For a lot of us, winter is already here, but who could resist photos like this from the gifted and ever-dependable Ozark Hillbilly?
Who’s got garden reports? Questions about household repair / maintenance? Tips for better photograhs — or questions on how to get the best shots?
opiejeanne
Those frost flowers are much prettier than mine, which are just columns of ice pushing up out of mole hills in the lawn, usually with a little pebble at the top.
A couple of weeks ago there were about 60 apples on two of our trees after we’d eaten the good ones. We left them because they had cork spot throughout and we thought the critters might eat some of them, but planned to pick and dispose of them this week. They are all gone, every apple on the trees and nothing left on the ground and we’re left wondering what took them. Did a bear sit in our garden eating apples one night? Or did the three deer we saw a half mile down the road come and gorge themselves while we slept? There are no broken branches and nothing else in the garden has been touched, which is why I think it wasn’t deer. It was too many apples for one raccoon to finish and they usually don’t visit us in more than pairs.
Sab
I love these photos. Winter is here in Ohio also. A relief to me if not to the neighborhood squirrels. Hope my peanuts help.
We bought our Christmas tree last week and dumped it in the yard. Today we are planning to shake off the snow and haul it into the house.
For the live tree enthusiasts who wonder how we have a cut tree: I am in my mid-sixties. How many large trees would I have in my yard if I had tried to save Christmas tree every year? Also I eat vegetables.
Though to be honest the live tree is at my ancient dad’s house, and our house has a fiber optic tree that we hope survives another year of the feline attacks on Christmas.
Sab
@opiejeanne: I bet it was the deer. Voracious in winter, poor guys.
JPL
The pictures are lovely. Most of the snow is melted in my area but the weight of the snow caused several limbs to fall in my yard. Yesterday I started the clean up, but it will take some weeks before it’s cleared.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Sab: We used to leave the tree in the pot and put it outside and just bring it back in the next year. We’d usually get about 5 years out of the tree before we’d plant it.
Of course, there was one year we brought it into the house and madame started the decorations and saw something move in the the tree. A lizard had decided to make itself at home in the pot.
opiejeanne
@Sab: Yeah, probably although we’ve never seen them closer than that half mile. We not only have a bear cruising through our neighborhood, there is also a puma, the other direction past our house about a quarter mile. I’ve been told that deer stay away from bears, that if you have bears you won’t have deer. Seems to be the case in the mountains.
I dunno. There left a lot of yummy shrubbery untouched.
rikyrah
Good Morning,Everyone ???
rikyrah
The pictures are beautiful ?
Sab
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Live lizard in your tree? Midwest everything dies that is outside unless it’s a mammal.
We had very amazing lizards in my Florida childhood. Anoles, that turned green or brown, depending on their mood or fear level.
My seat mate in first grade in Florida in 1960 had a cockroach in a jar that he maintained for the whole school year. I was new to Florida and thought it was wonderful. 6 year olds have no judgment.
On the other hand, never did like alligators.
Sab
@rikyrah: Border line lurker: may I say good morning back? You have been brightening my morning for years.
JPL
@Sab: That darn cockroach is probably still alive and lurking somewhere.
Sab
@JPL: Even if someone stomped it, it probably shook itself off and moved on.
Sab
Nothing kills a thread like discussing cockroach especially. Won’t make that mistake again.
Raven
Nice pics! It’s pretty cold here and there was a bit of a snow “event” here last week so I guess it’s winter. My wife’s sibs did drive down from Virginia and we mostly ate and visited. Their pop did a vice narration over a bunch of home movies of them including shots of each of them coming home from the hospital right after their births. It was fun even thought they’ve all seen them numerous times. Their mom was a Virginia beauty and they never fail to comment about her risqué short shorts in the summer clips. Her mom was also an incredible gardener and, obviously, instilled that love her her daughter. She had heart problems and her MD told her she needed to back off ther garden work. One summer day over 20 years ago she worked like a demon in her plot and died in her sleep that night. I had only met her a couple of times before she died so I didn’t really know her except through the stories.
Raven
@Sab: That has nothing to do with Sunday morning threads. People come and go with more frequency on Sunday and there can be big gaps in comments.
