Food Notes: Niki sent some parched corn in her Christmas package—frozen sweet corn parched with a smidgen of butter and salt. Everyone, including the sender, agreed that it was awful. But one has to appreciate the direct experimental approach, and now we know, or think we know, that dry parched old field corn is the way to go.

With the demise of our grocery store and the need to shop elsewhere, we are enjoying shopping in stores with good stuff (probably spending more money, too). Apple cider from an orchard in Fort Atkinson, not pasteurized! After about a week in the fridge this stuff starts to taste really good. Also now buying eggs from JRS Country Acres of Lake Mills, and these eggs have shells so thick a hatchet would not be out of order in the cracking of them. And the cheese—the sharp cheddar prepared by an as yet unknown but local dairy for Cowley's Piggly Wiggly in Milton is brilliant. (How can someone named Cowley own a Pig?)

In sum, local is delicious.

Tonight, grilled steak and vegetable/barley soup (local, grass-fed beef from Festival) with friends kitty-corner across the street, and the new couple who recently moved in next door to them.

And! Tonight the shortest day of the year. A special night for the ancient Druids who were not quite sure that tomorrow would live up to its reputation as the end of the descending dark and the beginning of the return of life-affirming light.

To finish, a question: Where was Moses when the lights went out?