I’m on the left. My sister Laura, close foreground, tagged Dad right in the face. She has always been the superior athlete. Anyway, we got outside in the snow a lot, sledding and making snow people and, in there was enough snow at the right temperature, building snow forts.

Most of the time Aurora is nonstop tortoiseshell energy, so it’s important to capture the gentle moments when they come.

And here is the finished Yule log 2024!

This is the correct filling/icing btw

Running my own personal version of Great British Bake-off this morning. Trying to follow Julia Child’s convoluted recipe I made the wrong filling for my Yule log. So now I have started the Italian meringue over. If you need some crème patisserie today, I have it for you.

At my mother’s house. Apparently the All-Clad saucepan being used to scoop sidewalk salt is my brother’s doing. Nothing else was sufficiently sturdy for his liking.

I ordered a new dishwasher and thought it would be installed after Xmas, but today got a text that it’ll be installed this afternoon. So make-the-cake-and-meringue-mushrooms-for-Yule-Log-cake day has become deep-clean-the-kitchen day.

Running its final load. Farewell, old soldier.

Absolutely delicious, hard to really mess up.

I’m practicing a thanksgiving dish tonight — big change from my usual “make a complicated recipe for the first time on a too-busy day” norm. I’ve learned lots already. Even for a mini version the dish must be smaller than I expected, needs more cream, and the potatoes need to be skinny.