MomSense
@Sab:
A few years ago my son was in charge of the classroom’s Madagascar cockroaches while his teacher was away. Ever try to keep crickets alive in a plastic bag long enough to feed them to a bunch of hungry cockroaches? Good times.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Sab: Yes, a live lizard in the tree; remember I’m in CA.
NotMax
@opiejeanne
Oh no, the chipmunks have learned to stand atop one another and form a tower!
Time to pack up and skedaddle.
:)
Sab
@Raven: So sorry for your family’s loss. She seemed like a lovely person. I am so glad she died pescefully.
I come from a family that lives long but doesn’t age well. Mother had hereditary ataxia where she spent ten years mostly not able to walk well and five years not able to walk at all and also emotionally unhinged. She was physically limited, emotionally raw, and desperately unhappy. This wasn’t about her moral character. Her physical collapse also had a physiological basis.
My father is in his mid-nineties and only recognizes me out of his four children, because I am around a lot.
Dad in his nineties used to be brilliant, now doesn’t recognize most of his children, none of his grandchildren, and only the son in law who lives locally
There are many worse ends than dying in your sleep after a day spent well.
Elizabelle
Good morning, pals. Countdown to Christmas ? Eve begins. Coffee up. I will have some gluhwein for you in an hour or two.
I think we all need gluhwein to get through these dark days.
Quinerly
@rikyrah: Good morning from Little Ivan and Fat John Lennon. Poco’s tribe is up. Poco snores on….Exhausting day watching his mom from outside cleaning her basement joists (oops, everyone tells me to quit calling it a basement since less than 2 feet of it is actually underground and it has its own entrance and full windows). Hopefully, “Salle Roche’s” kitchen cabinets and appliances go in this week. Behind on our construction schedule.
Sab
@MomSense: I hope most of those cockroach especially survived. Were those the Madagascar hissing kind.? I have met one of those and it (he/she) was very cool.
Also VERY large. Very sweet, considering it was a bug/insect.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle: I’ve been informed that we will be celebrating Christmas on Christmas Eve. Now I have to come up with dinner plans, I think all I have to get is a roast.
I’m still waiting for all my photos to copy to my new drive, I figured it’d be done by 4:30. Looks to be right.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Sab: I had some neighbors that were from Madagascar, they didn’t bring any cockroaches.
Quinerly
Ozark…..great pictures!??❤ (see how easy it was for me to say that?….just made my reservations for the Carlsbad Caverns and White Sands legs of this year’s trip. January 18th can’t come soon enough)
Quinerly
@Elizabelle: Good morning! Are you spending Christmas Eve/Christmas at home or are you “on the road?”
NotMax
@Quinerly
7-Up is the uncola.
You’ve got the unBatcave.
;)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: Of course, the Batcave is in Griffith Park.
JPL
@Raven: Sounds as though a good time was had by all.
NotMax
@Elizabelle
Calls for a smidgen of music?
Sab
@?BillinGlendaleCA: A guy in my town loves weird critters, and has a business where he takes his weird critters around to local schools and other events. I have always been creeped out about his alligator, interested in his pythons, and charmed by his hissing cockroach.
This has nothing to do with my views with folks from Madagascar.
I moved up from Florida to Ohio as a child, I didn’t bring any anoles, alligators or cockroaches with me.
MomSense
@Sab:
Yes, and they were cool. Apparently they are also very clean. The funny part was going to the feed store where they have just added crickets to their regular orders because of that one teacher.
The feed store is very cool except they keep the bully sticks and pigs ears in bushel baskets at dog muzzle height.
Quinerly
@NotMax:
?
NotMax
@MomSense
“Look, it’s a simple enough question, Going to ask it one last time. What do your feed your cockroach?”
(*crickets*)
JPL
The daughter of a friend has a bearded dragon, and as part of the regular diet ingests crickets. The lizard loves scritches as much as my dog. .
Sab
@NotMax: You are just a troublemaker ( df. troof to power.)
Sab
@NotMax: Bookbindings. Every cockroach dreams of being let loose in a rare book library.
MomSense
@NotMax:
Ha!
