Can we pretend today is January 2nd?

Can we pretend this is the day after New Year's Day 2024 and I'm publishing this blog post in a timely fashion? 

Only two days before, on New Year's Eve 2023, my pretty Karen Adams calendar was posing for a picture for the last time that year.

December's page was almost too pretty to say goodbye to and I still hadn't opened that green tube holding "Stress Away" that was a Christmas gift from my daughter-in-law, a roll on essential oil product that I've used for at least 8 years. 

Boy, was I going to need it along about January 20th when this happened in our front yard...

That's right, a big salt truck slipped backwards into our yard and wasn't able to get back on the icy road. 

After watching vehicle after vehicle slide into the ditch  of our long road frontage that afternoon we were first very happy to see the salt truck come to the rescue. That is, until he slid backward into our yard and broke our water meter and line and we were not only without water but water began spewing out into the yard, soon giving us an ice rink. Oh, and the white car is where someone in the neighborhood abandoned his car there and walked home. 

The good ending to that night was that three trucks and four supermen from our local utility district came and worked in the dark to restore our water. And as far as we know, in all the vehicles up and down our street that landed in the ditch that day, no one was hurt. 

Now, back to pretending it's January 2nd! I'm going to attempt to embed a video of our family Christmas party on December 23rd hosted by daughter-in-law Court in our old Valley View.

I hope that works! It was a wonderful night with everyone there except for our dear daughter Christy and son-in-law Bryan who now live in northern Florida. But her sons Luke and Alex were there with Alex's family. In fact, we had four generations of our family there including our four great-grandchildren! 

It was such a joy to join together as a family at the house that was our home for over 26 years. While there I couldn't help remembering all the Christmases and Thanksgivings and birthdays that were celelbrated and all the good times in the kitchen cooking and eating together. I'm so grateful to Court for hosting all of us!

Now, on to New Year's Eve. Let's have dessert first, shall we? Last post I told you I was going to make a Boston Cream Pie so I must show you that, but don't expect a cake where the chocolate glaze just drips down the edges because if a little chocolate is good, more is better.

A homemade cake deserves a pretty presentation so my Boston Cream Pie went on my milk glass cake stand and called for damask napkins and my wedding silver and wedding china. The television is set on YouTube's Hobbit House fireplace.

The cake was the best Boston Cream Pie I've ever eaten, including the first piece I ever had, in a Miami Beach restaurant when I was 18.

We did share our cake with our firstborn son and his family but RH and I looked forward all day to our slice at night until it was gone. 

This was a Cook's Illustrated recipe back when my dear Christopher Kimbell was Cook's Illustrated and I subscribed to the magazine for years. If you search for Wicked Good Boston Cream Pie you can find where food bloggers have the recipe for it. I now find Christopher Kimbell on his podcast, Milk Street. 

I did end up making braised salmon with caramelized onions from my Mediterranean cookbook by Nancy Harmon Jenkins.

And made potato salad to go with it. I froze individual portions of the salmon that make delicious lunches.

 That's pickled green beans on the plate too, part of a big gift box from Court.

On New Year's Day we got busy in the kitchen early. RH washed and cut two large bunches of collard greens for me. They do quickly cook down.

I also had black-eyed peas cooking early, soaking them overnight first, and Rancho Gordo's are the only dried beans I buy. Here's my last order from them of dried beans and their wonderful spices. I even gave Rancho Gordo products for Christmas gifts! 

After getting the collards and black-eyed peas cooking, I started on the pork loin roast.

That's prunes and apricots in the final gravy.

 I begged for a break in football games while we ate and got to watch a favorite Christmas movie.

Do you recognize it? I should have cropped out our red sofa. 

I'll end with a quotation that was the inspiration for my pork roast recipe, even though mine did not end up as beautiful as the one in the quotation from a favorite old 1975 book.

