Friday, January 27, 2012

Man's Best Friend

One of the fire alarms in my house started it's low battery beep at 3am last night. One high pitched beep every 90 seconds or so isn't necessarily enough to wake me up. However, two very concerned dogs pawing at me definitely is. Hereaux, my rescue dog, was particularly insistent on following me around until I found the source of the beeping and made it stop. I was pretty irritated at the time, but in retrospect, it's nice to know that your dogs will wake you up if for any reason a fire alarm goes off in the night. When I woke up this morning I told them that they were very good dogs! :)

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

The Frozen North

It was 8 this morning. Which was actually an improvement from the low of 5 last night. I'm actually kind of excited to say that 8 is by far the lowest temperature I've been exposed to. I'm pretty sure that when I was out and about last night (I had pizza for dinner) and it was 17, that was also, at the time, the lowest temperature I'd been exposed to.
I'm excited about this because all things considered I've been pretty comfortable. It's not like I've dawdled outside or anything, but I think that the winter wear I own is definitely good enough to keep me warm in this kind of weather. In general, the only part of me that's cold is my knees b/c my coat comes down to the top of my knees and I'm unwilling to wear leggings under my pants if I'm going to be mainly indoors b/c I'm worried I'll be too hot.
So as for shoes and clothes, I've been kind of wearing the same few things over and over again, especially at home. My bean boots are my go-to for when I'm going outside, and inside I'm living in my fleece lined mocs. Outside, my long down coat has been perfect (if not a little too warm- I was sweating while taking down the trash and recycling today, but I needed it when I walked the dogs), and inside I've been living in  an Under Armor hoodie and pair of sweatpants that one of the groomsmen from the wedding sent me for Christmas. (The hubby got a similar pair.) He said it was to preserve my marriage because otherwise I'd leave Maine once it got cold. Haha! Of course I may need to buy a second set so I can disagree when the hubby accuses me of wearing the same thing every day. :)
In honor of the cold snap, I have a nice, warming meal planned this evening. It's based on a recipe for pasta with sausage, tomatoes, and mushrooms from Smitten Kitchen (it's the last recipe on the page) but I'm planning to add some chopped carrots and white beans to the mix to make it a bit healthier and to ensure that I'll have plenty of leftover sauce to freeze.

In other news our NYE party went really well. I ended up serving meringues, baked brie, rotel dip, red pepper jelly dip, smoked salmon deviled eggs, bacon wrapped water chestnuts, chicken salad bites, and a chocolate tart with cinnamon and cayenne, a biscoff cookie crust (ganache loosely based on this recipe and crust loosely based on this one), and Kahlua whipped cream.
For drinks we went with Poinsettia cocktails, Moscow Mules, and Sazeracs.

What are you go-to cold weather coping mechanisms?