My mother's cabbage rolls

As you can see from the condition of the recipe card, I've been making my mother's cabbage rolls for many, many years.

I love them. Ken loves them. They're easy. They're delicious.

A helpful hint before you try wrapping cabbage leaves around the hamburg-rice mixture:

Use a sharp knife to cut a cone-shaped hollowed-out area in the core of the cabbage, then place the
cabbage in the freezer, uncovered, overnight.

The next day take the frozen cabbage from the freezer and immediately place it into a pot of boiling water.

Let the cabbage sit in the hot water for ten minutes or so.

When you remove it from the water, the softened leaves will come off the head of cabbage easily and will be soft and pliable to work with. I learned this trick years after I'd been fighting with uncooperative cabbage leaves that wanted to tear and become a mess.

Here is a "glob" of the hamburg/onion/egg mixture ready to be rolled into the cabbage leaf.

Here it is rolled up, with another cabbage leaf ready to receive the hamburg/rice mixture. (These are actually half-leaves. The outer leaves are large enough to accommodate two hamburg fillings, so I cut the leaves in half. Once I get closer to the center of the cabbage, I use one full leaf per filling.

The cabbage rolls are now topped with tomato soup. I actually put some tomato soup in the bottom of the Dutch oven before adding the cabbage rolls. I also add a final sprinkling of fresh-ground pepper before putting the pot on the stove. I love pepper. I also add one bay leaf.

Um-ummm. Just like my mother used to make!

My Gulanfang

My WHAT?, you ask.

My Gulanfang collection.

When Ken was doing contract work in Chengdu, China, in 2005 and 2006, I would join him there for a few weeks at a time during several of his trips.

We had a housekeeper, of course, because every Westerner in China has a housekeeper. (This, incidentally, is the only time in my life that I had a housekeeper, but sadly it was the only time in my life when I didn't need one.)

So, to help pass the time while Ken was at work each day, I'd leave on a walking sightseeing tour. I felt perfectly safe in this city of 11,000,000 and I knew how to keep my bearings in order to return to our apartment at some point later in the morning.

I must have walked several miles each day, and I came upon a multitude of interesting sites.

One day I stumbled upon a small shop selling Gulanfangs.

I recognized them immediately, because I'd seen a story about Gulanfang on CCTV (Central China TV) just days earlier.

Gulanfang are small, elaborately embroidered animals made in a specific region of China. The embroidery is hand done, so of course that's what attracted me to these colorful creatures.

I browsed the shop quite some time before selecting the animals I wanted. Then I went back to the shop the next day and selected more.

I left the price tags on the underside of the animals. This morning as I dusted my collection and looked at their prices, I was reminded I'd paid roughly 25 yuan per animal. That was roughly $3.00 each in 2005-2006.

Some of the animals are easy to identify; others are a bit of a mystery to me. Then there's the two-headed donkey. I'm not sure what the story might be regarding him!

So these are my gulanfangs. It's another snowy day here in Maine, and these creatures are adding much color to an otherwise white world.

REAL Maine winters aren't for wimps

After a rather so-so start to this winter, things have suddenly ramped up and it's definitely a good, old-fashioned Maine winter around here.

It's not just the heavy snow, which we've been getting in big doses for the past week, but also the cold. Last night it was around 8 degrees when I went to bed. That's not extremely cold, I realize, but this cold is hanging on and hanging on and hanging on. I don't remember when the temperature last went above freezing during the day.

Yesterday the local meteorologist said, "February begins tomorrow, and with it the snow and the cold will continue."

I've been looking out my kitchen window for the past week and thinking I really need to refill the bird feeders. A few minutes ago I finally did it. It wasn't easy, because the cold has produced light, fluffy snow with each storm, and that means the snow hasn't packed down much.

With each step I took into the snow, I sank down at least a foot, often more. At one point I'd sunk down so deeply that I had a hard time lifting my foot out of the snow to attempt the next step.

But I got the job done, and now my pants are drying by the wood stove. My efforts were worth it because I saw a downy woodpecker at the fresh suet cake not more than three minutes after I came back inside.

I do wish I'd remembered to remove my birds' little red Christmas stocking from their feeder, though.

Oh, by the way, another heavy snowstorm is headed this way for tomorrow. The forecasters are saying 12" in this area of the state.

Me, again

Two posts in as many days. Incredible.

The truth is, though, I've had the virus that's been going around this area. Came down with it January 12 with a slight sore throat. That blossomed into a bad cough, much congestion, and it drained my energy.

I didn't go to the doctor, because I'm stubborn like that, but two friends who've had it told me it lasts four weeks, and they seem to be right. I'm still coughing and sounding as if I have The Plague, but I'm feeling SO much better. I actually have much of my energy back and have even dabbled in some housework and cooking.

I'm never too sick to knit, apparently, so I've kept my needles working when I haven't felt like doing much else.

I get such a charge out of that little pink and white hat in the top photo. I guess it's the four "prongs" that crack me up. I know of three babies, all girls, due this spring, so the pink hat will go to one of them.

