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We are fast approaching the winter solstice here. That means less daylight hours. In our house, it also means the blinding light of late afternoon… and when I say late afternoon, I really mean 3 pm onward. In summer, the sun is high in the sky. But if you think about the Earth’s obliquity at 23.5 degrees and my latitude around 40 degrees, we are talking about a sun incidence angle at max of 63.5 degrees from vertical or 26.5 degrees above the horizon. Our windows face south and in the afternoon that means our windows get the sun full bore. See here.

3:30 pm from the kitchen

[Puke carpet: Kaweah decided to share just how much bark she ate yesterday afternoon by yakking it up on the edge of an area rug this morning. Right after I hosed it off outside, it began to snow, so I had to drag it inside and then it stopped snowing.] Not only does the sun hit me square in the face, but our passive solar set up makes the house HOT. Don’t get me wrong, hot is good because we want to trap that heat so we don’t blow a fortune on heating the house at night when it gets cold. But hot is rather miserable if you’re trying to cook or shoot or think. I’m not a fan of hot… that’s why I live near snow.

unpleasant

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Jennifer of Bake or Break just announced the October 2007 DMBLGIT awards and I managed to nab a host award on my very first entry!

A big thank you to Jennifer and all of the judges, and congratulations to the winners this month. You can have a looksee at the creative and mouth-watering October 2007 entries here.

but does my blog look fat in this?!

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Recipe: roasted butternut squash soup

Confession time. Until just a few years ago, whenever I heard the words butternut squash I envisioned the acorn squash. I was not much of a squash consumer other than zucchini and pumpkin. I was squash stupid. It was when Nicole and Andrew had us over for homemade butternut squash ravioli one evening that I became enamored with the lovely gourd.

butternut squash

the guts

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