The Omars always ate dinner by candlelight. It was restful, provided a cozy atmosphere, and seemed right in the old house in which they lived. Barbara Omar was an expert in bringing forth the beauty from everything she touched, and she never minded the extra work. She was an excellent cook and the dishes she served often resembled magazine displays. He was a lucky man to have such a wife...He turned his attention back to their meal--the pork roast was almost too pretty to carve, he joked, so beautifully decorated with apricots, stuffed prunes, and parsley. This was the life he loved--a dear family which showed its love, good food, and the warmth of home.

                         From The Golden Acre by Thyra Ferre Bjorn 

I want to be Barbara Omar when I grow up! 

I'd like to sincerely thank those who read this terribly long post--even if you just scrolled through, which I wouldn't blame you for doing! 

RH and I wish you a safe and blessed 2024,

Dewena

A post in January, by the skin of my teeth.

 

Faith Baldwin, pictured in the header of Dewena's Window all these years, writes of wanting to express her thoughts but not always being able to:

...to pin the butterfly wing of the valid emotion to paper with the key of a typewriter is usually to destroy it.

If talented Faith Baldwin felt this way can you imagine how often I doubt my ability to put into words my thoughts here? Today as I try to get in one January post after one of my frequent absences from my blog, it seems even more difficult for me. 

And so, I'm starting back with another picture of the current year's beautiful Karen Adams calendar that my sweet daughter has given me each Christmas for a decade. 

 It is always a pleasure to open my new calendar because I know that Christy is opening hers too. You can bet we're thinking of each other every first day of the new month. Both Christy and I love pretty packaging too and Karen Adams' packaging is always a delight. Here's a link to this year's just in case anyone is interested.

Here I'm packing last year's calendar away where it went in the cabinet of my bed table along with those from years past.

I wonder how long it would be before they would fall on the same day and I could reuse them? Probably not in my lifetime?

And to add another picture to this post, here are RH and I at the family Christmas party at a son and daughter-in-law's house.

I hope that all of you had a beautiful Christmas and a happy and blessed New Year's Day. So many friends of mine have gone through another bout with Covid or have had their first bout of it recently. Take care!

I won't go so far as to wish you all the bliss of winter days because I don't think there are many who love January and February as much as I do, but spring really will be here before we know it. So I'll just end with wishing you daily comforts and joy until she arrives.

Here's a picture of our darling daughter taken one Christmas morning that seems like only yesterday:

See you soon! (That's one of my resolutions for 2023!)

 

A House with Twelve Rooms

It's not just a coincidence that I'm turning today to words of Faith Baldwin as I think about 2020 ending.

She's pictured in the illustration above that I begin every blog post with here at the Window. I begin every new year reading one of her books about her thoughts, this year with her Testament of Trust. 

  

This dear friend of Gladys Taber writes of the New Year as a house, "swept and garnished, the floors and furniture polished, all the clutter tossed out, and everywhere, for welcome, flowers."

 

How I always loved to think of the New Year as that! 

Can I do that this year? Can I toss out the worries and fears and frustrations of 2020 and go into 2021 with my mind swept clear? 

I've decided that would take Herculean effort that I just do not have so I am going to take the New Year as it comes, just as I did its older sister.

 

 

  I expect there will be some dust and clutter along the way but I also will be watching for little miracles every day.

 

 I pray that each one of you visiting this post will have a safe and healthy New Year, and that each month will bring you a myriad of lovely "astonishments".

Pretend that someone with a much better voice than mine is singing Auld Lang Syne right now as I leave you with the wise words of Faith Baldwin:

A year is like a new house; each of us has lived in such a house before; at least the shape looks the same and we know before we enter that there will be twelve rooms. It's funny how we can settle in, while knowing that someday we must move.

Each year's house seems familiar from the time we set foot in it; the furnishings are, to begin with, the same. But they may change, little or much, during our tenancy. And always astonishments await us. There'll be views and vistas we didn't see from last year's house; and almost certainly a step we'd forgotten, down which we'll stumble, or a light switch which will fail, at least temporarily.

