The Masterpiece Theater version with Rupert Penry-Jones as Captain Wentworth and Sally Hawkins as Anne Elliot. Just perfect for New Year’s Eve, spent quietly recovering from a nasty bug. I’m getting to a very exciting episode in Battlestar Galactica, but don’t need something quite so dark.

After eating nothing but soup all day, steak and a baked potato was a no-brainer.

All I had yesterday was a banana and a boiled egg. By suppertime, I dispatched a family member to get turkey soup at Whole Foods.

There was no soup, only turkey stew. It was sludgy, tasting of cafeteria food. Hot, but not palatable. I ate a clementine instead.

Today, I reached in the back of the freezer and pulled out a container of frozen chicken soup, at least a year old. It was just the thing. Between that and the meds, I should be back to normal by tomorrow.

Oh, and while I was in the freezer, I took out two steaks.

Yesterday I slept. Today, thanks to antibiotics, I am watching the new birds at the feeder, checking the Sibley’s now and then to see what they are. A wren comes by now and then, and a titmouse is regularly chased away by the juncos. Once in a while I look up, and am startled by a squirrel. In those cases, I’m the one doing the chasing.

Christmas is over, time to get on the daily exercise program. I was surprised to see a man reading a book while walking. He didn’t look up, totally engrossed.

In the past, I was almost wiped out by drivers who, while maybe not reading a book, were otherwise multitasking. If the pedestrian is also deeply engaged, I shudder to think what might happen.

We ran into a few, notably the fellow this afternoon at Trader Joe’s. I needed eggs, waiting patiently as he examined them. Then he examined some more. Being a hefty guy, he took up all the space in front of the egg display. I waited and rolled my eyes. He picked up yet another carton. He made no move to put anything in his cart. I gave up and moved on.

At Whole Foods a few days ago, I needed an item that was blocked by a woman on the phone. She was deep in conversation and had a list that was a legal-size sheet of paper, writing on both sides. Apparently there was some question about the price of needed items. If this was truly a concern, she was in the wrong store. Still, she loudly expressed her views on this and that, here and there, politics, religion - the while blocking my way. I decided that she would have been more organized had she not spent the last 45 hours working on her hair.

Tonight, we will embark on yet another viewing of the local Christmas displays, tasteful and otherwise. The boys aren’t so little anymore, but we’re all kids in our hearts on Christmas Eve.

For some really unique holiday creativity, go here, which links to a slide show that includes flying spaghetti monsters and baby Jesus laid out in a morgue-like setting. Not in the same display of course. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. We don’t want to give these people any more ideas.

A well-dressed, ultra-thin mom saying to her two very young kids, ‘Now that I know I can’t trust you anymore, I’m going to treat you like little babies and put you in the cart.’

Uh-oh. Do you suppose Santa is listening?

Let’s see, when did I stop shopping at Fry’s. Was it after the time I bought a $3000 laptop from the clerk who couldn’t make eye contact with me, and addressed replies to my questions to the male accompanying me? (Yes, yes, I know I should have gone elsewhere.) A little over a month after, the CD slot quit working, and someone at Fry’s told me not to bother them, they were not responsible after 30 days.

Maybe it was after when I went with a female friend to buy her Mac. That clerk treated us like a couple of homeless people with mental issues. (My friend now takes her business to the Apple store.)

The comments following the SFGate article make for interesting reading.

Hooray for online shopping.

Usually by this time each year, there will have been several batches of fudge, chocolate-covered nuts and cashew nut brittles made and delivered to office functions, neighbors, friends, etc. But this year, in the spirit of cutting back (and the realization that said treats contain ingredients not on my list of allowed foods), I haven’t begun the process. I’m actually very pleased about this.

But having gotten at least a week behind on the whole holiday scramble, I’m starting to make a little progress today. The tree is almost trimmed. It’s too bushy at the top third for most ornaments, too sparse on the lower two-thirds for words. In a bit, I will begin the present-wrapping. I am printing out Christmas cards. They might arrive on time.

Do you have a small kitchen? No counter space, like me? Are you a food writer and author of books about food? Maybe you should take a look at this.

After a really long day of shopping in Berkeley and SF, we actually planned to go to La Ciccia, having heard of their house-made salumi.