Raven
@?BillinGlendaleCA: We. Are going to Blacksburg Christmas Eve and Lynchburg Christmas Day. We have a loft AIR BNB in Lynchburg and last night they dropped on me that everyone was coming to our place for a little gathering! The info on the bnb says no parties so I wasn’t too happy they’d made plans for a 10 people gig so I emailed the owner to clear his with her.
Sab
@MomSense: I hesitate to ask what is a bullystick? I have a feeling it is something pigs ain’t happy about.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Raven:
Sounds like a good idea and avoid any surprises.
NotMax
@Raven
Midnight mass mooning in Falwell’s direction?
MomSense
@Sab:
Bull pen is
Raven
@NotMax: It’s just up then road. I think what’s bothersa me most biased that they are making a real effort to be “normalized” and an academic institution. We are part of an association of faculty development organizatiions and they are part of it. I finally told my boss that I would no longer participate with schools like Liberty involved.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
What beautiful pictures. I envy the ability to see them waiting there to happen.
rikyrah
@Quinerly:
Morning Poco and the tribe ??
Currants
Ozark —thank you for such beautiful pictures! I’ve seen them before, but can you remind me what the conditions are for growing these? I see beautiful ice/frost things outside in the mornings, but never this sort of thing.
By the way, you gave me instructions for making a new garden gate last winter. I finally got it made…but now have to set new fenceposts to hold it. So that will be another project for spring.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Watching “The Spy Who Loved Me” on Hulu. Every time I watch it (it is a guilty pleasure – I like looking at Barbara Bach), I’m reminded of how stunningly awful the movie is. Ridiculous writing, and a couple of the most ludicrous villains ever in Stromberg and Jaws.
And Moore’s delivery of his “humor” lines comes off poorly.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
And remember she married Ringo.
Patricia Kayden
Mario Batali is down and out. It feels as if the #MeToo movement is doing an excellent job of showing how pervasive sexual harassment is in the entertainment industry. We’ve all heard of the “casting couch” but whoa, I didn’t expect so many men to be engaged in harassing conduct. I’m shook (as the young folk say).
satby
@rikyrah: Good morning ?!
I got up at 5:15, took the dogs out, poured my coffee, and fell deep asleep in my chair after only a sip. Those Advil PMs I took last night really worked a bit better than I needed them to.
OzarkHillbilly
@Currants: Frost flowers occur when the unfrozen ground is holding plenty of moisture and there is a hard freeze. Only certain dead, reedy grasses will produce them and are more likely to do so when they have been mowed. As the water in the above ground stem freezes it is extruded as ice through fractures in the stem and as it does so it pulls more unfrozen water into the stems, which also freezes and pulls more water into the stem…. I managed to catch these just as the sun was coming up over the ridgeline above the field. Sunlight is the kiss of death for frost flowers. It was a cold morning (24 degrees at my ridgetop house, maybe 21-2 down in the valley) so they probably lasted at best a half hour in the sun.
OzarkHillbilly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Nobody’s perfect.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: beautiful pictures!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Patricia Kayden:
By the time #metoo finishes with its “this lumpy, creepy dude looked at my ass and asked me out, that’s just like a rape and I’ll never recover” phase, about all that will be left of the producer and director side of entertainment will be candyassed Christian companies with message lockdown and ironclad NDAs. The Dem congressional delegation will be down to just whatever women are serving and Blake Farenthold will have made a loud confession to Christ Jesus, withdrawn his pledge to not seek re-election and will have been elected Speaker of the House in a 385-50 vote (the 50 representing democratic numbers).
Follow it on twitter and tell me I’m wrong.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: The pictures are wonderful and thank you for venturing outside to take them.
debbie
Awesome photos! Amazing beauty in what (to me) is an austere, barren season. Like this:
The Snow Man
Wallace Stevens
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
debbie
@Raven:
Nothing better than home movies. Time mostly destroyed ours, sadly.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Looks like my transfer of pics to the new drive work and Lightroom is snappy again.
stinger
Wow! I hate winter but love those photos!
Patricia Kayden
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: My friend and I were surmising that there’s going to be a backlash against #MeToo like there is against any other social justice movement. That will happen once it takes down some prominent Rightwinger.
