Yesterday, we had goulash for lunch. Goulash at my mother-in-law’s is potatoes and sausage smothered in a creamy tomato sauce. We had it with fresh rolls – you use the bread to soak up the sauce that’s left on your plate. Because of my vegetarian tendencies, you think I’d pass entirely, or at least migrate the sausage to the edge of the plate, but I don’t really mind a little sausage now and again. Plus, as part of my dietary revisions, I’m trying to act on the adage of eating protein at every meal.
The goulash was followed by an enormous tin of Christmas cookies. Shortbread dipped in chocolate. Vanillekipfel. Chocolate stars decorated with vanilla striped frosting. Some layered hazelnut thing. Get this: I did not eat one cookie. Not one. I’m still a little under the weather and while I might sit down to a meal feeling ravenous, because my body is temporally confused, it doesn’t take much food for me to think that I’ve had enough and I shouldn’t be eating right now anyway. Having jet lag is a little bit like having a temp job. You don’t really want to do it but the hours are set and anyway, it’s not going to last that long so you just have to suck it up and get through it.
The valley has been filled with a moody fog that comes and goes throughout the day. It’s pretty dense in the morning and you can’t see very far ahead, but by the time the sun gets above the horizon, the fog recedes to about waist deep, rising in steaming tendrils towards the clear part of the sky. The fog makes the sky look like metal and it leaves frozen white ice crystals wrapping everything, a bicycle, the barbed wire fence, the red buds on the hagebuten (rose hips) hedges. It’s very pretty and makes the walk between here and the homestead look like a Japanese painting.