I’m suddenly very tired of words. Here are some sunrises.
Happy Easter.
Small Bean
I ordered a small Bean Burrito from Barburrito and it came with this written on the brown bag:
(It was a good and spicy burrito.)
Cast Iron
Been curious about cooking with cast iron for a while, so I got a Lagostina preseasoned cast iron pan on sale at Canadian Tire for $20, and I guess I’m a cast iron man now.
I did have to re-season after the first couple inexperienced uses (made the mistake of cooking eggs the first time), and it took a while to get used to the concept of not washing the pan, just letting it gather polymerized oil layers with every use. At some point the seasoning became truly nonstick, and at last I understood The Way of Cast Iron.
So far I’ve cooked cornbread, bacon, eggs, vegetable stir fry, garlic fried rice, breaded italian chicken cutlets, giant oat pancakes, sausages, and Newfoundland Steak.
For instruction and inspiration I’ve purchased MeFite cinnachick’s Everything Cast Iron Cookbook (affiliate link). New paperbacks are in stock now but at the time I had to buy it secondhand from some online thrift bookstore — which gave us a bit of a funny/awkward story that I will not relay here.
Things I still want to try cooking in this pan: Breakfast Skillet Cake, Skillet Pizza, Paella, and Hamburger Rice.
New Year, New Trail
New Year’s Day was cool and foggy, good for a little hike around the Jerry Lonecloud and Jersey Jack trails at Cole Harbour Heritage Park.
Temps had peaked at above freezing for the day, but patches of ice persisted on the paths, and the shallow waters of the harbour were still frozen beneath a thick, swirling mist. Ezra and I threw a few rocks onto the ice: some bounced and skidded, some fell through.
We found a bear.
Christmas 2021
Our Christmas tree, accompanied by a parol Amy made with these papercut patterns:
On Christmas Day Ezra got Bowser’s Castle, while Amy got me False Knees and a BasicFun handheld Carmen Sandiego game (to go with last year’s Oregon Trail). I’d already gifted Amy her Christmas gift early (iPhone 12 mini) but also got us some nice NS-themed sweaters from Local Love.
Can’t forget the cats; Martha and Amelia got little handmade plush catnip kickers from Hen and Goose.
Later in the afternoon we went for a walk around the beach, taking in the golden landscape of cold, tree-lined dunes by the Atlantic, lit by the low winter sun.
Merry Christmas — our second pandemic holiday, but we try to find what light we can. More photos here as the winter goes on.
Snowy Cart
Wintry
A dusting, a thaw, a coating, a thaw, a snowstorm, a thaw.
Here’s Ezra trying his slide under about 20cm of snow:
Moose, Passage, Tree
Eventful day: visited the Cow Bay Moose, played on a playground overlooking the ocean, popped into Shore Things, and ended the day with a new Christmas tree from a local lot — it fit in our car’s trunk!
Been a while since we last visited the moose. Should do that more often. (Note: small cheat; this entry was backdated, sorry)
Autumnal
Another autumn, the leaves change, the trees turn colours.
Fall. It gets colder and darker. Some of the maple leaves are fiery.
And soon the trees are bare again, and we can see to the ocean.
Winter snow soon. For now, always relevant Onion article.
Rainbow
Sun in the west peeked through storm clouds in the late afternoon, and a bright double rainbow appeared in the east, visible all over Halifax. Caught the full arc from work with the wide angle lens of my GoPro:
Probably the brightest rainbow I’ve seen, with the pronounced inner brightening clearly visible. Note the helicopter just inside the outer rainbow, to the left. (Might need to view this at full size to see it.)