Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to talk about more changes. You may remember me from such posts as “A Windy Interlude”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
I was busy chasing a rabbit out of the garden. I got an extra treat for being so efficient and yet nonviolent. 
Here I am eating my Ark Natural toothbrush deal. I really like these a lot.
In the last week, things were one way, and now they’re another way. The guy I live with said this is how things are. I do notice the changes, even though I rarely have an opinion, unless it’s something super different, like when I went to camp.
Some of the grass in the field was still green a couple of days ago. Those are my feet at the top of the picture.
This is right behind my back yard.
The grass is usually brown at this time of year.
We have geese now.
The sky is full of constant honking. The guy I live with said there are more Canada geese than people along the Front Range in winter.
I also saw two pairs of glowing eyes on my walk a few evenings ago. I could see them even before the eyes glowed in the guy I live with’s headlamp.
He said they were “trash pandas”. Maybe a not nice, but funny name for raccoons.
Something pretty unexpected happened a couple of weeks ago, and it’s been a little hard for me to accept.
The guy I live with said he was “suddenly Italian”, and so he’s been cooking Italian food, watching cooking videos in Italian, and even talking in the language (some, anyway) since he studied it in college.
This is baked rigatoni from Marcella Hazan’s cookbook. Not swimming in sauce like it might be in this country. He used Rummo mezzi rigatoni with a bechamel sauce and homemade ragù.
He said it was good. He’s also eaten more broccoli rabe in the last couple of weeks than all the other vegetables he’s eaten in the last year. I’m afraid he might turn into broccoli rabe, but his said his eye doctor told him to eat more green vegetables.
And I have to hear things like this, from time to time:
Nessun maggior dolore
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria.
This is a very famous quotation from Dante’s Inferno, lines from which, believe it or not, the guy I live with can recite in the original Italian.
The quote means “No greater grief, than to remember happy times, in misery.”
Well, this is like an obvious motto for people who are grieving.
Which kind of elegantly leads me into other events of the past week. I already talked about the Christmas box.
Maybe a day later the guy I live with was rummaging around in another, fancier box, and found some things he thought might create some “holiday cheer”.
He found the sleighbells, which he had forgotten about; they were tucked into the lowest drawer in the box.
His wife used to hang them on the doorknob, like this.
The guy I live with said the sleighbells would be our holiday decoration. Very minimalist, don’t you think?
This didn’t last very long at all; maybe a day. The guy I live with said this seemed too forced or something, and I didn’t like the sleighbells at all. Not even slightly. They were really loud, and scary when they jingled.
His friend came over last week and he gave the sleighbells to her.
And now, just like that, everything seems much better.
No more trying to recapture the past with hollow gestures like this. Instead, we’ll just have Opera Day every weekend.
The final change this week is an even bigger deal, and a very welcome change it is.
I’ll leave you with a picture of me noticing this change, this morning.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
From brown to white overnight! Almost winter seems like a good time of year to become suddenly Italian. We were in Venice many years ago and had some of the worst Italian food of our lives. I assume it was some sort of punishment for being tourists in Italy. Forced Christmas traditions are no good if they bring sadness or misery. Glad TGTYLW found someone who would enjoy the bells.
The snow is pretty welcome; it will sit on the pots in the seed frames for a long time now; maybe all winter, because the frames are in shade.
The guy I live with says in Italy they just call it food. (Old joke, sorry.) Or il cibo.
I understand there were a lot of issues with forced traditions and forced happiness after the guy I live with’s wife died, which of course made things worse. And now things seem to be better.
All that jingling was really annoying and scary.
Sono davvero felicemente sorpreso di trovare qualcuno che citi Dante in America e per giunta in un blog! Accostarlo ai rigatoni è un po’ sacrilego per noi ma agli stranieri va sicuramente perdonato. Non sapevo che la Rummo circolasse in America, è una buona pasta, forse non la migliore. I mezzi rigatoni sembrano riusciti ma tutto poi dipende dalla qualità della besciamella, del ragù, e soprattutto del formaggio. I più maniacali qui poi insistono sulla qualità dell’acqua e del forno! Ma sono appunto dei maniaci.
Buon Natale e buone feste dall’Italia!
Thanks; the same to you.
The guy I live with said the ragù is made with a soffritto, butter and olive oil (Monini Gran Fruttato), then the beef is added, with a little salt and pepper. When that has cooked, milk is added, with a little nutmeg. When the milk has cooked down, white wine is added. When the wine has boiled away, the tomatoes (La bella San Marzano) are added, and the ragù is left cooking on the stove for a few hours.
It isn’t very easy to find dry pasta here which hasn’t been dried at low temperatures for a long time.
Looks like the snow that visited you guys was more than what fell in my NW Denver neighborhood but it was definitely well received. Well, except for the part of shoveling (in chilly temps) an oversized corner lot. But after 21+ years here, I’m used to it. My back…not as much. 😉
We got about four, or maybe five, inches. No complaints here at all. The guy I live with shoveled the walk, though not all of the driveway, and his neighbor’s driveway.
But now they’re saying freezing drizzle for tomorrow night, which the guy I live with says is just weird. This isn’t back east.
I know, I just heard that forecast…sheesh, this isn’t Pittsburgh…what the devil?!
It’s been one way and then another, kind of like the guy I live with changing his mind all the time.