There are certain rooms which we'll redecorate, according to our own customs, and there are rooms which will assume new contours--those of pain or mourning; and other rooms will be warm with joy.

Walk with me through the house of one year, all twelve rooms.

Faith Baldwin in 1958's Testament of Trust

 

A Dumb New Year's Day Question

Whoa! This ad from a 1928 magazine made me do a double take. I flipped back to the page several times.

How many years older will I be next New Year's Day?

Well, God willing and the creek don't rise, I'll be another year older, right? And you will be too?

Of course I get it--if I drink Postum instead of coffee then I'll be younger than otherwise, that's what the ad is trying to say. 

If I give up this and give up that, I'll age more slowly. If I do this and don't do that, ditto.

But, in January? The month that follows Christmas?

As Abbie Graham says in Time Off and On, "I am not wholly committed to January. I do not entirely trust it as a month." Can I at least wait until Easter's carrot cake is made, frosted with cream cheese, and nibbled, savoring each bite?

But I'm willing to approach this question from another tack. How many wonderful healthy things can I cook in January? 

Lots of things, beginning with the traditional New Year's Day dish of Collards!

  
Say you don't like collards? Maybe you'll like my recipe that is an old Gourmet magazine one:

 
I skip the bacon now and jump straight to cooking chopped onions, any color. Then I stir a tablespoon of brown sugar into the onions and caramelize them a little, stir in a good sprinkle of dried hot red pepper flakes--have you tried this brand?

 I get them from Amazon and they are amazing!

Then I add a little apple cider vinegar and a box of good chicken broth. You've already washed your collards, of course. Triple washed them because who wants to get any grit in their collards?

 Cut the toughest part of the stems out, bunch and slice them and add to the hot pot and toss and wilt and slow cook all afternoon, add salt and pepper and you have one fine mess of greens and pot liquor that will put strength and vigor in your body. 

 Don't believe me, just read here!

Just don't be like Fred Sanford and eat them when they're eight days old. They don't last that long in our house.

On New Year's Day we'll have a pork loin roast with sauerkraut (sharing an extra one with family), black-eyed peas, and Pioneer Woman's Stuffed Baked Potatoes, and some Cranberry Jalapeno Relish. And collards, naturally, with a spoonful of my hot pepper vinegar over them.

What are you having for New Year's Day?

Blessings in 2020, dear friends and family! And all kidding aside, I wish for all of us to be as young as healthily possible next New Year's Day. 

 

  

Happy New Year!

[cover of Woman's Home Companion December 1938]

R.H. and I wish each of you the very best in 2017.

Thank you to each one visiting here, to those of you who leave comments and emails, and to those of you who just read, as that is what I did for years myself.

I wish I could reach out and hug you and tell you what it has meant to have you here, through this year of sparse postings.

Party safely, take care of yourself, be proud of yourself because you are unique and wonderful!

See you in 2017 from Nashville, Tennessee!

An Unfamiliar Room

"Entering the new year

is like going into a big and almost

unfamiliar room."

Faith Baldwin

Evening Star

"Having tried to travel light,

I hope I haven't brought the brittle,

broken disappointments with me--

they can cut like glass--

or the faded shopworn things

that should have been thrown out long since."

Faith Baldwin

"But some old things, the good ones,

without which the new-year room

would be very empty,

are the qualities,

emotions,

and attachments we have cherished;

these fit into the room

like a hand in a glove."

Faith Baldwin

"Love and loyalty--

a quality rarer than one thinks--

gratitude,

remembered without embarrassment,

and joy recalled,

without mourning."

Faith Baldwin

"No new room becomes one into which we

can fit with ease

and live with security

if it lacks these."

Faith Baldwin

"It is easier said than done,

this moving only the good memories

into the new room,

compelling oneself to discard the unhappy ones.

But I find as the years go past

and I move from one year's room into another,

that I manage to take less with me

of the things I do not need

and should never have kept."

Faith Baldwin

Shall we travel light

into the unfamiliar room of

2015?