OzarkHillbilly
@Patricia Kayden: In my opinion the #metoo movement began by taking down Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly.
ThresherK
@OzarkHillbilly: Oh, BillO is like the Yuri Gagarin (if being the first man in space were a bad thing) of this movement, except BillO’s head won’t be on a pike like it should be. Our press corps will not stand to make a right-winger the biggest perpetrator taken down by #MeToo.
Now I’m flashing back to when O’Reilly went down. I had to listen to some lefties say “This is too far, we’re only making (right-wing protofascists) them angry!”
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: One wonders how many of the “creep asked me out” tales are from real live humans. I suspect at least some are part of an organized attempt to keep the moral panic ratcheting up so that the whole movement can be discredited.
OzarkHillbilly
@ThresherK:
Even if they weren’t obviously already angry, why would that be a problem?
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@debbie: I’m not a big poetry person, I rarely “get” a poem or understand what makes a good one.
But I saw this Robert Frost poem on a bus one day (one of those art-in-public-places initiatives) and fell in love with it. It somehow captures something about winter and how walking around in fresh snow brings me pure joy in ways I don’t understand.
Dust of Snow
By Robert Frost
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@MomSense: “You chew it, you buy it”
ThresherK
@OzarkHillbilly: I know. I had to remind certain people* about Dan Rather’s ousting (albeit asymmetric response for LW and RW “scandals”) being a crown prince offspring of the 00’s mainstream media being fucked by the right-wing pukefunnel..
(*Nobody here, mind you.)
ETA: The right wing is already mad. If they become less mad at me or any Democrat, that means I, or Democrat X, is Doing It Wrong. That’s how far around the bend they’ve gone.
MomSense
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Exactly! When I went there on the pup’s birthday they let her pick out a present from the store. They love her there. She has managed to charm everyone so even the guys who operate the tractors will stop and come over to pet her and give her treats. Old Mainahs who look surly and mostly communicate with head nodding will turn into puppy talking fools.
germy
debbie
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Nice! I’ll have to keep Frost in mind whenever I wax too Stevens-y.
Kay
I’m trying not to pay attention for a while because the tax bill really upsets me. Cordray’s campaign will start up after Christmas so that will be something positive to focus on. I’m also pleased because my middle son, who is mysterious and often absent although he lives an hour away, is having the Christmas gifts he’s (apparently) buying sent here so he must be both flush and planning on showing up. My daughter goes to a lot of effort to plan a “gift exchange” among her siblings. They are only supposed to buy for their allocated sib and there’s a price limit. He is completely ignoring this because a lot of packages are coming so he’s buying for everyone. Odds are he never read the email.
Jager
@MomSense:
First class marketing, I’d say.
Brachiator
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: A very nice poem for December. Thanks for sharing it.
NotMax
Owie.
Forced awake by a canker sore in a spot where it can’t help but rub against the gum right where the bottom of the tooth is.
Fortunately, knew right where the licorice drops were. One of those to suck on, placed between the sore and the gum, helps tremendously to alleviate discomfort.
No hope for returning to slumber; wide awake. Too pre-dawn to fuss making a whole pot of coffee, enjoying a mug of Constant Comment tea.
chopper
had a Chanukah open house yesterday, about 70 people came through. fried up every goddamn thing you can imagine. now to spend the rest of the weekend scraping a layer of oil off of all the kitchen surfaces…
Brachiator
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
You’re wrong.
@Patricia Kayden:
Some of the stories are unbearably sad. Vanity Fair, the Guardian and others are reporting about how Harvey Weinstein deliberately tried to hurt the careers of actresses who defied him. He flat out told the director of the Lord of the Rings films to reject Mira Sorvino and Ashley Judd as casting choices.
And we learn about talented women who were so discouraged by vile practices that they gave up and left various industries and gave up work that they loved.
There may be an attempt at a backlash, but this needs to be resisted. Society needs to be reformed.
HinTN
@debbie: I don’t think you can be too
debit
When I used to have a LJ I used to post this PSA every year. If you haven’t read Truman Capote’s Christmas Memory, please do yourself a favor and do so. It’s short enough to read with your morning coffee.