But that was not to be at 7:00 on a Saturday night when we were all running on empty. Park Chow promised only a 15-minute wait. The considerable crowd outside the restaurant promised otherwise. Luckily, it wasn’t that cold, and it wasn’t raining. After a time, one impatient gentleman began grumbling loudly, ‘Tell them to eat faster.’ Large parties were seated. We waited some more. I double-checked the menu, only to be told by a family member that there was little question what I would be ordering.

From time to time, one of us will get a pasta or some fish. Inevitably, the rest of us will get the short ribs. The ribs come in three sizes, depending on the appetite, and are served over mashed potatoes. Not a real hearty serving of mashed, but adequate. The lone holdout will spend the meal gazing at the short ribs enviously.

Saturday, we all wanted comfort. Eventually, we were seated (fairly close to the fireplace), and were told that we would be getting two free appetizers due to our wait that had turned into 25 minutes. Service was very attentive, the food appeared quickly, the ribs meltingly tender.

We were in SF for some shopping, and needed a little something to fortify us for the duration. More and more people squeezed into the tiny space. An elderly gentleman seemed to be a regular, and like us, waited patiently for his order. From time to time he greeted other customers.

Another white-haired fellow breezed in, went straight up to him and said, ‘Hey, aren’t you Bernie Madoff?’

The first guy was a bit taken aback. But a minute or so later, he took off after the other, who was back examining the vast cheese selection. ‘Hey you,’ he shouted. ‘You look more like him than I do!’

The orange oil was only a temporary fix, sadly. Believing it would do the trick, confident the ants were banished, I took off with a family member to shop in SF.

When I returned, the ants had sent out word that they were in a citrus-scented tropical paradise. It was time to bring out the heavy salvo: the boric acid solution. However, this solution has been aging since last year when I mixed up a large batch. Whether it will have its usual deadly effects will be obvious when I check tomorrow morning.

How cold does it have to be before the ants decide to move in? Early this morning, a bunch of ice cubes from a big cooler were tossed onto the driveway. Most of them were still there at 1 p.m. When we returned from the city after 6 p.m., there they were, diminished but recognizable.

Shopping was abbreviated, but successful. I found a few places rumored to be THE sites for the objects I hunted. There was parking very close by, surprisingly. For all practical purposes, I am done with the shopping.

Just what I need at Christmas time, 36,000 guests, hungry and clamoring to be seated at my huge container of photogenic candies.

Luckily, I have a large bottle of orange oil concentrate, which has dispersed the bulk of them rather quickly, and makes the house smell good as well. But it also means going out in the 36° temps to saturate the house perimeter, which is not that much fun.

Seeing those excellent food blogs means I should stop dragging my feet and get going on my own. I stopped photographing food for months, thanks to all the allergy problems, but now that it’s Christmas, I’m starting to get a spark of interest again.

The kids used to refer to it as brownus birdus, and we’ve always had them in the yard. They have been making do with scrounging around the mulches and other lowly pursuits while watching the chickadees and juncos feast on peanuts and sunflower seeds up on the table. Finally, yesterday one appeared nervously at the feeding area. I froze, knowing that they can be skittish. It hung around long enough to ascertain the abundance of foods, then took off.

Just now, another appeared. I faded into the background, and it never stopped watching my movements. It didn’t take the other birds long to get used to me. I think the cold weather is a factor in other birds starting to join the party by the window. Maybe I’ll get a picture or two today. It’s going to get lots colder, snow in the lower elevations, which means the hills all around are white today.

Some old favorites on Bon Appetit’s list, via the NYT. Not only are they excellent foodies, but they’ve got the scrumptious photography skills as well.

My triglycerides are kinda high. After find out that flax seed would be a helpful addition to my diet, I went looking for it at the grocery store. When I asked a clerk where to find it, she looked blank and said, ‘What’s flax seed?’

I found it in the cereal section. It makes my morning oatmeal a little thicker, and will help me get a little thinner, along with many other benefits.

But not quite in the way you might think.

Even though the winds were gusty and the temps low, it was a fine day to go for a long walk. My walking friend and I had a lot of catching up to do, news-wise, and the ginkgo trees were at their supreme fall moment, turning the sidewalks and curbs to that wondrous golden yellow.

