I Like It That Way

You will find this to be a more oniony soup than the usual kind but, as the cross old lady said when a stranger told her that her slip was showing, "I like it that way." ~ Margaret Yardley Potter

One day, last winter, I had a craving for some French onion soup.

Banish the onion from the kitchen and the pleasure flies with it. Its presence lends color and enchantment to the most modest dish; its absence reduces the rarest delicacy to hopeless insipidity, and dinner to despair.

~ Elizabeth Robbins Pennell

I had never made it before and went in search of a recipe. I decided on this one. It was more time consuming than I'd imagined, allowing the onions to caramelize but it was also incredibly yummy. This is what six or seven large onions simmered down to.

I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food. ~ W. C. Fields

The recipe states that wine is optional. Ha! I wouldn't possibly consider opting out of adding this flavour enhancer.

Cheese is milk's leap toward immortality. ~ Cliff Fadiman

And given the choice between Gruyere and Parmesan cheese, I went for the former. I probably even added a bit of the latter.

Unfortunately, there were no photos take of the finished product. It disappeared far too quickly. Plus I forgot. Mostly, I forgot (I did mention the wine, right?). But it was delicious. I strongly recommend this recipe. If you happen to make it, please let me know how you like it.

Nature unfolds her treasure at the first ray of sunrise. ~ Kishore Bansal

A winter sunrise possesses so many vibrant, jewel-tone colours. This was the view outside my apartment window, a few mornings back.


We've had some crazy weather, this winter. We keep jumping from above-seasonal highs to deep freezes, only to warm up a day or two later with rain, freezing rain or a large dump of snow. Someone (probably my sister) on Facebook suggested that Mother Nature might be menopausal. That sounded about right. As I type, we are experiencing freezing rain which weather-watchers predict will turn to rain as the temperatures rise to just above freezing over the next few hours.

A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water. ~ Carl Reiner

This image of the eastward-facing view across Little Lake was taken last week, after a snowfall and before the melt.

...now and then a giggling trail of mermaids appeared in our wake. We fed them oatmeal. ~ Tove Jansson

The water tower you see straight ahead belongs to Quaker Oats/PepsiCo. This factory has been in Peterborough since 1902 but was rebuilt after a devastating fire destroyed it in 1916. When the wind is blowing just right (or just wrong), you can smell the sickeningly-sweet smell of their flavoured oatmeal wafting through the east end of the city. At first the scent is pleasant - like fresh baking but eventually it can permeate the air quite relentlessly, forcing you to find something with which you can overpower it. Like wine.

Nothing burns like the cold. ~ George R.R. Martin

It was a brilliant, sunny day but very windy and much too cold to just sit for a while. The windchill was around -24C (-11F). I played around with the colour/effect in this and the next image in Photoshop a bit.

And finally Winter, with its bitin', whinin' wind, and all the land will be mantled with snow. ~ Roy Bean

You can see by the absence of footprints that nobody had interest in stepping out on the dock.

Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. ~ Willa Cather

A glance southward.

Here am I floating

'round my tin can

Far above the Moon

Planet Earth is blue

And there's nothing I can do.

~ David Bowie

A couple of evenings ago, we had a full moon. This image was taken shortly after it rose. Unfortunately, it was snapped through two panes of  less-than-sparkling-clean glass, one window screen and the branches of a tree a city block away. Still, it demanded I take its picture. Bossy old moon!

More photos coming up.. eventually.