Cooking Gadgets, Shoulders and Entertainment in Everyday Ramblings

From our group hike in the wind and the rain on Friday. If I were a bird this would be a sight for winter weary eyes. As we were all standing in a circle, stamping our feet in the cold, like ponies wearing rain pants, before we started, the woman who encouraged me to try the Body Pump class was telling us about a body movement class at a dance studio I have been to when I was taking adult ballet.

Another woman, new to me, was asking questions about that and we started listing all the dance classes we had been to, the woman is finally out of her sling and recovering from pretty extensive shoulder surgery, which is why I had not met her before. We talked about Tango and Swing but when I mentioned Bhangra, she was very interested in that.

We talked a bit in the rain on the walk, she is also a birder at about my level with as much of a fondness for Lazuli Buntings as me; a lovely woman and I hope to see her on more events as the year progresses.

The Body Pump woman, who knows Mrs. Sherlock well because they have traveled together and they ride bikes on group rides, and I belong to the same gym chain and we were both talking to Mrs. Sherlock about our memberships and what we do there and because she has been talking about building upper body strength for over a year and it is not going to happen in my current yoga classes because of the limitations other students have, she joined our gym for a year!

We were going to do an introductory workout today but she texted me last night that their power was out and she was behind on planning for this trip she is taking this week to a Central Oregon area for snow sports and camaraderie so we pushed that off until she gets back.

It was quite the social weekend for me. Kes came up after I went to said gym on Saturday and she brought what was not what is called a cookie press, used for spritz cookies, but a Nordic Cookie Stamp with a lovely geometrical design. It is metal, 3 inches in circumference with a wooden handle like an old timey stamp pad stamp.

(Kind of like the kind draft boards used to use to stamp draft cards, with a person’s selective service designation. I find American young people’s concerns about being drafted these last few weeks poignant and heart breaking.)

We went shopping for food in case we do have a snow week, and bought the ingredients that I didn’t have to make Stamped Shortbread Citrus cookies and a savory bread pudding with kale and mushrooms.

It took us a little over three hours but worked well as we made the bread pudding after the dough was done and in the refrigerator. The oven temperature was the same for both, which was helpful, as if we had planned it that way. Ha!

I forgot the tablespoon of butter for the cookie glaze in the microwave but the glaze worked just fine without it. The cookies are really good. And pretty.

Then yesterday I went to church, mostly because I wanted to get the walk there and back in and I needed to pick up a book on hold at the library.

I listen to the New York Times Book Review podcast and I had put holds on two new literary books with long wait times. I had also put a hold on a couple of e-books as well. One is a 2nd novel by a writer, whose first novel, a kind of fantasy that I had enjoyed, though it wasn’t perfect and is quite popular. This one is The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern. The other one is in the Shakespeare series by Charlaine Harris, who wrote the Sookie Stackhouse books that True Blood is based on.

Of course all four holds came in at the same time.

Do you remember back when Netflix used to ask you all kinds of questions about what you liked to watch and wanted to watch after they first started? They figured out a few years in that this algorithm that they built to make recommendations for what to watch next on your stated preferences wasn’t working. The reason? Because it turns out we were all making lists of aspirational movies.

What we actually ended up watching was television series and movies that were light or entertaining or sexy or distracting. Ingmar Bergman took a hit. :)

This is what happened to me with the library reads… I went right for the Lily Bard series by Charlaine Harris. This character works out at a gym, is darker than many of her characters and is without a doubt the precursor to True Blood. It doesn’t have the supernatural elements but it has sex. Not Game of Thrones sex but…

I had an Audible credit and right after I finished this book yesterday I ordered the next one on the series in audiobook form that I hadn’t read instead of picking up the literary books.

Are you getting a picture of what I will be doing this coming week with the iffy weather?

Bu first I need to work on my classes for this week. I am teaching healthy happy shoulders.

There are far too many surgeries going on for my taste.

Last updated January 13, 2020