Mince Pies, Tea, Chocolate, and Bailey's Irish Cream

Friday, December 14, 2007
Bangor

On Monday evening this week after Reed and I got home from his violin lesson, I turned right around and went back to one of the Presbyterian churches to meet our neighbor June at the women’s group gathering. She of course offered to give me a ride with her in the car but I’d gotten a little bus sick on the way home with Reed and couldn’t face getting in another vehicle. Besides, it was a lovely crisp night – frosty in fact – and I couldn’t resist a walk in the dark under the stars.

Everyone was very nice to me of course, and the presentation was of a lot of lovely Christmas craft items made by a pastor’s wife from a nearby town – and she does absolutely amazing work. I still find myself most interested in fabrics, and in making things to wear or use, as opposed to knickknacks for putting on a shelf to gather dust. The most fun thing was when several of the ladies heard me say something about “my son” the general reaction was that looked quite too young to have a child. That quite tickled me – although maybe it says more about my casual clothes and untamed hair than it does about my actual face, I don’t know. But I like to think that I’m looking younger these days, a sort of glow of happiness perhaps. Afterwards we all had hot tea and mince pies and shortbread while everyone chatted and looked closely at the craft items on display. I didn’t try to explain that we’ve already sort of committed ourselves to the parish church for Sunday services – but I’ll probably go with June to some other events, as she is good company and it’s fun to get out and about.

We’ve been eating well these days; lots of soup especially. Today we made a sort of combination of turkey-rice with split pea and ham and it was great. I got some pork chops for dinner the other day, and made some fresh applesauce to go with them, and boiled Charlotte potatoes. Mmm. For lunch yesterday I made our favorite refried bean enchiladas, discovering that although they don’t sell canned refried beans in the store it’s dead easy to make them myself with cooked beans. And yesterday I made bread that turned out wonderfully- so wonderfully in fact that when it came out of the oven at 4 pm we all decided that’s what we wanted for dinner. Walt made turkey sandwiches for himself and Reed and I ate two big pieces spread with butter and honey, alongside an apple w/ peanut butter. Not fancy but my goodness it hit the spot. Every once in a while you have to relax the mealtime thing, and let yourself eat cold cereal, or bread and butter. I’m finding that eating the main meal at lunch works quite well, so we do that several times a week – then our digestive systems don’t have such hard work to do right before bed. Sometimes I’ve not even felt like eating dinner on days when we’ve had a good lunch – an amazing thing for me, who is usually raring for every meal and snack.

I do have a couple of downfalls here, though, since it is Christmas: After Eight mints and Cadbury’s chocolate oranges. And Walt and I gave each other an early present the other day: a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream. That’s the perfect dessert in front of the fire after Reed’s tucked away in bed at last. But I have to say I really hate the Bailey’s t.v. commercial they’ve got out this season, with the slow motion closeup of the woman’s face as she shakes up the Bailey’s and ice. Really not attractive. I drink Baileys in spite of that and I bet other people do too.