Day...one.

There is no day of the year as focused on One, First, Beginning, as New Year's Day is. Well, the first day of school comes close, but it doesn't usually include that great big unsullied One.

Courtney Carver wrote a post six years ago called The Power of One, and she has revisited it on other posts since then. Why do we need so many multiples, extras, backups?, she asked. What if you limited certain possessions or activities to a one-and-only? Or, for things that come in sets, one set?

The all-commanding nature of a One can appeal to us, while still being sometimes unreachable or impractical. I can think of situations where a spare is not excess but common sense, or where it is an opportunity for giving. An extra sandwich in your lunch means the chance to share. Every little kid needs a backup pair of mittens. And, as in one of the last Mitford novels, you do not want to be buying toilet paper one roll at a time.

There's also the long-cherished idea of having an "everyday" and a "Sunday" or "special" whatever-it-is. In Josephine Tey's novel Daughter of Time, Mrs. Tinker makes a point of wearing her "blue" on important occasions. Some people will remember the "red plate" tradition, a way of honouring one person at a meal. Bringing out a "best" tablecloth or pair of earrings or bottle of something can be the way we mark a celebration.

However, the idea of One's Enough, at least in the everyday, gives us a chance to focus; even, perhaps, to value, cherish, practice loyalty, and see the uniqueness of our One Thing, like The Little Prince's rose. So with that in mind, here are some of my Ones.

1. One new handicraft this year. I was a book winner on Sew Mama Sew's Handmade Holidays posts, and sometime in the New Year I will be getting a copy of Sew Illustrated, a book of zakka embroidery projects. This is all new to me, but I'm game.

2.  One neighbourhood takeout pizza place, and one go-to Chinese restaurant. This saves us from having to keep track of all those coupons from other chains.

3. One general stream of ethnic food tradition: we lean towards Eastern European cooking rather than Indian or Tex-Mex or Japanese. Not that those other things aren't fun sometimes, but they all have their own must-haves in the fridge, in the cupboard, with the pots and pans. If I cooked Asian all the time, I'd want a rice cooker and probably a wok; if I made curry regularly, I'd need all the spices. I worry more about running out of sauerkraut than I do salsa.

4. One pair of blue jeans. For awhile I didn't have any, then I had one plus a backup pair that didn't fit quite as well. Now I'm back to one. Some people might call them mom jeans, but I don't care.

5. Related to #3, I have one favourite recipe for brownies, one for oatmeal cookies, one for rolls, and so on.

6. One husband. Because there is only one Mr. Fixit.

Over the next few days I will be posting about Two, Three and Four. Stay tuned.

Wednesday Hodgepodge, Looking Ahead Edition

1. Are you ready for new? Is 2016 likely to be very different than 2015? Do you want it to be?

Probably some of each. Last year we had the first big round of transitions:  the end of homeschooling (meaning new school for Lydia, new things to do for me); the Apprentice's internship which turned into a permanent job, and her move to The City; Ponytails' graduation from high school; Mr Fixit's foray into the antiques barn; other ends and beginnings. So you could say that 2016 will be different because it (obviously) isn't going to contain any of those things. But give it some time: we're only a week into it.

2. January 6th is National Technology Day. Currently, what is your single biggest struggle or frustration when it comes to technology?

The parts of it I understand and use quite well, vs. the things I'm quite clueless about. I bought my first computer in 1986 (I was one of the first students on my dorm floor to have one: see photo), and I was sending e-mails from work not long after that. In the early 1990's, Mr. Fixit had a small computer set up to dial into the public library, so that I could put books on hold. We've had Internet here for almost two decades. But I have never had my own cell phone, because I've never really needed one and it would be an extra expense, and I'm very stupid about using them when someone yells "can you just pick up that call for me?" 

3. It's that time again...time for Lake Superior University to present a list of words (or phrases) they'd like to see banished (for over-use, mis-use, and general uselessness) in 2016. You can read more about the decision making process here, but this year's top vote getters are-

So (at the start of every single sentence), conversation (as in hotly debated topics where we're invited to 'join the conversation'), problematic, stakeholder, price point, secret sauce, break the Internet, walk it back, presser, manspreading (common in larger cities where some men take up the entire bus or train seat by sitting wide), vape, giving me life (refers to anything that may excite a person or make them laugh), and physicality

Which of these words/phrases would you most like to see banished from everyday speech and why? Is there a word not on the list you'd like to add?

