Blue Ribbon Weather

The Weather
Like I mentioned in the last post, we had an arctic front move through the neighborhood early last week and temperatures dipped down into the 20s. Snowflakes flurried as snowflakes are wont to do. This weekend warmed up a bit, into the high 40s. According to weatherchannel.com, this is NOT a harbinger of spring. Apparently, we still have more cold weather waiting in the wings, with snow expected next weekend.

Food
We've nearly worn our soup repertoire threadbare, so the other night we made Chicken Cordon Bleu. This dish dates all the way back to 1940s Switzerland. Since they declared neutrality during World War II, they had the time and resources to invent new schnitzels. The original dish calls for veal and gruyere instead of prosciutto and swiss. We're not so fancy, so we just used ham and swiss. At some point, before it migrated to the US in the 1960s, this schnitzel (a blanket term for any breaded cutlet) picked up the name cordon bleu, which means blue ribbon in French. It has absolutely no relation to the culinary education system.

I found the Tyler Florence recipe online and served it with the extra long grain wild rice we bought to make the Aunt Sheri Girls' Movie Night Wild Rice Soup and baby sugar snap peas, which are pretty much the final word on green beans.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/chicken-cordon-bleu-recipe2/index.html

School 
This is the end of the Grad School Semester for Ainers. She's been busy grading and taking exams and writing papers. I last saw her, briefly, Wednesday evening. I assume she's still alive since the fluid level of the milk carton continues to drop and the dirty clothes pile continues to increase in size. I'm hoping to see her again next Sunday. We'll be driving to Oklahoma together.

Goins On
The squirrels have gotten fat. The Fox Squirrel of Texas has no real winter for which it needs any sort of preparation. Our Eastern Gray Squirrels feed from the dumpster all autumn long in preparation of the cold weather to come. As early as August, you can see them hopping across the parking lot carrying apples and sandwiches and other food items that clearly outweigh them. Now, they sort of waddle around on the sidewalks looking gassy.

Pig has grown more affectionate. She wants to play fetch all day long. She doesn't like cat toys, however, all she wants is the little plastic ring you get off of milk cartons or soda bottles. A little plastic ring is pretty much the pinnacle of bliss for her. So she brings the little plastic ring for me to throw, but she drops it quietly behind my chair. When I don't hear the plastic hit the carpet, she sinks her claws into my back as friendly way of saying, "hey there, let's play." The other day, I thought I had her fooled. I sat all the way forward in my chair so she couldn't reach me through the Amish slats in the chair back. She responded by leaping from the floor to my back with all four feet, sinking no less that 18 talons into my unsuspecting flesh. When I started screaming, she climbed to my shoulders and lay down, staring at me as though I had lost my mind. I nearly did.

I also realized that the elementary school for the kiddos that live in my apartment complex sits due west of here. If you want to walk your child to school you can go the long way, up to busy Kirby and then down Prospect, a 15 minute walk one way. or you can cut your walk in half, like a few of my neighbors do, by walking your child through the unfenced backyard of the house behind my unit and cutting through the neighborhood. Every morning I watch one or two parents lead their children across this guy's lawn. I thought, if he had any decency, he would pour a concrete walk for them and hand out warm breakfast tacos.