Weekend Plans Post: The Longest Month
January went by lickety-split, didn’t it? I tell ya, I blinked and then it was gone.
Februaries, however, are *NOT* like that (in my experience). They just go by at a gruelingly slow pace.
In Michigan, they were the month that had cloud cover for the whole month. You got those lake effects and the sun got behind a cloud that blanketed the sky and just stayed there. In New York, sometimes we might see the sun, but the February snow was never the good Christmas snow that you see in the movies but the snow that was about the size of a grain of sand. You’d still get three or six inches of it at a time, but shoveling it was awful, you couldn’t make a snowball with it, and the slightest breeze would have it blowing sideways and it’d get down your collar and up your sleeves unless you were bundled up like Randy in A Christmas Story.
Colorado Februaries are a bit better. We get a lot of sunshine, I guess. The snow is similar to the New York snow, though. At least it melts quickly.
I have learned that the length of the month isn’t due to the sun being behind a cloud. It’s just interminably cold, interminably dull, and the sun does this thing where it manages to shine exactly in your eyes no matter whether you’re driving or walking around and getting in your steps. It’s a cold blue light with none of the yellow warmth.
February just sucks.
And this weekend is the first weekend in February. Just gotta gut through the rest of them.
We aren’t doing a whole lot this time around. Friends coming over for breakfast, the usual litany of stores and laundry, and trying to keep our heads down and the sun out of our eyes.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Featured image is “Napnap”. Photo taken by Maribou.)
Tomorrow after work I believe we are running up to Denver to go to the glass blowers and pick up some artsy things K and her friends made a couple of weeks ago. Maybe we’ll try to stop and have dinner while we’re out and make an evening of it. Saturday I don’t think we’ve got anything planned. As you say, it doesn’t look like it’ll get warm enough to take the dogs out for a much-needed walk. It’s an FA Cup weekend and Arsenal are already out so I’ll have to see if any of the games catch my interest. Sunday is, of course, the Super Bowl, and if I wasn’t watching it with friends I may not have gone out of my way to watch it despite my (sort of) team being in it. I’m finding that I have less and less time I’m willing to give over to watching sports these days (Arsenal and the opportunity to hang out with friends being the exception), and less willingness to endure the stress and agony of watching a team I actually support. Blah.
Enjoy your weekends, everyone!Report
I played simulator golf with my brother and nephew this morning. Not nearly as good as real golf but it’s February in Chicago, so whaddya gonna do?
Sunday is church, some handyman work around the house, and the Super Bowl. I don’t really have a rooting interest, so I’ll just hope for a competitive game.
If you’re looking for an interesting, and topical, novel, I can’t recommend Lionel Shriver’s The Mandibles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_MandiblesReport
Can’t recommend highly enough! Oy.Report
OH YEAH!!! The Superbowl is tomorrow!!!!
I will throw something up.Report
If football makes you that sick to your stomach, you probably shouldn’t watch the game.Report
It’s one of those where you feel like you should do that every couple of months, to rebalance the humors.Report
February along Colorado’s Front Range is random. I remember sub-zero blizzards. I remember a week where I took three afternoons off from work to go play golf in shirt sleeves. My favorite recurring thing, actually, is when it’s 10 °F when you go to bed and 50 °F when you wake up because the Chinook blew in.Report
Last weekend I promised to share the lentil croquettes recipe and here it is.
2 cups chopped yellow onions
2 tbsp olive oil, butter, or a mixture
salt and pepper
1 cup lentils, sorted, rinsed, and soaked for 1 hour
1/2 cup finely diced celery
1/2 cup finely diced carrot
1 tsp sea salt
2 cups soft bread crumbs
1 egg
vegetable oil, for frying
Cook the onions over low heat in a medium skillet while covered, stirring occasionally, until they are brown, soft, and full of aroma. About 15 min.
Meanwhile, combine the drained lentils, carrot, celery, and salt to a saucepan. Cover with water by 3 inches. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer 30 minutes Drain, reserving broth..
Puree vegetables in a food processor until mostly smooth. Add broth if needed.
Mix the lentils with the onions and half the bread crumbs. Spread out on a plate to allow to cool for easier handling.
Form the mixture into 3-inch ovals or 2 1/2-inch rounds. Roll the croquettes in the remaining bread crumbs.
Pour the oil into a skillet to a depth of 1/4 inch and place over medium high heat. Fry in batches until golden brown on both sides, about 5-8 minutes. Drain on paper towels.
After cooking these and trying a soup recipe from the same book, I have the same complaint. Both dishes were bland. The cookbook’s author seems to be afraid of seasoning, which is the worst stereotype of vegetarian cooking. I will continue to try recipes, but I will have to improvise some seasoning to give them flavor.Report
Easy mode, just from a glance, is probably jalapenos if you want kick or paprika if you don’t…Report
Duly saved in my recipes archive. Many thanks
Regarding blandness, croquettes are a staple in Spanish and Portuguese cuisine, which does not use (spicy) heat. Being Spaniard myself, I don’t expect heat (not even Spanish paprika heat) in croquettes, but I expect them to be a normal level of saltiness.
My only other comment would be the pureeing. I like texture in my croquettes, so I would never puree them to smooth (potato puree) consistency. You want to be able to feel some resistance.
As an aside, we normally drizzle some high quality olive oil on croquettes when we are about to eat them. We drizzle it on a croquette by croquette basis, just as you are about to start eating each individual one. It gives them a refreshing aroma and feeling, and the contrast between the warm croquette and the room temperature oil is quite pleasant.Report
When we were in Spain for a camino, croquettes were the single biggest food revelation I’d had in years… like how are these absolutely amazing and diverse food stuffs not simply ubiquitous? Those and tortilla.Report