Roasted Parsnips

Just a week more and those crazed bastards with their fucking bells will be gone. I just want the days to turn around, I'm tired of losing light. Got up to pee and stoke the fire, the oven was hot, 400 degrees, and I thought to roast some root vegetables. I had some beets, some turnips, and some parsnips. I cooked the beet and turnip stalks in chicken stock with minced salt-pork, then added the greens, cut all the roots into bite-sized pieces, and tossed them in walnut oil with salt and freshly ground pepper. Died and gone to heaven, and the parsnips were incredible. Snowing at dawn and quite cold, completely overcast, looking like a backlit scrim on an empty stage. Very still, when I first went out, but the wind picked up during the day until it became a low roar. Read an Elmore Leonard in the morning, drinking tea, and watching the snow drift down. All afternoon I wrangled commas, stopping for small bowls of fried rice. Ran into Cass at Kroger yesterday, we know each other but have never had serious conversation, he bikes out this way and I gave him directions to the house, told him I'm usually home. He's a very bright guy, and his wife is a painter, they both listen very well and have interesting things to say. Fairly rare at this point in time, and I don't object to having new friends, I just choose more carefully now. Being alone is better than being with most people. Even when my construct topples, it's interesting. Cass may have been a counselor of some kind, he uses language in a considered way. I have a language bullshit detector and there weren't any flags. Supposed to be twenty degrees for a couple of nights so I let the fire go out, so I can clean out ashes, and I need to bring in a couple of armloads of wood. Eat left-overs, split kindling, wash dishes, and I want to wash my hair but it's just too damned cold. Tomorrow, with a clean stove, and an early start, I'll get the house warm enough for a sponge bath. After I got the stove cleaned out, I built a fire, butter wrappers and cash register receipts, some dry thin oak splits and some wood that had been in the house all summer. Very hot very fast. A testament to the new floor insulation that seems to have blocked air infiltration by 50% or more. A good test will be tonight, below twenty degrees, and I'll put a last log on before I go to bed. See what it's like in the morning. I'd make cornbread but awash in breadstuffs right now. Cory gave me a bunch of stuff from the pub freezer, artisan sour dough, bagels, and I'd just bought a loaf of my usual multi-grain, so I'm eating a lot of toast. Cream cheese and roasted kale, extremely bitter marmalade, peanut butter, and seedless jam.