You're Doing It Wrong

My favorite winter food is hot chocolate. I have written about this before. I make it with milk and cocoa — not the sugary packets.

Many years ago we were in Bend, Oregon and my husband brought me an ocean roll from the local bakery. It was a life-changing delicious treat.

I have a recipe — I’m not sure where I got it. Maybe it’s a different cardamom roll. That’s not the story.

The story is how I plan to bake these every holiday season and every holiday season passes and I did not make the ocean rolls.

Bob won a frother like this at some conference and it sat in a drawer for years until one day I tried it in my hot chocolate. My hot chocolate has never been the same. The frother finally died and I had to buy a new one which was still inexpensive. Little gadget that’s actually worth it.

This year I finally cleared up how this happens.

At the beginning of the holiday season I get out all the baking I plan to do. Usually 2-3 cookies and 1-2 pies depending on where we’re going or who is coming over for what.

Most of the baking is at the beginning. Then we have all these goodies sitting around plus what people gift us.

Then I’ll decide to make the ocean rolls later – maybe for New Year’s Day.

Except by then we have been eating treats every day for weeks. Plus my birthday treats.

Just to be clear, I’m not complaining about treats but there is a point when I’ve had enough treats and I want to be done with treats and cut back to more normal consumption so I can continue to button my pants.

So the ocean rolls get put away to make next year.

Maybe I’ll try to think of ocean rolls as something I make at the end of January or for some other time of year because I’d really like some.

I couldn’t let the last post of the year be a rant about shrinkflation.

So here is a quick backyard animal wrap up.

Skunky is still a regular as are a number of raccoons and opossum. I haven’t caught Bunny on camera for awhile but when my sister was here, she reported a bunny hopped away when she took the dog out one night.

I need to think about where I place the camera and try some new tricks. With the raised beds, it’s not the same but I haven’t problem-solved on this yet.

The bird feeder is very active at the moment with the usual backyard birds you’d expect plus squirrels. I changed the bird mix I use in hopes of discouraging the squirrels but they are not discourage-able. I have a couple regular visitors to the hummingbird feeder. I did have a Cooper’s hawk out there a couple of weeks ago and everyone cleared out while it hung out.

Happy New Year everyone! Hope all our dreams come true.

I thought I wrote a post about the Christmas cactus at the office but I can’t find it.

I inherited a plant at the office. I did not find it particularly impressive and it sat in a corner.

At some point I wanted to learn what it was and found out that if I kept it away from the window for a certain part of the year and then put it by the window in winter, beautiful flowers would bloom. I tried it and it worked and I learned to love this plant.

But also, I am bad at taking care of plants and the dirt always looked dried out and I dutifully watered it each week and then one day, the branches all collapsed because they were rotten from over watering.

I felt terrible.

The Internet said I could take a little cutting and try to grow a new plant. I made 6 cuttings because I don’t think I’ve ever successfully made a new plant from cuttings and I now have 4 Christmas cacti and even 1 flower! I need to re-pot these and if you would like a Christmas cactus let me know, because I don’t want 4. I like plants out in the garden but I’m not a big house plant person.

Just this week, as I was baking cookies, I became aware of chip shrinkflation.

FOR SHAME!

I was having trouble with my photo software so if you can’t see, the normally 12 oz packages are from top to bottom: 11, 11.5, and 10! BOO! The butterscotch recipe on the back adjusted the amount of chips from 2 cups to 1 2/3 cups. DISGRACE!

Here’s a clip I took the other morning of the crows downtown. This accompanies my post from last month about the crows in Portland.

I keep finding notes for posts I intended to write last month but apparently never did.

I have a really old sourdough that I bake with pretty regularly all year long. Over the summer I really noticed how much more robust the sourdough is when the weather is warmer. I understand how sourdough works and I know my kitchen is cold. I have never successfully come up with a trick to help in the winter.

Tips often say to put in the oven and turn the oven light on. My oven is ancient and has no light. I’ve read other tricks and they seemed fussy or created other complications that didn’t work for me.