NotMax
@chopper
70? Wowsers. That’s a fryathlon.
currants
@OzarkHillbilly: Thank you. They’re amazing. We had a really long dry fall here, but next year I’ll be on watch for them.
Steeplejack
Water woes! Went to take a (much-needed) shower yesterday morning and discovered the hot water was not working. Small trickle of water coming out, never got warm. I was already pretty seedy, and I went through the rest of the day getting seedier and feeling grumpier. And feeling frustrated because I didn’t know what the cause was. (Probably like the people I help with computer stuff.) Neighbors mysteriously absent, so I couldn’t check with them to see if it was just me.
I would periodically check the tap in the bathroom while dreading having to deal with the situation. (Absentee landlord—a great guy, for the record—in Florida or Georgia, six-unit condo building, so who’s responsible, etc., etc.) The only thing I could think was that maybe a pipe froze. It has been getting down in the 20s here in NoVA the last week. But the building is a solid brick pile, retains heat well, and I’ve never had that worry before. Or, I thought, maybe something happened with the water heater in the basement.
Anyway, checked the tap when I got up this morning. Flow was slightly better, but still no heat. Then just a little while ago I tried it again while I was passing by. Full flow! And the water got hot after a little while. So I hopped in the shower right away to hog the hot water before it went out again or the neighbors used it all. IGMFY! Now I’m feeling pretty feisty. Winter white and minty fresh.
But I am wondering what the universe is trying to tell me with the water stuff. Last Tuesday I went to take a shower late in the morning and discovered there was no water at all. I absolutely had to go to the grocery—cat food!—so I went out feeling seedy and grumpy. There were a couple of utility trucks doing some big-ass digging and fiddling down the street, so it looked like the whole street was affected. Water came back late in the afternoon. Then there was a notice that the water would be out from 10:00 to 4:00 on Thursday. I was able to plan around that. Took a shower in the morning and went out to do errands; water came back about 4:00 as predicted.
So, end of story. Tide comes in, tide goes out; you can’t explain that. No big plans today except feeling clean. In fact, I’m feeling so perky I may go out and hit the deli for that pastrami sandwich I’ve been craving. Yee-haw.
oldgold
Each year I do a review of my gardening experience. This year as always, I have determined that West of Eden was much less than it should have been as a consequence of missing key moisture.
This despite having received over 25 inches of rain.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Brachiator:
Weinstein, Farenthold, Spacey, Trump are shitheads which need to be driven from public spaces. instead, even.
But Batali? Franken? Spurlock? The false equivalence of their (to me) far more normal conduct is getting ugly, and we’re taking out left oriented men at a high rate. I’m also seeing seeing petty vendettas spreading out to Colicchio, Damon and others for not doing an SJW callout on behavior.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Anyplace nearby offer up dirty rice?
;)
TaMara (HFG)
Those are lovely photos!!
I’m hoping that the ducks, while wandering around my yard are helping revive it, between their aerating with their little beaks and claws, and the constant duck poo, it seems to be helping the grass (which because of the warm winter so far, is thriving). And back in the veggie garden, their food, water and hut should be giving me instant compost over the winter. I use what I clean from their hut to compost around my bushes (there’s enough water content I’m not worried about it being to acidic).
Fingers crossed.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
Sorry, I don’t get it.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Down home Southern recipe.
Name of it seemed to fit with the state of being unwashed.
;)
Miss Bianca
@opiejeanne:Maybe it was some mad rogue cider-maker, to whom spots and blemishes wouldn’t matter a whit. : )
Miss Bianca
@Raven: Been wanting to check out that region of VA, or more precisely north and west of that region – Augusta County. From what I remember it’s very beautiful in the summer – wondering what winter is like up there!
StringOnAStick
@NotMax: You can buy over the counter a thing called Cankacover; they are little cellulose disks that adhere to the canker sore and slowly dissolve as it heals. It takes longer to heal an uncovered sore because the skin is so thin and damaged, plus every bit of abrasion sets you back and hurts like crazy).
Miss Bianca
@chopper: One word for you – OK, two:
Air fryer.