Hardly anyone else was out, given the cold, except for a man sweeping his driveway up ahead. People are generally very friendly on this route, but he ducked back into his garage. After we passed his drive, we noticed the smell. We both stopped to inspect our shoes, didn’t see anything. The smell prevailed over the next couple of blocks till I stopped and looked again. Surely one of us had stepped in something. Yes, there in the treads.

My friend decided that the man was cleaning away some dog poop. Surprisingly, a lot of dog owners don’t bother to pick up after their pets. Still.

The way home was simply the reverse route. Deep in conversation, we didn’t notice till we walked through the driveway again. This time, we took a close look. It appeared that the sweeper merely spread the stuff around. There was no way to avoid it unless we went into the street.

There was an incident recently, my friend said, when a construction worker client came into her office. The toxic smell that accompanied him throughout the office complex (over several stories) was so pervasive that a pregnant woman in a waiting room was moved to a different area for her safety.

Turned out that the guy had stepped in poop, and being in a hurry for his appointment, reached for the nearest solvent. The combination of diesel fuel and dog feces almost emptied the building.

When the lab person printed out the stickers to go on the blood vials, I thought, no way. It was a very, very long strip. Longer than anyone else’s in the mostly filled waiting room.

But, as I said, I got into the Coben book and was transfixed by the page-turning wonder that it is. When I realized that people with numbers higher than mine were being processed, I dashed in to take a seat in a cubicle.

Long ago, I learned not to look. Maybe it was during one of my pregnancies when they would take 3 vials of blood at a time. The technician seemed to be taking a really long time. He was not a talker. I had not eaten since 7:00 last night.

Luckily, there was a distraction. The man next to me was being told he had to stay for three hours in the waiting room after. He was not happy. He said he’d just go around the corner and get some coffee. The technician said no, he could not leave the building. I was still pondering what his problem might be when my silent blood person seemed to be finishing up.

Lined up neatly were five vials. Four were for the allergist. I went home to eat. Meat. It’s on the list of approved foods.

If you have to go in for a blood test and anticipate a long wait, Harlan will help. In fact, I missed my number when it came up because I was engrossed in The Woods.

If only they had allowed me to keep reading during the taking of the blood.

My allergist handed me a list of foods yesterday. Since I broke out in hives from almost everything I’ve eaten lately, I was expecting the worst, but still, it was depressing. So here are a few of them:

Apples
Peaches
Grapes
Oranges
Apricots
Strawberries
Raspberries
Nectarines (there goes summer)
Tomatoes
Peppers
Cherries
Ice cream (well, I knew that)
Gum
Jam or Jelly
Lunch meats such as salami
Bakery items
Diet drinks (what!) except for 7-up and some Hansen’s natural soft drinks
Candies
Hot dogs

On the bright side, I am allowed:
Lemons
Dates
Bananas (hmmm, I’m not sure about those)
Pears
Dates
Figs
Melons (not sure about those either)
Meat
Eggs
Veggies
Fresh lemonade
Water
Vodka

And while this was not mentioned, I can eat 100% cacao chocolate, which is palatable to me if it is chopped and baked into scones, for example. I’m on the second piece of the afternoon. Between the chocolate and the vodka, maybe Christmas won’t be so grim after all.

The crows left it alone this morning, and it tolerated my attempts for a little longer than usual.

After cutting up an avocado, some tomatoes and a cucumber last week, I broke out in hives. The kind that has me stumbling to the kitchen for an antihistamine in the middle of the night. I’ve cut up these veggies many times without a problem before.

I made a beef vegetable soup with carrots, onions, tomatoes, corn and peas. Ditto. I had a cup of soy chocolate milk. Ditto. I took an antihistamine with a spoonful of applesauce. The hives lasted twice as long. I ate a lot of grapes one afternoon with no apparent reaction. The day after, I ate a few grapes. Almost instant hives.

Clearly, I needed some expert advice and allergy testing. Today, I met my allergist. She checked me out before setting up some skin tests, but she wanted to make sure I was up to it. She made some slight marks on my arm with the back of her fingernail and waited. Within a couple of minutes the marks got redder and raised. Not hives, but enough to tell her I could not do the skin tests.

More later.

