December 27, 2007
Peoria, AZ
Christmas Day has come and gone, but the colder temperatures seem here to stay. According to the local news, we’ve had something like 20 consecutive days of below-normal temperatures. More on that later…
Our Christmas dinner came out nicely, except that we had enough food to serve ten people instead of two. We knew that the crown roast of pork would entail leftovers (aka “pre-planned-and-prepared meals”), but this was overboard. I separated out one portion for this week and three went in the freezer. Geri made an excellent “from scratch” dressing and her crispy baked red potatoes. I used carrot, parsnip, fennel and apple in place of a roasting rack, so we had plenty of veggies. The whole meal was paired with a red Burgundy (1998 Chambolle-Musigny «Les Charmes» Premier Cru from Domaine Daniel Rion et Fils) which was excellent, with bright red fruit and a smooth finish. It was part of my plan to attack the “wine box” in a more balanced fashion.
Geri received two bottles of 2004 Pinot Noir from Badge Wines in the Santa Rita Hills area of California. We met the winemaker, Bruno D’Alfonso, when we visited Sea Smoke Cellars in Lompoc early in 2007. He’s a pretty interesting guy, making his own wines after spending years as winemaker at Sanford. I’ve been looking for his Pinot ever since and finally found some at Sam’s Wine & Spirits in Chicago. Fortunately, it arrived in time for Christmas. We thought about trying one bottle with dinner, but decided to wait. That’s willpower!
Yesterday started out really chilly, with freeze warnings all over the valley. I got an early start and headed for the coach to check things out. I had decided to do a basic winterization, so I brought the materials to blow out the water lines and put non-toxic anti-freeze in the traps. I have a compressor in the coach basement and had made up an adapter to attach it to the water line, so it was a pretty straightforward process. Basically, it involves opening each faucet one at a time and waiting for no more water to be driven out by the air pressure. The only tricky parts are the washer (have to run it through a partial cycle to open the valves for the air and then pump out the water) and the icemaker (have to drain the line from the valve to the freezer manually). Overall, it took about 1.5 hours. I’ll probably have to do it again when we get back from our January trip, since we’re likely to still see some cold overnight lows in the latter part of January through early-February.
Last night, Geri made another “keeper” dinner, roasted chicken thighs with tomatoes and olives, baked yams, and broccoli. Fabulous! I've never been a big broccoli fan, but she has these steamer bags that do a wonderful job.
Today started early for me: I headed over to the doctor’s office before 8:00 AM to have some blood drawn for a lab test (have to monitor the cholesterol these days) in advance of a check-up on January 4. It was the coldest it's been this morning when we walked the pups. Even with a hat and jacket, the wind (about 20 mph) cut right through. We're becoming such wimps! :-)
We don’t have any big plans for today, just bring the pups back to the groomer for a touch up. Both of them need a trim around the eyes. We can’t tell if Merlin is a Yorkie or a sheepdog. (Well, we can tell, but he really needs to be trimmed.) We should have noticed it last week when we picked them up from grooming but didn’t. Geri called yesterday and made arrangements to bring them back in.
In the meantime, I’ll catch up on paying bills and updating Quicken, filing, and getting things organized for income taxes. Now that the AMT (“alternative minimum tax”) was adjusted by recent legislation, we should be much better off.
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