Happy New Year!

 I often intend to post something here, get sidetracked, and then find I'm too tired. I need a better plan. 

I discovered a most delicious and mainly healthy treat which I brought to our cousin's for Christmas. Here is the recipe , if you want to read the post, but I can tell how to make it, it's so simple.

Gently heat half a cup of natural peanut butter, a quarter cup of maple syrup and three tablespoons of coconut oil. When it's all melted, remove from the heat and stir in a half cup of grated coconut and one cup of Rice Krispies. (get the generic brand - Rice Krispies are over six dollars a box!) Spread in a pan and chill in the fridge for twenty minutes.

Meanwhile, using a double boiler, melt one cup of dark chocolate chips with one tablespoon of coconut oil. When the peanut butter mix is cold, spread the chocolate over, and chill it for two hours at least. 

This stuff is way more than the sum of its parts - it would make you well-liked at any gathering. Delicious.  Of course you can use other nut or seed butters, or crunchy peanut butter, and I'm thinking if you don't want the grated coconut, try crunchy peanut butter and more of the cereal. Good luck cutting it as neatly as the recipe's author; I don't know how she did it. I just broke it apart. It will get sticky if left out, so keep it cold. But do try it! 

*The recipe says to use a 9x13 pan - that is too big; it won't spread that much. I used something a couple of inches smaller. But it would be easy to double it, and then I'd use the nine by thirteen.

I've been thinking about The Hobbit for some reason lately, so I picked it up, and it's been so long that I really didn't remember most of it, so it's like I never read it before. 

In the past week or two, we've seen large flocks of blackbirds along the main road in the mornings. Hundreds. The ones I saw were grackles, and I'm not sure why they're moving in such a large group at this time of year. I used to see them in November, thinking that some left the area for the winter (but am not sure they do). We saw them on Friday and later my brother said when he went to his car at lunchtime (he comes home for lunch every day) it was so covered with droppings, he had to go first to the car wash. So this afternoon I looked out and there were thousands of blackbirds swooping around our neighborhood, not a starling murmuration but just flying around in groups from tree to tree, maybe lighting on the ground for a bit. I got my camera and starting filming. Wouldn't you know, the film I thought was the best one, didn't film! I must have stopped it without realizing. But it was quite amazing, and we have never seen it before like this. I found this online from a year ago. 

A small number of them came back later, but that's all. 

It's been snowing since before eight - we're finally having a real snowfall, still in time for Christmas. I was afraid it wouldn't happen. 

Winter is the mother-nurse of Spring,
Lovely for her daughter's sake,
Not unlovely for her own:
For a future buds in everything;
Grown, or blown,
Or about to break.

- Christina Rossetti