We saw a story about this list on the news, and Mr. Fixit says his least favourite is "join the conversation." Some of them I've never heard anyway, so I don't know if they should be banished. "Problematic" sounds ugly and ungrammatical.

4. Share one of your current health related goals.

I would rather talk about something more interesting, like the periodic table.

5. Let's talk fifty shades of gray. As in the color. Gray is currently a popular color in home decor, paint, wardrobes, hair, wedding party attire, and more. Are you a fan? Do you have the color in some variation in your home or wardrobe?  Gray hair, the old gray mare, gray matter, gray area...which gray idiom can you most relate to right now?

Hair? Not interested yet. But I would think about it in clothes if I could find some gray that didn't wipe me out. My biggest problem with gray is just deciding how to spell it. Gray? Grey? British/Canadian spelling is supposed to be "grey," but I see it both ways and can't decide which to go with.

6. Certain foods are considered 'lucky' if eaten on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. Cooked greens to bring economic fortune, black-eyed peas or lentils also symbolize money, pork which symbolizes progress, fish for good luck, and if you're in Spain 12 grapes at the stroke of midnight. Did you eat any lucky foods on the first day of the year? Is that a tradition in your home? Of the foods listed, which most appeals to you?

We went out to an Asian/sushi restaurant and ordered a bunch of little dishes, so I probably did eat something on the list. I liked the fried udon, and that's pretty close to Japanese lucky soba noodles.

7. What's the single biggest time waster in your life and what, if anything, will you do about it this year?

Still thinking about that one.

8.  Insert your own random thought here.

I'm done...Happy New Year, Happy Epiphany, and Happy Orthodox Christmas.

Linked from So It's the Hodgepodge at From This Side of the Pond.

Of snow and sausages

Every year the Treehouse hosts a very small New Year's Eve party, just for our own family of Squirrels. We usually have a theme of some kind: Star Trek, the Red Green show, fairy tales. This year's theme was almost a given: Narnia.

This is definitely the year to be searching the 'Net for Narnia feast ideas: every other youth group is putting on a Narnia event, every other fancy restaurant has some kind of four-course Narnian menu online. Ideas range from a medieval feast gone wild to a Mr. Tumnus tea with toast and sardines. Most of them feature Turkish Delight. I haven't seen one yet with barbecued bear meat wrapped around apples, but maybe that's a problem of supply. Tim's Mom has a description and photos of their family's annual Narnian dinner--the toddlers in their cloaks are adorable.

But anyway, we had decided to do a small-scale feast for tomorrow night, and I found a website with some food quotes from all the different books. The one that appealed to us most was from The Silver Chair:

"She had a vague impression of Dwarfs crowding round the fire with frying-pans rather bigger than themselves, and the hissing, and delicious smell of sausages, and more, and more sausages. And not the wretched sausages half full of bread and soya bean either, but real meaty, spicy ones, fat and piping hot and burst and just the tiniest bit burnt. And great mugs of frothy chocolate, and roast potatoes and roast chestnuts, and baked apples with raisins stuck in where the cores had been, and then ices just to freshen you up after all the hot things."

Except for the chestnuts, those are just about all of our favourite cold-weather things, and if you add in some Really Good Grapes (from Prince Caspian) and a few cookies (we just happen to have a lion-shaped cutter), it sounds like a perfect New Year's party meal.

Jackdas obviously liked the quote, too, and included it in an absolutely delightful (and mouth-watering) blog post; it's archived here, so you'll have to scroll down to his October 14th post.

As for Turkish Delight...we haven't quite decided. Tim's Mom included a recipe in her post, and we do have a Middle Eastern store nearby that would probably have some, but after all, that was the BAD food in the book! (Not to mention what I've heard that the university students used to put in it in C.S. Lewis's day...Turkish Delight seems to have been the Hash Brownies of its time.) I think baked apples and cookies (and ices just to freshen you up) would be just as good.

So we'll be making some glittery jewellery, having a Narnia scavenger hunt, and eating sausages, maybe just the tiniest bit burnt. What are you doing New Year's Eve?