Tuesday, December 27, 2016

On the third day of Christmas...


Once again we return to our annual crusade. As my friend Ryan put it on Facebook today: It is not two days after Christmas. It is the third day of Christmas!

With which, I baked rum raisin cake.

It is from Cooking Light but it won my approval anyway. There were no errant egg whites. Plus I got to use up the end of a bottle of rum that had just been kicking around. It was not bad rum. There is no such thing as bad rum! It is just that I do not normally drink rum. I cook with it.

While I worked I listened to my Carmen Dragon Christmas LP. La la la la la la la.

Fa la la la la la la.

I have sung the praises before of this Carmen Dragon record. You can tell from listening to it that Maestro Dragon -- his real name was Carmen Dragon -- loved Christmas very much. I bet he would not be satisfied with anyone trying to cut Christmas off on the First Day. Forget that!

Leonard Pennario liked Carmen Dragon and they had Christmas in common, I can see that.

Anyway. This is the third day of Christmas and there are many more to go. From now on, it is the gym every day, because I have to continue my Christmas treats.

It is ridiculous that we have let go of most of Christmas, you know? The Jewish people have Hanukkah and they have held tightly on to their eight days. Christmas folks must do likewise. So there's three months of commercialism beforehand, so what. All the more reason to stretch out the actual holiday and revel in the fruits of your labors.

Speaking of which, back to the Rum Raisin Cake. Zounds, I looked back on my Web log and I mentioned it before! Back in March. 

I wrote that I wanted to make it for church coffee hour and I was planning on making it in loaf pans, not in a Bundt pan as the recipe asked. That picture above, that is from the magazine. It is not from me.

Sure enough, today I made it in two loaf pans. And one loaf will go to church.

And another funny thing, back in March I mentioned eyeing up the Eggnog Coffee Cake recipe, in the same magazine as the Rum Raisin Cake. Sure enough, today too I eyed up that recipe.

I guess I know my own mind.

Merry Third Day of Christmas!



Thursday, December 15, 2016

The cat and the tree


I put up my tree on Sunday. It was Gaudete Sunday! That is THE day to put up your tree.

All kinds of people put up their trees. I saw it on Facebook. Jeoffry assisted me in putting up my tree as you can see in the photo above.

After it was up I sent this photo to Howard who put it up on Facebook.


OK, well, things are not perfect. But we are moving into the season!

The day you put up the tree is always one of the happiest days of the year. The day you take it down is, I am sorry, one of the saddest. I hate to take down the Christmas tree! One of these years I will just not do it. It will stay up until next year. Some of my Facebook friends have already taken that route.

I should just leave it up all year! I am a grown-up and this is America.

And Jeoffry would love it!



Monday, December 5, 2016

The clouds roll in


I took these pictures a few days ago when we were on the cusp of winter. Well, we are still on the cusp of winter. We are not quite there yet.

That picture up above was taken in Delaware Park.

We live in the golden era of photography, you know? Anyone can be Ansel Adams. Imagine a world in which anyone who sat down at the piano could be Leonard Pennario!

Here is another picture taken the same day. For some reason I like this. Even though I know there are these two red trees in the middle of the picture, it's not great for the composition, it would have been better if there were two trees on one side and one tree on the other, still, still, still ....


I like this picture.

And this is the one I put on, ahem, Instagram.


I wanted to put the picture up at the top on Instagram but the square format did not work with it. Then I started to like this last picture. I liked the lamppost.

That is one of the things good about our ubiquitous phones. It is fun to go through life with a camera.

It brightens your day!