Notes from the First Day of Winter

What's that? The calendar says it's still fall? Yeah, well, tell the calendar to take a look out my window and shut up. Snow has been falling since about 9 a.m. It didn't start sticking until about an hour ago, though.

Before it started to stick, I loaded the children up in the van to go out to the local orchard to pick up A.'s buckets of apple cider. In the past, we've pressed our own cider that A. has subsequently turned into many gallons of hard cider. But there were no excess apples this year, so A. decided to just buy the sweet cider. He made me promise that I wouldn't lift the five-gallon buckets into the van myself*, lest I damage myself or the other human currently residing in my body. So I had the lady at the orchard carry the buckets to the van for me.

I also bought two ten-pound bags of apples. Cubby carried one. Charlie carried the other. I carried nothing.

Put 'em to work young, I say.

Tonight is the St. Martin's Day celebration at Cubby's preschool. I once again volunteered to bring meat--we eat a lot of meat, so I figured I might as well supply it--and once again, I happened to choose a roast that was all tied up with string. A beef roast this time, which I browned, stuck in a Dutch oven with onions, and left in the oven all day.

Way easier than baking something or peeling potatoes or whatever.

Around 4 p.m., I pulled the meat apart in lieu of slicing, since it had been in the oven so long it was falling apart anyway, doused it in storebought barbecue sauce and dumped it all back into the Dutch oven.

My name is Kristin, and I am a lazy potluck contributor.

But at least I managed to get the string off this time. I'm sure that will be appreciated.

* I didn't mention the fact that Charlie, who I must still lift and carry regularly, weighs a lot more than five gallons of cider. I'm okay with being weak if I can get away with it.