Crazy Texas Weather

By Dave Granlund

All the hype leading up to the latest Arctic cold front that reached us last night resulted in near-panic for many Texans. Here in Corpus Christi today the low temperature was 31 degrees F. and the high temperature was 36 degrees F. That is in great contrast to just yesterday when it was 40 degrees warmer!

And tomorrow it is projected to be 30 degrees warmer, with a high temperature of 64 degrees F.

So in three days, the high temperatures have fluctuated widely:

Thursday 74  ---->   Friday 36 ---->   Saturday  64

It can be crazy around here!

It's Cold Enough for Soup!

An arctic cold front blew through TX on Friday, dropping temperatures precipitously. It was 83 degrees F. in the morning, and later in the day it was 40 degrees colder. We drove to Austin to visit our son DC and his wife AA and their two daughters Avery and Emma. It was also Avery's third birthday!

When I got there, I made soup. I love to make soup, which is not a common occurrence in south TX. (I made it so much in New Jersey when we lived there 1991-94 that oldest son DC told me he'd be glad if he never had soup again when we moved away.) Well, I made enough hamburger vegetable soup (from the old LLL cookbook) that he'll be stuck with for several days.

So we came back to Corpus Christi, and I was excited to try a new recipe for soup tonight. Chuck and I both liked it a lot. I am glad that it also is a vegan recipe--for my two Seattle daughters. It is also from a cookbook that I learned about when I visited them this past summer: New England Soup Factory Cookbook (although we were on the opposite coast).

So I am going to copy the recipe here for Vegetarian Mulligatawny Soup, which is the second good recipe I have tried in this cookbook:

VEGETARIAN MULLIGATAWNY SOUP

3 Tbsp. olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 large Spanish onion, peeled and diced
2 ribs celery, diced
4 carrots, peeled and sliced
2 cups (16 oz.) canned diced tomatoes (though I used a larger can)
1 can (16 oz.) chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1 16 oz. bag lentils
8 cups vegetable stock
2 cups tomato juice
3 tsp. yellow curry powder
3 tsp. ground cumin
2 tsp. ground coriander
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 can (16 oz.) coconut milk
2 Tbsp. honey
1 1/2 cups cooked basmati rice
1/2 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat a stockpot over medium-high heat. Add the oil, garlic, onion, celery, and carrots. Saute for 7 minutes.

Add the lentils, tomatoes, chickpeas, stock, tomato juice, curry powder, cumin, coriander, and cayenne pepper. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium, cover the pot, and simmer for 40 to 45 minutes.

Stir in the coconut milk, honey, rice, cilantro, salt and pepper.

Makes 12 servings.

Druker, Marjorie and Silverstein, Clara. New England Soup Factory Cookbook. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007. 101.

Delicious!

Friday Five: Grateful Smiles!

For this Friday Five with RevGalBlogPals, we are going to tell of five things that make us smile.

1. I am smiling because my oldest daughter AE has written me two emails today! I also got an e-letter from a friend. It is so nice to get communication from dear people rather than just the email subscriptions and advertisements that are always popping up in my email account. Another sweet thing was a "thank you" on Facebook from Fran.

Margaret Faith White

2. I've been thinking of my mother a lot lately. She died 20 years ago and stories 
bring her to mind, just like her words about smiling.

Here is an early picture of my mother even before I ever knew her.

Grief is a long journey. I used to cry when I thought of her, missing her very much. Now I remember my mother with love and gratitude and smile. I also smile when I think of how much she would enjoy seeing and hearing about her grandchildren and great-grandchild Avery.

3. Stew is cooking in the crockpot. But what I am smiling about is that my husband Chuck browned the stew meat. I dislike doing that and wasn't going to do it all. Instead, he offered to and finished the job much more quickly than I ever do.

4. I smile when I hear the dinging sound on my Kindle Fire that someone has played Words with Friends with me! I don't often win, but I enjoy playing this scrabble type game with friends and sometimes my children. Only oldest son DC still plays with me, and he usually wins by 200+ points.

5. I am much happier when the sun is shining outside. Much of the year in south TX this makes it too hot as we have a 9-month "summer." But the gray drizzley days that are more common for the Pacific Northwest where I grew up are not much to my liking anymore. This morning it was chilly in the low 50s, but the sunshine made it cheery! (So it is also possible to hang clothes out on the clothesline.)

Cold!

We are struggling with the cold in south Texas, even though it isn't as extreme as in the north. Today it stayed in the 40s F., which is at least 20 degrees colder than usual. It probably affects us so much because only a few days ago, it was 80 degrees F. It will be short-lived here though, unlike where my daughters live in WA State and Utah. In fact, youngest daughter MJ sent a picture of the icicles on her apartment building in Salt Lake City, where it has been below 0 degrees F. at times lately.

My daughter's apt. building in Salt Lake City

Rare icicles in Corpus Christi, TX

This is the observable ice in our yard at noon today. Highly unusual for Corpus Christi, TX! My son in Austin and friends of his in Fort Worth have posted pictures of inches of snow on Facebook, but we only had ice and some sleet here.

The sun has just come out, so it seems warmer, even with the temperature at 31 degrees F. When the wind was blowing and the skies were gray yesterday, it seemed much colder at the same temperature.

Yes, Texans are wimps. Even though we lived in NJ and RI in the 1990's, those cold temperatures are long-ago and faint memories. It is nice to see the sun out again, knowing there will be only a few more days of freezing temperatures--and way too soon I will be complaining about the HEAT!

Gracie, all warm and cozy, on my winter coat today.

It's cold, even in Texas!

I know we are not inundated by snow and ice, but the difference in temperatures from the norm is about 50 degrees colder than a few days ago. Low temperatures for the next few days will be in the 20s F., which is very unusual for south Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico.

Of course, there are over-reactions. Public schools are closed for the next two days. A friend told me that her husband's medical office has received appointment and surgery cancellations due to the impending weather. Snow is predicted for Thursday-Friday, but it is unlikely in my opinion, though the local meteorologists are enthusiastically predicting the worst.

The only significant snowfall in recent history in Corpus Christi was the amazing 4-6 inch snow of Christmas Eve 2004. We never expected any to be left when we woke up on Christmas Day, but the snow was still there. They say that Christmas Eve was the first night ever to have NO crimes reported! (Everyone was out playing in the snow.)

There are rolling blackouts throughout the state of TX so that the state power grid will continue to operate. We did not lose electrical power today at our house, but about a mile away, neighborhoods were without power for a couple of hours. Traffic lights were off at some major intersections, too.

I am happy because a new book was delivered from Amazon this evening: The Essential Tillich edited by F. Forrester Church. I was so excited by this week's chapter on Paul Tillich in the fourth year of EFM that I had to find out more about his theology.

I have only read a little bit, but already love what Paul Tillich wrote in 1958 for the Saturday Evening Post:

"The first step toward the nonreligion of the Western world was made by religion itself. When it defended its great symbols, not as symbols, but as literal stories, it had already lost the battle. In doing so the theologians (and today many religious laymen) helped to transfer the powerful expressions of the dimension of depth into objects or happenings on the horizontal plane. There the symbols lost their power and meaning and became an easy prey to physical, biological and historical attack.

"If the symbol of creation which points to the divine ground of everything is transferred to the horizontal plane, it becomes a story of events in a removed past for which there is no evidence, but which contradicts every piece of scientific evidence." (4)

Tillich, Paul. The Esential Tillich. Ed. F. Forrester Church. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987.

This all makes so much sense to me; I will later find out how he concludes this essay!

STAY WARM and SAFE!