I thought I would just buy one of the fancy bread proofing pads but when I went to buy it, it was over $100 and I couldn’t bring myself to spend that much. In the process of searching for that I found another gadget that’s like a little plastic tent you unfold and can use for proofing bread. I went to put that in my cart and that was over $200!

Then I heard that there are heating pads for dogs and cats that aren’t as strong as the ones for humans. I went to the pet store and couldn’t find anything so I found someone to ask for help.

Him: What kind of pet is this for?

Me: Sourdough.

He did not miss a beat and took me to the reptile warmers that seems like they might be too warm so I settled for a terrarium heater for insects. I’ve only used it once and I need to refine my technique but it might work.

My friend Hannah said: That’s the most Pam story I’ve ever heard.

I might also try a seed warming mat.

This is a very old box of ornaments from my parent’s Christmas stash. I think some of the classic ones have been broken over the years, mostly by pets, and have been replaced but there are few nostalgia ornaments in the box.

I don’t have strong feelings about Christmas either way these days. It’s not my favorite but I don’t hate it.

I enjoy a lot of holiday movies and I love Christmas lights. There are a bunch of foods that we love around the holidays and I have plans to find some new ones.

I have made my goal of 30 posts in 30 days. My final word count was 16,002 of a goal of 15k new words on the project of forever/new romance. I wrote 25 out of 30 days. I will do an updated word count of the whole project when I get things sorted. I need to review my progress and put things in order.

Happy December — here we go.

This photo is actually a few years old. I took it while waiting for the bus one evening.

The Portland downtown crows are a thing:

The Downtown Portland Crow Roost

For more than a decade, crows have been gathering throughout the fall and winter to roost in downtown Portland. This roost has been gradually growing over time to the point where today, at its peak, it can exceed 15,000 birds. The sight of thousands of birds converging on the downtown area is truly spectacular.

I first wrote about the crows in January and February of 2013. And in 2018 I posted this same photo.

I remember one time Bob and I came out of an evening event and the crows were in full force. There was a guy with a hawk or maybe a falcon (?) who was part of a project trying to scare them off. I guess that was an early strategy. Now it’s just part of the landscape and a lot of blocks use pressure washers.

PDX Crow Roost.

WINTER (November-February)

Peak Urban Roost
Nov-February- Counts observed between 6000-22,000

Many mornings when I get off the bus they are going full tilt. I kinda like it but I also walk fast and tell them: Don’t poop on me. Don’t poop on me.

Sometimes, on the bus going home, if it’s near dusk I’ll see groups of crows headed back to downtown for the night.

I was going to celebrate 10 years this month of the first romance novel I self-published.

Except when I looked, it was actually last year that it was 10 years. Happy 11 years!

I remember at the time it was terrifying. Then I did 4 more plus a book of short stories.

This book sold 1 copy in 2025 but I have removed most of the links to it. You can’t even buy the paperback anymore. At least, not from me.

The Crooked Rock books still sell so readers are finding me. I’m grateful.

The next one is coming along. I think I’m over halfway. I am currently writing out of order which I don’t normally do, so it’s hard for me to tell where I’m at.

Image sourced from the Public Domain Image Archive / Harvard University

According to the information with this image — this is “a Weroan or great lord of Virginia” The artist is Johann Theodor de Bry and the date is 1590.

From the amazingly named: Briefe and True Report.

I don’t have the energy to research further. I’m sure it’s your standard colonizer analysis.

I had a plan to cook all the standard dishes and then fix plates to take and eat with Dad at the retirement home.

But, turns out they are doing a Thanksgiving dinner there this year. You’d think I would be thrilled not to cook but actually one time a year I want all those foods the way I make them.

The plan is to make the traditional thanksgiving over Christmas. Just for this weekend I’m going to make the rolls (here’s a photo from 2010.) They are just Betty Crocker dinner rolls but a very nostalgic for me so I have to have them. Somehow I heard about Cookie Butter Pie so I have try it.

Happy Thanksgiving.