A Lovely Winter's Day

Even though spring has arrived here, according to all the beautiful pink trees and daffodils and daphne and red-flowering current bushes, today felt wintery. The repeated/lingering cold that M has been fighting pretty much all winter seems to be back, with lots of hacking and nose blowing. We ended up not having science club here today, and we actually overslept and missed A's piano lesson (I can't believe we did that! I've never done that before). So we had neither of our usual Friday activities.

But it occurred to me today that we humans are meant to hunker down in the winter and stay home. At least those of us who aren't that close to the equator. It seems like I spend all winter fighting the urge to stay home, and all summer out of doors. Surely this is how our ancestors lived--hunkered in during the winter, working on quilts and clothes, repairing tools, eating soup and stew, reading, going to sleep early. Today was one of those days here. A and I ran a few errands, but mostly we hung around and did schoolwork, read, made a delicious black bean soup for dinner and ginger snaps for dessert. After dinner we watched a movie, read On the Banks of Plum Creek, and called it a day. This was my kind of winter day.

OK, tomorrow, no excuses, I have to get some exercise. I seriously have to work off those ginger snaps!

P.S. I got the black bean soup recipe out of the current issue of Cook's Illustrated and it was incredibly delicious. I don't think I can post here, since I followed their recipe almost exactly, and they aren't giving it away for free. I definitely recommend it, though, if you come across it. It has ham in it, but it has lots of other seasonings and loads of flavor, so I imagine it would be very good without the ham.