Apparently they are the Hot New Thing in kitchen appliances. A friend of mine has one and can’t stop raving about it.
scav
Little tastey tidbit of nothing much that will nevertheless (pleeeeaase!) stick in the craw of someone not getting his widdle wide in a fancy carriage and private golfing with adoring crowns moment: Prince Harry interviews Barack Obama for Today programme guest slot. (Have to admire the use of the spare in such a high visability moment too.)
amygdala
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Seriously? Batali has been accused of groping and kissing women, including subordinates, who did not welcome what he was doing. The ugly there belongs to him. As for Spurlock, he’s being edgy by getting out in front of the story, but what he shares with the others is a penchant for the nonapology apology.
Absolutely not to both of them, and to any handwaving that this should constitute “normal conduct.”
Yutsano
@scav: Prince Harry is the boyfriend we all wish we could have.
Also from the Graniaud: Brother Cornel needs to take all the seats.
trollhattan
@scav:
That’s very cool. The young man could go places.
BBC World Service is why I can’t bring myself to cancel SiriusXM for my car.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Oh my god. I can’t even bring myself to read the text. That is more sad than anything else.
trollhattan
@amygdala:
Batali and Franken seem separated by an order of magnitude. Batali hung out at an after hours place nicknamed “The Rape Room”
Eric S.
RE: Home repairs. I’ve had the bathroom under construction since Thanksgiving. The rehab was needed but was forced to start sooner than planned because of leak. Construction is nearly done but the downstairs neighbor came up and said water was leaking all over his place today. My washing machine, which backs up to the bathroom wall in another room dumped water all over. The contractor is on his way down. We’re going to pull the washer and dryer out of the closet and see what is to be seen.
Gelfling 545
Baking some frosted orange cranberry cookies this morning and making chili. Heading out to hear my son in law’s band play a benefit for a local food bank at 5. The band is Ten Cent Howl. They play a lot of original music with a few covers mixed in. If you’re a fan of “Americana” music you will enjoy. I’m not, in general – with some exceptions, but I enjoy their work nonetheless.
laura
@debit: the movie -with the incomparable actress Geraldine Page is so touching and bittersweet. All the feels!
amygdala
@trollhattan: Franken’s situation is complicated by rodent procreative activities on the right, among other things. But I’m stunned anyone would defend Batali, and Spurlock’s “apology” is anything but. Although I suppose we should be grateful he at least had the good sense not to append a cinnamon roll recipe, as Batali did.
NotMax
@StringOnAStick
Thanks.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
I know what dirty rice is. Just didn’t make the connection. Sorry.
Jeanne Ringland
@Miss Bianca: I like that theory better.
frosty
@Kay:
This is just like my brother when we’d have a grab bag. He’d just go out and by something else for everyone too. I finally decided to quit feeling like a clod for following the rules.
J R in WV
@Raven:
For a gardener, working hard all day doing what you love, then dying in your sleep, sounds good to me. Having spent a couple of months in MICU and SICU helping wife recover, I got to see lots of people on total life support, eventually stopped at 1 am.
I think anyone who has been there for 6 or 8 of those would be good with the do what you love all afternoon, pass that night. ICU is all glass. I was there around the clock some days. You get to watch different families cope with death in their own ways.
MoxieM
@Elizabelle: Yum! I’ll see your Gluhwein, and raise you Glögg. (do not attempt to walk after consumption.) One Swedish friend said his recipe was basically to open his liquor cabinet, pour it all into a big kettle, and add the spices.
I do:
1 liter of vodka–anything reasonable, no need to break the bank
2 bottles of nice but not too expensive red wine
1/2 bottle of Port (some folks use brandy)
Maybe 3/4 bottle of whole cinnamon sticks–use your judgement, depending on length, etc.
About 1/2 cup of whole cardamom pods
About 1/2 one of those dinky spice containers of whole cloves–so maybe a scant 1/4 cup?
Keep nearby:
3/4 pound or so of dark seedless raisins
3/4 pound or so of slivered (NOT toasted) almonds
Warm gently in a large soup kettle until it smells like heaven.
Ladle into pretty teacups, with a dainty spoon for the nuts & raisins preferably (added when you ladle out the drink.)
Good with everything: gingerbread; cheese, herrings especially recommended.
Go gently, it packs a wallop.