use real butter

There’s nothing I quite hate as much as being sick. I’m not sick, but I have been fighting off some low-grade mental cotton in my head for the past few days and without much success. It lingers because I’ve had horrible sleep habits of late. Today I decided to make some headway and fight it with naps, liquids, and not skiing (*sigh*). I don’t like to sleep, but when my body needs it, I do it.

However, tomorrow is Chinese New Year which means today is New Year’s Eve, which means I had to cook a lot of specific stuff for the New Year. I made dumpling filling with ground pork, nappa cabbage, shitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, green onions, ginger, sesame oil, cornstarch, and soy sauce. This filling is also used to make pork meatballs and goes in these little egg pockets. It’s a lot of work being a good Chinese daughter…

Yesterday morning my cousin looked at the thermometer on our deck and said, “It’s 20 degrees” and my reply was, “wow – it’s pretty warm out!”. We bid farewell to my aunt’s family at 8 am. As they pulled out of the drive to head home, we loaded the car with our skis and set off for the hill. Mixed conditions included glazed to fluffy and high winds. It wasn’t terrible, but we didn’t stay beyond morning – that’s the luxury of the local bump. I managed to piece together all of my quilt squares, clean up the house and return it to normal, and make dessert to take to Fiona’s place in the remainder of the day. It snowed all day long with the sun shining the whole time (winds).

Perfect morning. Not too cold, the four days of wind we’d endured finally died down, and sunshine. No crowds to speak of, we never waited in line. And from the top, we could see tons of great places to hike and ski and all of that good stuff.