I don't typically think of myself in a rural area. We live in a small town.

But sometimes I do wake up to "moos". I don't know why these cows have been isolated in the lot behind a neighbor's house.

I am something more than halfway through John Julius Norwich's Byzantium: The Early Centuries.

Heresy, heresy everywhere.  We're up to our necks in heretics: Arians, Nestorians, monophysites.

And all those barbarians: Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Huns.

Western Emperors, Eastern Emperors, and lots and lots of murder -- families, rivals, possible rivals, traitors, so-called traitors, and whole stadia full of people.

And that's just halfway through the first book of the trilogy.

I have been talking to my BIG brother all day long.  His son picked up the phone and  said, "It sounds like one of your sisters."

Quit being such a punk, child, I'm coming with the gumbo recipe.

Ok, then.

My brother Charles and I are scheduled to fly to Portland, Oregon to see the Major Dude in May.  We tried last year, but Charles was put down with osteomyelitis.  That's gone.

If he can't go this year, that's too bad. I love the brother's wife. I have loved her since I saw her walking down the concourse from gate whatever at Love Field in 1966. Some combination of pleated beige chiffon and strawberry blond tripped my love button.

Lyman and I both went up in 2000 to feed the crowds for their first son's wedding rehearsal.  Lyman made red beans and rice, crawfish pies, and seafood gumbo.

I will carry those responsibilties on my shoulders.

When Mama cleaned her old round-shouldered refrigerator in the '60s, she'd empty it, take all the wire racks and enameled metal bins into the backyard, hose them down, swab them with a bleach solution, hose them again, then let them dry in the sun while she wiped down the box and defrosted the freezer.

With all this crappy plastic and glass, I spend twice as much time cleaning the fridge.

Lyman has his very first sauerbraten in the oven.  We are going to attempt spaetzle tonight.  I do not think we'll be doing it this way:

Okay, so my Valentine tulips are a little late.

Recipe.

Regarding the recipe: I had eight-inch pans when I made it before. They work fine. The proper size pan for the recipe is a nine-inch, which I have obtained since.

Tomorrow is my mother-in-law's 91st birthday, so I've spent most of the day working on an Italian Cream Cake.

It don't get any easier when you do it so seldom.

Let me preface this by saying that I have worked in newspapers, both weekly and daily. (No, never, I didn't work for the Dallas Morning News. Nothing that large.)

And I understand that the time pressures of publishing do push proofreaders to the max, but, can you make any sense of this sequence out of context?:

A group of women in down coats went through the door; behind them a quartet, the two men black, white haired, distinguished, both in suits as though they'd been to a board meeting, their while wives dressed in for coats.

It could be a too elegant expression about women the men were running with, but I don't know.

My husband fed me Susan Spicer's "Spicy Shrimp with Tasso Cream and Green Chili Grit Cakes" for after-Valentine's. We all doing just fine.

UPDATE: Scott provides a link to the recipe, p. 67.

I really shouldn't laugh, but here goes:

Yesterday, I took a tiny miniature rose bush, a pretty Valentine card and a Whitman's Sampler to Lyman's mother at the assisted living center. She'll turn 91 on March 5.

The great current irritant in her life is the woman in the next room over. A group of ladies were chatting after lunch one day when suddenly this woman stood up, looked directly at her and loudly said, "You're a liar, and you're lying right now!"

Girl was flabbergasted and hurt. She said the woman was hard to get along with anyway, and she'd made a special effort to be her friend. The upshot is that there are some papered-over bad feelings.

Now, Girl's memory is shaky. I suspect the other woman's is, too. Who knows what they've talked about or how they remember it, or how much they remember? Who could ever tell if they're deliberately lying? Girl can't even remember what she said to prompt the outburst.

Happy Valentine's Day!:

Sometime before Christmas I read Anne Perry's The Sheen on the Silk, a novel about Constantinople after the sack. I'd read many of her mystery novels.

Which led me to the history I finished reading about three weeks ago that I started on New Year's, The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople, from my brother's library. The book had a lamentable lack of a good map of Constantinople that was remedied by a reference to Wikipedia: Constantinople.

He also has the trilogy of the history of Byzantium by Julian Norwich, which I will read as time allows after he drops them by.

Commenters at Amazon say that Warren Treadgold is a readable historian who pursues more of the cultural aspects of Byzantium.

As a separate offshoot, Charles has a couple of books on the history of Venice.

If the illusions were pretty cool, this is WAY cool:



Have at it, Sarah. The kids will love it.

(Thank you, Nate McCord.)

Pierre saw his shadow -- a short spring and a long summer for Louisianans. New Iberians say Pierre's prognostications are strictly local for Acadiana.

Tomorrow is February 2:

Down in the swamp lives Pierre C.Shadeaux,
where the nutria tells how the seasons will go.
If the sun wakes him up on Groundhog Day,
summer comes early and spring goes away.

Happy Cajun Groundhog Day!

Because it's always good to be grateful, we gave a hefty portion back to Nancy, the hairdresser. She called to say that it's the best gumbo she's ever eaten. She wants to become Lyman's assistant.

The ducks were a wood duck, a small female mallard, and a shoveler.

Mmmm. Mmmm.

Lyman finished his duck and sausage gumbo last night.

It started weeks ago with him begging ducks from local hunters. Finally, our hairdresser's husband brought three ducks by on Thursday -- two wood ducks and a spoonbill. I took one look in the bag at those pretty little orange feet and pretty feathered breasts and said, "Tell me when it's over."

He plucked and cleaned those ducks in the kitchen, making less mess than the parrots do on any given day. I was pleasantly surprised at that. Friday he made the stock.

Then last night settled into the finish. He used something near this recipe.

It's good. Really good.

I've found this tutorial to be effective at achieving the line sketch effect in GIMP. I won't be using it this time.

Malgalin is good, but a little beyond my reach. I'll watch a cute young Aussie anyday, though.