He did say it would be interesting to have weather like back east, where he once saw rain on top of snow, which was about the weirdest thing he’d ever seen, weather-wise.
Our copy of ‘Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking’ by Marcella Hazan is stained from years of use but the one we return to most often these days is the English version of https://www.phaidon.com/store/cookbooks-food-and-drink/the-silver-spoon-9780714862569/
Thanks; the guy I live with said that looks like a good cookbook. There’s only one person here (he says I have my own food), so that’s a limitation.
I’ll mark your Italian period by making a pizza this week!
That’s one thing the guy I live with has never tried making. His wife used to make pizza fairly often, but now it would be pizza for one, unless he decided to set up a pizza stand on the sidewalk.
Italian?! Well, you can tell the guy you live with that Tony Tomeo is not convinced. Actually, . . . I have never been any closer to Italy than North Fourteenth Street in San Jose, but the guy you live with does not need to know that. By the way, some of my ancestors lived in the Tomeo House in Louisville a very long time ago, as well as Aspen.
Yep, an Italian phase. The guy I live with goes through a lot of phases, the way humans do.
He understands the language, too, though can hardly speak it. (And French and Spanish and German.) He can barely speak English, if you ask me.
Tomorrow night, for dinner, pollo alla milanese, with broccoli rabe.
That is amusing. I studied French, but can barely pronounce it. I can speak Mexican Spanish with only minimal accent, but can not pronounce the double ‘rr’, and can not pronounce or understand other dialects of Spanish. If I try to speak Italian, it converts to Mexican Spanish after the first two words or so. Rhody is a terrier, so ignores me in four languages.
The guy I live with used to work a lot with a guy named Ramon, and would drive him crazy by saying “Ramon, che ora é?”
The guy I live with took Latin in high school and so has all the translations for Romance languages turned off. (He says Romanian is a little difficult.) He can understand all these languages but as I said can barely speak them, just like when he tells me there’s a you know what in the garden and I have to find the you know what before I can chase it. If he manages to say rabbit, then I know what to look for.
“but now it would be pizza for one, unless he decided to set up a pizza stand on the sidewalk.” Leftovers from this foccacia/pizza recipe adapted from a Milk Street episode freeze well: https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=62355.0
Thanks; the guy I live says that looks good. He’s made focaccia before, in a previous Italian phase.
(By the way, I’m supposed to say that if you include a link in a comment, WordPress sends it to moderation every time.)
Thanks for that info. Not a problem.
Sure. It’s just a WordPress thing.
Buona giornata Mani. Though that is about as far as my Italian goes despite my Italian heritage. Did you get to try some of that rigatoni? It looks fantastic and I bet was delicious. I respect the guy you live with moving forward by trying new things such as opera days. Sometimes hanging onto the past can be painful. Opera days may have him singing Puccini. Enjoy the music and all that snow.
Thanks. Opera Day has been here since Chess, the purebred border collie who lived here before me, was left alone after his cousin Slipper died.
It’s mostly napping for me, as it was for Chess. We have lots of Puccini here, but to the guy I live with, opera means Mozart (above all), Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti. The other day, though, it was Andromaque by Grétry. Very esoteric stuff.
I didn’t get any rigatoni.
Mother Nature sure fooled efurryone there Mani! Nice an green an sorta brown an then WHAMO! white!!!
Mee betss those slay bells were a bit too noisy…..mee likess THE small jingley bellss…..mee has a gold one mee batss around.
Wee sorry this time of yeer iss so diffycult Mistur Guy. BellaSita gave up lightin THE Menorah an wee not ”due-inn” Catmess eether…..
Shee told mee shee will give mee giftiess on THE 24th her Birfday…..
Mani you are lookin furabuluss purr usual.
***nose rubss*** BellaDharma an 🙂 BellaSita Mum
Thanks. Yes, this can be a difficult time of year for people who have lost loved ones, and the guy I live with now thinks that trying to recreate past happiness, or give in to pressure to pretend to be happy, just makes things worse.
He said on our evening walk that it isn’t easy just staying in the moment when we see all the lights on some of the houses, but that it probably can be done in some way or other.
The snow is pretty nice, but there’s no gardening.
Mee meowed to BellaSita about purrtendin to bee happy at CAtmess an Mistur guy shee told mee it iss not a grate idea. An that you need to bee true to yoreself. As BellaSita has been widowed twice shee meowss from xperience.
Stayin inn THE momint iss diffycult fore Hu’manss…..maybee make yore own tradishunss an stuff…..fore you an Mani….
Wee have a few inchess of snow heer today 🙂
It snowed here a little, this morning.
The guy I live with watched a video about “building the house of pain”, and it seemed to him that that’s what he’s been doing constantly in the last fourteen years, though there isn’t any way to prevent memories from being triggered, and not having any other human here to talk to is a constant reminder, too.
Going out of the way to try to recapture stuff from the past is just not a very great idea at all.
Mee-yow!! That “buildin THE house of pain” soundss pawfull an so so sad Mani…..
Mee only a cat how efurr mee nsoe BellaSita Mum focussess on guud an happy memoreess an even meowss to THE foto of eether Mistur Paul or Mister Kevin.
Shee tellss mee storiess about them both…it makess her feel bettur.
Mee nose shee missess them both so much speshelly this time of yeer……
Yes, humans do that. They can also easily make things worse than they need to be, mostly, it seems, by doing things other people think they should be doing.