2021 Life Logs, Day 49: Snow, Perseverance, Compost Tea, Laundry, Lasagna, and Snorkeling
Date: Thursday, February 18, 2021
Weather: Snow (about 2 inches); High 32, Low, 22 Degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
What do snow, Perseverance, compost tea, lasagna, and snorkeling all have in common? The answer is me—my day. It is not every day that I can attach a title like to my daily log. I didn’t really get a lot of writing done today as I had planned, but I did finish writing about our time in Bequia and got us to the Tobago Cays where we had a fabulous snorkeling experience. This was enough to keep me warm today while the snow was falling outside. The rest of my day was filled with researching lasagna recipes and making the meat sauce, doing a laundry while feeding the guinea pigs, learning how to make compost tea for my gardens, following the successful landing of Perseverance on Mars, and walking and playing in the snow with Shadow. Oh, and I worked on my jigsaw puzzle. Basically, it was a day that included a little bit of everything.
I spent a bit of time this morning looking for a good recipe for lasagna with béchamel sauce. I asked Heather on Sunday night how her experiment of making lasagna for the boys went. It was an experiment because lasagna is not something they had ever eaten—too many things mixed together. But I was delighted to hear that both Ollie and Sam liked it. With that, I offered to make lasagna for them as a welcome home gift when they arrive back in Falmouth on Saturday. Lasagna used to be a staple food in our household, but I make it rarely these days. I looked forward to making it for the Goldpebbles. But then Heather added that the lasagna she made was a lasagna with meat sauce and béchamel sauce. Uh oh, I’ve never made béchamel sauce. Don’t even think I’ve ever heard of it. But I said I would give it a try. Then Sam chimed in and said he thought I should make two lasagnas, my special recipe and the lasagna béchamel. They could have a lasagna taste test. So, that is what I am planning to do. But this morning I was having trouble finding a recipe for a meat sauce-based béchamel lasagna. The béchamel seems to go with spinach lasagna. So I am just making up my own recipe. That will be tomorrow’s activity, although I did make the meat sauce tonight.
After my recipe search, I started writing. But at some point, I looked up and saw that it was snowing a little earlier than I expected. I knew I had to stop and go into town to feed the guinea pigs right then in case the roads were unpassable later. And while I was at it, I was going to put in a load of laundry. Last night I fed the guinea pigs later than usual so I could go mid-day today and just make the one trip due to the anticipated icy roads. Good plan, but the snow came so fast and so hard, that by the time I fed the g-pigs and did some grocery shopping for the lasagna cook-off, the drive home was a little dangerous. I just made sure I kept far away from other cars and did make it home safely.
I had already done my daily mile walk with Shadow, so when I got home, I brought him out to play in the snow. By this time there was almost two inches. I cleaned off the car again and did some shoveling while Shadow played and then I went in and got back to work. I finished watching yesterday’s gardening docu-series about making compost tea to feed your plants and I learned about biochar which can help your soil retain moisture. I need to learn more about this. And then it was time to check in on the landing of Perseverance on Mars. After traveling 293 million miles, this rover that is about the size of a car landed successfully on Mars. What an incredible feat. I then got the lasagna sauce on to burble for about an hour while I continued writing. It was so exciting to go back and read my log describing the day of snorkeling on the outer reef at Tobago Cays. I felt like I was right there discovering a whole new world underwater. I look forward to continuing to write about it tomorrow.