This weird, dark photo is probably a mystery to you. It's what knitting-by-candlelight looks like. Our power went out for a couple of hours the evening of the blizzard, but since my knitting was a simple knit 5-6 rows, purl a couple of rows, I did my knitting by candlelight.

This is the same candlelight project,...in light of day. Another "pronged" hat.

And this one I finished this afternoon. The color doesn't show well here (It's actually a deep rose), nor does the color of the shawl it's sitting on, but you get the general idea.

All of these little hats are from a pattern by Cascade yarns. It's a free pattern at their website, and it's a quick, easy pattern. It's called the Cascade Fixation Baby Hat.







I also managed to crank out a pair of socks for myself. I do love my wool socks in the winter. If I'm wearing pants, you can bet I'm wearing my beloved wool socks. As usual, the pattern is by Yankee Knitter. It's the only sock pattern I've ever used, and I bet I've knit roughly twenty to twenty-five pairs of socks at this point. I used to give them away as gifts, but before long I figured out that no one appreciated my knitted socks as much as I did, so I keep them for myself now.

So that's what my needles and I have been up to. Now I'm off to bake a couple of loaves of banana bread. Somehow I've managed to accumulate three hands of fresh bananas, and there isn't a monkey in sight.

Storm

Attempt #2.

I just wrote this post, thought it had been saved, went to another website, returned to this post, and darned if the only thing saved was the photos.

Anyway, yes, we got the blizzard on Tuesday. It was a very cold, windy day with visibility about as good as you can see in this photo. I took this one while out in the storm to walk Molly. The wind whipped around, covering Molly in a while coat and plastering itself to my face and clothing.

This shows you the calm after the storm. I took this the next morning. As usual after a good Maine snowstorm, the landscape was beautiful after all was said and done.

Here's Ken's little workshop looking cozy in the snow.

I'm thinking I might be wise to take down my "Let it snow" sign. We have another heavy snowstorm on the way for tomorrow.

FitBit'n

 I know. I know. No posts in December until December 30, but suddenly another post today.

I want to get this one posted before I forget about it altogether.

For my birthday in November, my nephew and his wife gave me a FitBit. I'd happened to mention to them in October that I thought I might enjoy having one, and luckily they took my comment to heart.

I love it. I love the fact that it motivates me in so many unexpected ways. I love that it has made me aware of how much sitting I was doing during the course of an average day, although I'd always considered myself to be quite active.

The "Today" in the top photo is just that, today, December 31. I went to my thrice-weekly exercise class from 7:30 to 9:00 a.m., walked for almost an hour, then did the aerobic/weights video for 30 minutes. Mondays and Fridays are easy FitBit days for me, because I easily have 6,000-8,000 of my daily 10,000 steps taken care of during the exercise routine. I have only 700 steps to get to 10,000 today, and that's going to be easy.

Here is my FitBit record from yesterday, December 30. I exceeded my 10,000-step goal, but that's because I went to the mall to walk for 30 minutes before doing the errands that needed to get done. So I was about 4,000 steps, maybe 5,000 steps into my goal by mall-walking, then I got groceries and did some other shopping.

I don't always reach my 10,000-step goal. Some days I manage to accumulate only 7,000-8,000 steps, but I tell myself that's all right. Even at that, I'm getting more daily exercise than I had been getting, so that's a good thing.

You can see in the top chart that I've achieved 60 active minutes today, compared with 31 active minutes yesterday. Credit for that goes to the aerobic exercise videos, I'm sure, although partial credit goes to my being a fairly fast walker. I've always enjoyed walking at a good clip.

So my resolve for 2015 is to keep active with my FitBit!

Whoa!

 

I guess if I intend to write a blog post at all in December, I'd better get to it.

I don't know how this month has slipped by me so stealthily. One minute it was just after Thanksgiving; the next, it was almost New Year's.

We had little snow for Christmas, as you can see from the top photo. We had, instead, heavy rain, which took away our snow, and plenty of wild turkeys. I consider snow to be ESSENTIAL for Christmas Day, so you can imagine how happy I was when the weather turned on us.

In the midst of the Christmas preparations, I managed to knit an Easy but Looks Difficult scarf for the Stamp Out Cancer project. All scarves are to be knit or crocheted in pink and white. I've started my second one now and will use the remaining white and pink yarns for it.

I did a little decorating for Christmas, but I didn't go at it with quite the frenzy I've been known for in the past.

Now it's time to pack all of this away and get the house back in order. I always feel better once the house is relatively orderly again.

Here's the Bubble Bread I made for Christmas dinner. Below it is my annual Christmas tiramisu.

I used some of my dough ornaments, snowflakes and stars, to make napkin rings for the Christmas dinner table.

My centerpiece was a giant vase filled with freshly-cut holly and fresh cranberries, submerged or floating in water, with a candle in the center. I thought it was simple yet snazzy. Best of all, it was easy.

Now I'm trying to wrap my brain around the thought of 2015 being at our doorstep.

Best wishes for health and happiness in the new year!