My Feet Have A Dream

Every tootsie's gotta dream.....
You know that thing about how girls are supposed to be obsessed with shoes? Yeah. I'm not. I mean, I have a bunch of shoes but its nowhere near an obsession, I basically can't hack high heels at all and none of the shoes I own are of any value....most of them aren't even purchased new. Hello estate sale shoes! Hello Goodwill wonders!

But...BUT....then there are these shoes. *sigh* I've been thinking about them for months. They're kind of my dream shoes. Hand made, custom fit to my crazy high arch, sausage toed, super wide feet, a grassroots company where they're working with real, natural leather right here on the East Coast. I realize the shoes are 150 dollars a pair but they are far more versatile and in my opinion more romantic than any runway Leboutins. I waffle back and forth between wistfully daydreaming about a pair of West Indians or a set of New Chinese in that rich, classic brown color. They may be most the ideal, perfect, crunchy chick shoe ever conceived.... forget Birkenstocks and Dansko clogs!

I see a visit to their workshop in my future. Aurora, New York...I'm coming sometime soon!

Snowy, Snow, Snow, Snow

Today it snowed some more. It's the latest thing. Everyone on the East Coast is having the same...it's all the rage. A even caught himself thinking longingly about a snow-blower until I reminded him that this year is a severe anomaly. We normally don't lose sight of our grass for very long stretches during the winter and real accumulation is more of a wish than anything else. I always head to Michigan for Christmas, thinking fondly about how absolutely cock-sure it is that there will be a deep blanket of white.

Somehow it seems "right" to me to have blizzards and snowy walks and a sifting blanket of white on these winter evenings. It is after all winter.  It seems like winter ought to come with snow. And really, Ru is rarely happier than when he's out playing in the white stuff. It's a year of sleds, snowball fights, and shoveling, shoveling, shoveling. He couldn't be more pleased. It's so very lucky that we bought a house just before the record snowfalls of 2010-11 so that he could get hands on walk clearing lessons by his daddy's side almost every evening.

That said, I am not sure how much longer I want this snow to stick around. December was a lovely month to be snowed-in and January is still quite jolly...no holidays just snow-days. February now...that ought to be the end. I'm willing to let the white stuff linger this one last month and then I hope to see signs of spring. That's about as long as this wussy girl from The Great White North manages to hold out with any amount of good cheer.

I love this sign that we pass on our way to the next town when we take the back-roads. I'm not the only one who's starting to dream of budding flowers.....

Culinary Windfall

So, you've all heard of White Elephant parties, right? The kind of holiday occasion where everyone brings a "gift" something you have lying around the house that you don't want anymore (all wrapped up for the sake of disguise) and then numbers are drawn and gifts are summarily selected, opened, swapped and stolen back and forth at high speed. That s a vague description but you get the idea.

Last night I took this beauty as my cleverly disguised gift.

That's a seven inch, folding knife with 007 inscribed along the side of the plastic handle. Quality, right there. Believe it or not, we found it in the master bedroom of closet of our house. So fabulous. You couldn't invent treasures like that.

And here I am fawning over what I got in exchange. (And getting fabulous insider cooking tips from our priest's wife about where to find the best stuff in it.)

Such a beautiful, old, hardcover gold copy of Fannie Farmer...complete with satin ribbon marker. I do feel just a little badly for the woman from whom I nabbed this fabulous tome. It really is a lovely prize. There is some small consolation in the fact that the publishing date is 1965 which means that (theoretically at least) the book was already fading beyond its peak. A mere shadow of its former greatness. So, I have heard but, I'm not complaining any.

Its so pretty. Such pristine pages inside, not a crease or a drop anywhere except for a few curious, stray pen marks in the pages about sorbet. It's just asking to be written all over and dripped upon and I'm sure I will be able to oblige. I always write notes about the recipes I try so that I can remember when I made and what I thought afterwards and any little adjustments or additions I make. Yeah, and I'm messy. If it was any other kind of book I'd feel bad but cookbooks are meant to be used and dribbled over and loved to pieces.

One of the things I like most about the book is the wonderful line drawing illustrations. Truly, they are frame-able. Excellent little drawings of how to peel a carrot, how to fold in egg whites or and entire one page spread full of visuals of the varieties of lettuces that seemed significant. Love a little handmade beauty in the pages of a manual.

I heard somewhere that Fanny Farmer (also previously known as The Boston Cooking School Cookbook) is the prime instructive cooking source for New Englander's and Joy of Cooking was the home base for the Midwest. Being a good Midwestern girl I cut my teeth on Joy of Cooking, but now that I am on the East Coast I feel like I ought to learn the ways of the natives so I feel like I'm truly joining the locals and learning their ways to be thumbing through my own copy of this book and reading recipes like Maine Peanut Brittle and Boston Cupcakes. The fabulosity knows no bounds! And just in time for Christmas cookie season! Score!