Winter sun

The day began with the sun low to the south, visible only as a muted bright spot in the otherwise gray sky. This is a winter sun.

Winter sun

The clouds got thicker through the morning, bringing a cold drizzling rain by afternoon. This weather cries out for baked goods. I am trying something different for Thanksgiving this year. Not very different, mind you, as I am a staunch traditionalist where Thanksgiving. Today I made a loaf of rosemary sourdough bread. 

Rosemary sourdough bread

I like sourdough for the dressing because it holds up to the chicken stock and egg so the dressing has structure. I don’t like soggy bread. (Or, for that matter, cake with ice cream.) I mixed 3 tablespoons of finely chopped fresh rosemary into the dough. That’s a lot of rosemary. Hilda brought her rosemary plant in for the winter. I had to go up twice because what I thought was plenty of rosemary on the first trip was less than half of what I needed. My hope is to get more depth of flavor by incorporating one of the herbs into the bread. Other than that, it’s turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie. None of that cornbread dressing and apple pie for me.

I’ve had some motivational difficulty since the gardening wrapped up. I don’t get much done in a day, but I don’t have much to do. I finally got motivated to clean the refrigerators today. There’s not much in the extra refrigerator these days. As soon as the harvest starts, it’s full of trays of fruits and vegetables waiting for processing. There’s nothing left but a bag of straggly-looking beets in the rotting bin. Now we use this refrigerator for wine and defrosting chickens.

My biggest fear when I clean the refrigerator is dropping the giant plate of glass that serves as the lowest shelf. I don’t know what a person would do if that broke. I am very, very careful to be sure I have a good grip on it and don’t set it down to close to the edge of anything. Always a relief to have it washed and back in place.

The bottom of the refrigerator had an assortment of beetles and flies that came in with the raspberries and crawled out of the container to their death. It’s a cruel world. I wiped up the carcasses along with spots of raspberry juice and the very last remnants of that bottle of red wine that shattered on the floor last summer. And here it is, clean!

Clean!

I started on the kitchen refrigerator next. That was harder because that’s where all the food is. I cleaned the big plate of glass and got it back in place without breaking it. Whew! I threw out those little things that accumulate in the back, like the Solo cups of hot sauce that came with an order of hot wings several months ago. We never use them. Why do we keep them? It’s a mystery. When I was done with the shelves, it was time for lunch and then football. I’ll do the door tomorrow. All those condiments were more than I could take today.