Corny

This is another of my favorite holiday ornaments. It's a little glass corncob, part of a small set of food-themed ornaments that were a gift from our friend Sue in California sometime back in the '90s, I think. I have the date written on the box, but the box is put away and I don't feel like digging it out until it's time to put the tree away.

The corn almost looks good enough to eat.

The star garland came from Crate & Barrel back in the mid-'90s. That store had a huge batch of holiday decorations each year (they still do). I got these and strands of wooden cranberries from their downtown San Francisco location. Before I found the wooden cranberries, I would make popcorn and string it along with real cranberries for the tree; where did I find the time to do that? It wouldn't even occur to me now to string popcorn. And if by some miracle I could find fresh cranberries in central France, I wouldn't waste them on the tree!

Bert in a box

A window box, that is. Here's a shot of our house on Tuesday. You can see that Bertie has just jumped from the deck onto the flower box outside the kitchen window. When he can't see us in the living room, he'll check to see what's going on in the kitchen. He knows where we hang out.

Nearly all the leaves are gone now. The grass will stay brilliant green all winter. Click to Bertinate.

Now that the flowers are gone from the boxes, we sometimes find Bert stretched out in one of them, napping in the dirt. Silly kitty.

Bertie perched on the window sill above the flower box. A nice view from up there.

Golden bear ornament

I've had this little golden bear for nearly thirty years. Ken gave it to me as part of a box of little glass ornaments back in nineteen eighty-something. There's also a circus bear, a polar bear, a dog, and a fish. This little golden bear is my favorite of the bunch.

I wonder if this Golden Bear went to Cal? Go Bears!

That's a miniature wine bottle ornament in the background. We've collected several of those over the years. This one actually has wine-colored liquid inside. The label says "Pinot Grigio. Once opened never to return." I have no idea what that's supposed to mean.

Cornbread muffins

On Sunday we planned a lunch of soup. It was basically a beef-based stock with tomato and vegetables, including okra, that we had in the freezer. Ken mixed a small amount of another similar soup into it and hotted it up a bit with a spicy pepper paste. We thought that cornbread would be a great accompaniment.

You can see the bits of corn inside the muffins. Tasty!

The cornbread we make is US southern style, not the sweetened cornbread that I was familiar with up north. There is no sugar in this recipe. The only changes I made were to substitute plain yogurt for the buttermilk and to add corn kernels to the batter. I also baked it in a muffin tin instead of a pan.

Savory corn muffins

• 2 cups cornmeal
• 10 oz (300 g) canned or frozen corn kernels
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1 tbsp melted butter (bacon fat would work great)
• 1 cup plain yogurt
• 1/2 cup cold water
• 2 eggs, well beaten
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 425ºF (I used 210ºC, slightly cooler).

Put the cornmeal into a large bowl. If using canned or frozen corn kernels, cook them for about five minutes in the 1 cup of boiling water. Drain the cooking liquid into the cornmeal along with the melted butter. Stir well. If you have a stick blender, process half of the corn so its broken up, otherwise coarsely chop half with a knife or leave it all whole; your choice. Set the corn aside.

Stir the yogurt, cold water, beaten eggs, soda, and salt into the cornmeal mixture. Now add the broken and whole corn and beat in thoroughly. Pour the batter into buttered muffin tins. You can fill them pretty full. If there is batter left, save it for a second batch.

Bake in a preheated oven for 15 to 20 minutes until a wooden skewer inserted into one of the muffins comes out clean. Cool and serve.

They're really good spread with butter!

A side note: I have a convection oven, which means that a fan blows inside the oven to maintain an even temperature. Whenever I make muffins, the convection fan tends to blow the soft batter to one side as it rises, making the muffins look lop-sided (you can kind of see the effect on the cut muffin in the photo). If I remember (which I didn't for this batch), I use the non-convection setting on the oven so the fan doesn't blow and the muffins come out looking symmetrical.

Sunday sunset

Sunday turned out to be a pretty day with big puffy clouds and nice sunny intervals. Late in the afternoon, as the sun went down, a new weather system started to move in and the sunset was pretty.

Looking southwest through the vineyard. See the airliner's contrail at the top?

Today we're going to have rain most of the day with the heaviest precipitation later this afternoon. The good part is that the system is bringing mild temperatures back, albeit temporarily.

I got nothing

I haven't taken many photos lately and I'm running out! I'll have to get out with the camera again soon, weather permitting. Here's a blast from the past: it's an Eiffel Tower Christmas tree ornament that I've had for ten years or so, found in the Museum Shop at the San Francisco Palace of the Legion of Honor before we moved to France.

This photo is from 2006.

This year's tree is up and the ornament is there. I'll take some pictures of it soon.

La Loire vue de Chaumont

The Loire River, seen from the castle at Chaumont, looking downriver toward the west. There's not much water in the river in this shot and it looks rather benign. But let it rain for a while upstream or in the mountains where the river begins, and it can fill up and become rather treacherous.

The Loire is France's longest river at over 1,000 kilometers.

I had always heard that the Loire is a wild river because it is not dammed and is only contained by earthen levees on either side. However, I did see a tv program not long ago that showed at least two dams, Grangent (built in the mid 1950s) and Villerest (built in 1978), with reservoirs up near the river's source, so I'm confused about that.