This is what our day looks like.  Although I thought the fog would burn off as the day progressed, it doesn't seem to be working that way.  It's dreary, to say the least, but not awfully cold.  My thermometer is reading 54 degrees and there's no wind, so it looks as if we'll have to put up with the fog for a while.

In case you've noticed there's a different look to the blog lately, it's because blogger.com changed things around, as often happens just about the time I get really comfortable with everything.  As usual, some things are easier, but then there's also a learning curve to navigate, and that always takes time.  One of the easily accessible features is the statistics for the blog are right out there so I can see every morning how many "hits" there have been.  This morning it shows a total of 2,557 posts since I started 10 years ago - just about this time, I guess.  At least, stats go back to May of 02.  There have been 129,184 "page views" over time, and 127 so far today - 288 total yesterday.  That's pretty exciting to realize that many people bother to check the blog - even if they don't stay to read it!  I wish my books got half the attention.

This morning has been busy and already I've experienced a "sort of" disaster.  I like to have something to go with my lunch-time and evening tea, and don't care much for anything very sweet, so I found a recipe in my "Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant" cookbook for Rusks - sort of a biscuit or flavored bread that came from the Dutch in South Africa.  They are hard and good for dipping in tea, according to the introduction.  I decided to give them a try - wheat flour, very little sugar, just a little butter, an egg and buttermilk, plus almond, vanilla and cinnamon.  They smelled wonderful in the oven.  They were to bake at 400 degrees and then "dry" in a low oven for several hours.  So when Fred asked me a question about something he was dealing with on a website, I hustled to my computer for what I expected would be a short interval; but then the timer on the oven went off - so I turned off the timer and continued working on my computer, with a vague notion that the biscuits could cool down in the oven as part of the drying out process.  

I'm sure you've seen the flaw in my plan.  Yep, I forgot to turn off that 400 degree oven, and pretty soon that delicious spicy smell turned to smoke.  They aren't a complete loss, but I'm really glad I decided to make only half the recipe in case I didn't like them.  I've actually already had three of the badly burned ones - they are about 1" x 2" strips - and even those aren't all that bad.  I do wish I'd taken them out of the over and tried them without bothering with the drying process. 

I'm quite famous in our family for over cooking food.  When the boys were little, they informed me my cookies had "hot bottoms" - obvious translation, they were burned.  I quickly learned gravy goes a long way towards salvaging over-cooked meat, but then there were the pots and pans that were beyond salvaging, no matter how much soaking, steel wool and elbow grease I applied.  I'd like to think I've improved my technique over the years, but obviously I still get distracted.

Just now I looked outside and it was raining hard, coming straight down, a good soaking rain.  At 9 o'clock I measured .60 in. that had fallen in the past 24 hours.  I've measured almost 2 inches of rain this month, which must have replenished our ground water considerably.  We still have a lot to make up, having had so little snow this year.

And now, back to my historical papers.  I'm looking at one of the slips of paper, a list of goods purchased in 1826 - 22 3/4# of butter, $3.18; 16# of cheese, 96 cents; 26 qts. flax seed, 82 cents.  On the other hand, John Prentice got $3.50 a day for haying, and $2.34 for mending fence .  .  .  life was hard, but lots of those early folks felt they had it pretty good if they harvested decent crops in the fall and made it through the winter without losing too many animals or family members.