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.

Things To Do in Less Daylight

As daylight shortens and nights grow long:

• watch and laugh at YouTube videos of parrots taught to swear
• buy something on eBay or Amazon every day before getting out of bed in the morning
• stave off morning coffee to extend the small pleasure of looking forward to it
• tap "Like" on every Facebook post
• stay up until 3:00 a.m. mending all the torn clothes and altering all the too-long sleeves piled up during the last five months 
• buy and eat Hershey bars
• buy and eat Hostess Snowballs
• procrastinate if there's any work to do
• scroll through hundreds of the latest memes 
• scroll through hundreds of before-and-after photos of plastic surgery
• attend fall festivals for 20 minutes and then go home
• drink

Daylight Savings Time

People who won't follow Daylight Savings Time are called "Daylight Savings Time Deniers." I happen to love Daylight Savings Time which lends to the day sweet lavender twilight and spring peepers at just the right hour, about 7 p.m., after supper, when the kitchen is clean but there's a thought forming -- in the shape of a red bell pepper on the counter -- as to the meals of tomorrow.

In 14 years here, 15,330 meals could have been prepared on this counter (this is ALL of my counter space), but I had  many meals at work, at Super Smokers barbecue, and mozzarella sticks eaten while hiking or sitting in the car in traffic, so probably I've prepared in this kitchen only about 10,000 meals, for myself and all sorts of guests ranging from baby birds to distinguished authors. I wish I'd kept a guest book over the years of the fascinating people I've hosted.

"Kommt von irgendwo ein Lichtlein her"

My stepfather's first wife, a lively German-born woman, had fine china and subscribed to Hausfrau magazine, sent from Germany. She, Helen, very sadly died of ALS in her forties. Their house was filled with German objects and handicrafts, including a hand-painted and framed 12-line poem I happened to inherit. My high-school German allowed me to read it. It began:

Immer, wenn Du meinst
es geht nicht mehr,
kommt von irgendwo
ein Lichtlein her. . .

Always, when you think
you can't go on anymore,
comes from somewhere
a little light. . .

It continues to say, "so that you try once again, and sing from sunshine and joy, and your burdens feel lighter, and you again become cheerful."

The poem fits my artificial-sunlight lamp, brought out of storage to glow at my side on dark mornings or late afternoons. Often in September I begin to lose heart, find everything difficult, and enjoy nothing but tiny cups of espresso. I'm one of the millions with Seasonal Affective Disorder, so somebody invented this little lamp, sent to me by my sister Rose. I didn't believe it could help, but it does. When overused (more than two or three hours per day) you feel not sunshine and joy but as if you've ingested too much caffeine.