Rainbow Chaser

Thursday afternoon's high winds became a brief thunderstorm about 7 p.m., and as I drove the last lap home across floodplain, a tall, vivid rainbow appeared, visible end to end. Excited, I found and wildly drove up the wrong side of a back road leading to a vista on a hilltop, scrambled out of the car and photographed the rainbow, by then fading. The chase itself was the day's highlight.

There followed a purple and lemon sunset so awesome I thanked God I was alive and outdoors to see it. During some sunsets, I'm indoors, working. It's a crime and I know it. On my one visit to the Grand Canyon I joined the people anticipating and gathering to watch the sunset as an event, as a one-time-only performance, and thought then, "This is the right way to honor a day of our one and only life." Having finished the drive home, I saw the sunset had changed its key, creating a Thomas Kincaid painting of my own dwelling. Sometimes I look at it thinking, "I live here? People can live in only one place. This is my home? The home I've chosen for my one and only life? How -- how awesome!"

When I moved here I was reverent about sunrise and sunset, grasses and moonlight, things that in the city are in artificially short supply. Thursday's rainbow invited me (and everyone) to renew that reverence, and the sunset sent me this letter, written with light.

Winter Solstice

Happy Solstice!

For a few days each year, at the winter solstice, setting sunbeams the color of flour come through the corner of the house, the screened porch, which points exactly southwest, and through the glass in the door, it hits the shelves of cookbooks.

Cookbooks are my favorite reading and there's one for every mood: frugal, hippie, microwave, Indian, microwave Indian, church-supper casseroles, Cook's Illustrated, Gasparilla (Florida), New York Times, Russia & Poland, vegetarian and vegan, bread machine, and three cookbooks that are all soups, for example. Since 1997, every time I make a recipe I date it on its page and write a note as to how it was received, or the substitutions made, or suggestions for next time. I also have my own cut-out-of-magazines or printed-off-the-Net recipes in a ring binder, and a tin recipe box with handwritten recipes on index cards. I feast on all these. This is wealth.

My top 11 cookbook recipes: Hot & Sour Soup (The Garden of Vegan), Flaxseed Wraps (Wheat Belly), Sausage and Peppers (Microwave Gourmet), Polenta (Microwave Gourmet), Slow Cooker Pot Roast (Cook's Illustrated), Maple Walnut Biscotti (Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites), Chocolate Ice Cream (How It All Vegan),  Coffee Gelatin (internet), Spicy Black Bean Burgers (Betty Crocker Vegetarian Cooking), Beefy Seitan (Nonna's Italian Kitchen), and Bucatini Briganteschi (Cooking from an Italian Garden). Bucatini is thick spaghetti with a hole down the center. It is so hard to find, and the recipe so delicious, I ordered a 20-pound case from a manufacturer. Yesterday I ate my first Olive Stuffed with Bleu Cheese and got all swoony. Want some, with some wine? Come over!

Happy Solstice and Yule, December 21 at 10:29 a.m. Have a feast.

So Humble

There's a full moon on this my birthday, signifying an exceptionally full and rich year ahead. I already know how busy I'll be, so I'm glad I've got my home all comfortable and familiar, everything stocked and in its place, and a newly-filled propane tank--a recipe for peace of mind. It's easy to write off January as a total waste. But daylight is growing longer (it's no longer pitch-dark at 5:30 p.m.; the sun set at 5:14 p.m. today) and after November and December, I've grown to appreciate more the tricks and pleasures of light. It recently turned colder and this is our only snow of the season so far, about three-quarters of an inch. It's already begun to thaw; when it's thawed, I'll resume digging at my site. Here's a January sunset over a happy and warm Missouri home. I'm older, but only lucky people get older.

Raspberry Sunset

What December has going for it: Christmas cookies with friends and neighbors, and great sunsets. Here's a raspberry-colored one from night before last. Tonight's was purple and gold, just like high-school colors. This has been a snowless winter in eastern Missouri and in fact the whole Midwest so far except for a single "dusting" that didn't last the morning. This morning it was 55 degrees and I put a chair outside the kitchen door and enjoyed my morning tea there. Who knows what it means, but it saves lives when the roads and bridges aren't icy.

What 2011 had going for it: The world got rid of several murderous dictators. The U.S. has stopped warring on Iraq. That is plenty.

Selecting a new wall calendar for a new year is always fun. My 2012 finalist calendars were "Hunks" and "The Missouri House Rabbit Society Calendar." I will let you guess which one I chose. Happy New Year!

More Reasons to Like November

A sundae of colors this late afternoon. And yet another reason to like November: escarole soup, made today, the VERY BEST I've ever made, and economical too; found the recipe online. Serves about 4:

Escarole-Sausage Soup
1/4 cup olive oil
2 hot italian sausages
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 potato, diced
1 large carrot, diced
1 can white beans, drained and rinsed
1 head escarole, chopped
Chicken broth, about 4 or 5 cups
salt and pepper to taste

Crumble the sausage into the heated olive oil, and then the onion and garlic. Saute until the sausage is almost crisp. Add potato and carrot and saute until they are barely tender, about 10 minutes. Add the broth, drained white beans and the chopped escarole. Heat to boiling. Reduce heat and simmer about 25 minutes. Add salt and pepper to adjust to your taste. Mangia from Missouri.