Mostly trying to catch up with friends, give cookies away, and eat and drink a little too much, in a typical holiday fashion.
Saturday my Dad would’ve been 99 years old if he was still here having birthdays – he stopped in 1998 at 77 (though the metadata in this Pitt Archives photo is incorrect; he died Nov. 21, 1998, not Dec. 10).
Alvin P. Shapiro, professor at University of Pittsburgh, 1956-1993. They date this pic 1980-85, that’s probably about right
Saturday was also the white cat’s last day on earth. She’d pretty much stopped eating, and when I came downstairs in the morning, she couldn’t stand up. I called the emergency vet service and we took her out to be euthanized at about 10:00, after the potatoes for the latkes and a pot of garbanzo beans I was cooking got done. So I am now cat-less for the first time in I don’t know how long – at least 17 years, how old she was. Her sister was the alpha cat, and probably more interesting, certainly smarter and more of a trouble maker. She went two years ago and we’ve never known if this one was secretly gleeful, “all the people, all the food, all the pets, for me, me, me” or if she missed her sis. Probably some of both actually. And as she aged and her sphere because smaller, she got more satisfying as a cat – it didn’t matter that she didn’t do all the crazy stuff her sister did – like stealing food off your plate, digging into the trash, taking the tops off cookie buckets to steal cookies – because she was warm and soft and she’d get in your lap and purr. All that’s necessary for a cat.
So I guess I’m on the lookout now for a new cat. I’ve looked at a couple of adoption sites already. I hope to meet my perfect next cat soon.
Speaking of latkes, Saturday night, Steve & Heike came over for latkes and leftover cookies. Ethan was here too. That was fun. To go with the latkes, I made the leftover Christmas pot roast into vegetable beef soup, and thawed out some applesauce, and we had a partly used big bucket of sour cream from the cookie party. For starters I made this carrot dip from Bon Appetit – that’s what the garbanzos were for, but I made all I had thinking I’d also try this salad from Milk Street – and also onion dip using the last of the caramelized onions from the Christmas Eve pizza.
I am in one of those phases where I’m feeling pressured by the leftovers in the fridge, and eating too much, making true the oft-repeated advice that too much food in the house leads to overeating. I tried to make small amounts of everything, but of course now there’re containers of both the onion and the carrot dips, I think 4 latkes, and about a quart of soup in the fridge, plus several servings of applesauce and of course sour cream. Monday, I put the extra garbanzos into the freezer. Saturday, I couldn’t find any dreidels to play, but we had a good time eating and talking.
Sunday we had a real brunch, eggs with salami and cheese (using up more cookie party leftovers); the last three Christmas dinner rolls, toasted; fried potatoes – I boiled a few extra potatoes that I didn’t grate up for latkes; and cherry muffins, using my blueberry muffin recipe, subbing cherries. Ethan went off to Milwaukee to pick up his girlfriend at the airport – he had her car – with a cookie box. I was afraid he might forget it, but he had a reminder in his phone to grab it out of the fridge.
After Ethan left, Mark and I saw Little Women on Sunday night. I liked it better than I thought I would – I was afraid it’d all be a bit too much, the type of young person’s thoughtful coming of age story that Mark likes a lot, but gives me a bit of pause because I don’t think I was ever like the young persons depicted. Like Lady Bird, they’re so self-aware. But it was good, kudos to Greta Gerwig, who come to think of it has played a lot the kind of messy, hapless, characters that I feel more like, as an actor (see New Yorker review). In the movie, all the characters were as strong and interesting as they are in the books – there really weren’t any bit players.
Sunday before we went to the movie I lit the litebrite tree and the Menorah with all its candles.
Somewhere in there, must’ve been Friday, we saw the last Star Wars. It had every Star Wars cliche we’ve all come to expect, like a small band of intrepid resistance fighters who’ve sneaked onto an imperial ship, blasting away at stormtroopers who outnumber them, but who seem to die awfully easy seeing as how they’re wearing that white armor – but I really liked the ending.
Monday we walked to the knife sharpening store, and used a gift certificate Mark gave me in the summer, for combined Mothers Day & birthday, to get a new 12-in. nonstick pan. I went for the ceramic finish, though I’m not finding the brand I bought in any of the 10 ten of 2019 lists. Evidently it has 3.4 out of 5 stars on Amazon with 158 reviews.
After I came home and packed up leftover cookies to donate to the food pantry when I go next, the first week of January. I thought I’d have one big foil pan, but in the end had two, plus keeping probably more cookies than is good for me; remember that holiday too-much-food-in-the-house, overeating, thing. And I thought I’d donate my two oldest 12-in. nonstick skillets to the pantry, now that I have the new one but I think maybe I’ll keep the better one (Farberware) and only donate one. And I’ll take the white kitty’s food and, now that cookie season is winding down, I’ll donate what’s left of my saved plastic clam shells and to-go containers, too. I washed all the cookie buckets except for a few that still have cookies in them, and are in the basement fridge. My big cabinet over the oven is nice and neat now that it doesn’t have a year’s worth of saved clamshells stuffed in alongside the big actual Tupperwares.
Monday night Jane & Jonathan came over and we went to dinner at Lombardino’s, and I gave them their cookie box to take home. I tried to eat lightly during the day to leave room for dinner, but those leftovers … I had a leftover pot roast sandwich on whole wheat toast with my dad’s quick 1,000 island (spoonful of mayo, ketchup, crumble in a pinch of dried oregano), and a cherry muffin. I now have about 8 pumpkin-cranberry muffins and 10 cherry ones in the freezer – I’ll have to take them to work, since nobody’s eating them but me. Breakfast wouldn’t have been so bad except around 4:00 I got into stress or boredom eating and ate a bunch of the onion dip with crackers and a bit of the carrot dip with pita. Oh leftovers.
And here’s Lake Mendota with no ice whatsoever, on 12-29-2019.
Oh climate change.
And, happy new year to all and best wishes for 2020.