It’s cute, but I’m keenly disappointed that the monkey-picked tea is out of stock.

Once in a while, I get a stack of Cook’s Illustrated magazines for nighttime reading. Because the photos are black and white, there’s less of an urge to eat a little something, which happens when I go through a regular cookbook.

In the January issue, there’s an article comparing dark chocolates. My lactose intolerance won’t allow me to eat milk chocolate anymore, but I don’t really like the dark. However, at Safeway the other night, I found a bar of Ghirardelli 100% cacao. For not very much. I’m pretty sure I can eat this, but whether it’s enjoyable or not is another matter.

The article rates Ghirardelli’s bittersweet chocolate baking bar second to Callebaut’s intense dark chocolate. Interesting to note that Scharffen Berger (which I don’t like) is way down the list, as are Guittard and El Rey. Here’s part of the article. The rest you have to sign up for, but I’ve given the more important results.

Having run out of Battlestar Galacticas (till season 3 arrives), I was set for an evening without scenes of torture and faces in varied states of cuts, contusions and worse.

Well. I only had to leave the room once. But highly entertaining with an intense coolness factor. Somehow, Jeff Bridges’ villain put me in mind of a stout, bald, evil Steve Jobs. Which, of course, made it that much more fun. It’s okay, Steve got his product placement in.

Dinner was meatloaf and cauliflower.

Obviously caught during the night, it made a nest of leaves and pieces from a garbage bag nearby. By the time I saw it around 9:30 a.m., it was very, very sleepy. Unlike a previous raccoon, which growled and bared its teeth whenever I got near, this one was docile and quiet, curling up in a ball to sleep.

However, once the cage was moved, it became extremely animated, and the family member who relocated it to the woods near the reservoir reported that it ‘galloped’ away when released.

For months, there were red, itchy areas on my hands that wouldn’t go away. Of course, I did some online research. I looked at quite a few graphic photos of skin ailments. The closest match was scabies, a condition that is not that unusual but highly contagious.

I was convinced that microscopic mites were burrowing in the skin of my hands (sounds pretty psychotic). Between the time of my research and my doctor’s appointment, I washed my hands even more than usual, and spent a good deal of time ironing my sheets and underwear.

Now how would I contract something so gross? From time to time, I go hunting for photo props, and sometimes that means pulling tapestries and old quilts out of boxes at estate sales. Some of these sales occur in less than hygienic conditions, but I gamely plow through, even on porches that seem to be the permanent residences of really smelly, unwashed animals.

When my new doctor entered the exam room, she immediately shook my hand. I was taken aback, because the last doctor I had was the one who backed away when I said I had poison oak. After one look, the new doc said I had eczema, easily treated. We agreed that too much information is not necessarily a good thing.

She told me to stop washing my hands so much. However, when I go looking for props again, I think I will scrub right after, just in case.

For those deer in the headlights moments in a crowded bookstore or library, a long list covering many categories from Publishers Weekly.

Last week I found myself without a list and in great need of distraction. After wandering up and down the aisles, I came out with:

The Minimalist Cooks at Home, Mark Bittman
These Dreams, Barbara Chepaitis
The Museum at Purgatory, Nick Bantock
First Light, Peter Ackroyd
Insatiable, Gael Greene
Edible and Poisonous Mushrooms of the World, Buchanan, Yun, Cole
The Woods, Harlan Coben

Are they photographs or paintings? Perhaps a hybrid? Or maybe it’s all an illusion.

According to the NYT, that is. Have you read any of them?

When I asked a family member to put up Christmas lights in the tree out front, he reminded me about the hornets’ nest at the base of the tree. Ground covers of vinca minor and honeysuckle grow underneath. Another family member was stung several times when he ventured near a few weeks ago.

The suggestions here sound doable without too much fuss, and while the torch of flaming rags sounds wonderful, visually speaking, it would give my elderly neighbors chest pains if they happened to see.

There might or might not be an update.

While you’re pondering about our friends across the pond and their chocolatey innovations, consider this: Mo’s Bacon Bar is a chocolate bar studded with applewood smoked bacon.

A chocolatier who doesn’t forget about those of us who are lactose-intolerant is a fine fellow indeed. His offerings can be seen at his site, but the photo accompanying the article is a stunner.