Grateful #12 – What are you thankful for today?

Welcome to winter, Brisbane!

This week has been frosty, and it’s all anyone can talk about. I’m so sure that every winter is the same, but I seem to have winter amnesia every year, and never remember the teeth-chattering, frosty breath, scarf wearing cold until it actually really is.

The good thing about real winter weather is that it brings lots of sweet snuggly cuddles, steaming mugs of sweet milky tea, and comforting layers of blankets, doonas and warm flannelette sheets. This year, we’ve also become a family of porridge eaters; we even ate it for dinner tonight because it’s so deliciously nourishing.

So, aside from winter weather and honey-laden porridge, this week I’m grateful for:

Friends who love food, cooking, eating, and sharing just as much as I do. This weekend, we have lots of lovely friends coming over for a wintery afternoon BBQ to welcome a pair of sorely-missed nomadic travellers home.

I’ve been seriously dreaming about this feast for nearly two weeks, and this is why -

Imagine: A big open bonfire outside, fireplace lit and roaring inside; marshmallows for toasting on found twigs, a wild boar roasting deliciously on a spit, lovely spiced mulled wine, cheese wheels for nibbling, rich gravies and warm bread, lots of hearty winter salads, baked potatoes roasted on the bonfire coals and topped with lashings of sour cream and bacon, decadent self-saucing puddings, and sweet syrupy cakes.

It’s absolutely my idea of foodie heaven. And that we get to share it with the people we love most in the world – well, it makes it all the more delicious.

Young Flaubert, looking dapper and important. Image from here.

Madame Bovary, and French writer/wonder, Gustave Flaubert. I’ve had a rollicking good time re-reading my absolute favourite book this week. Beautiful Madame Bovary (Emma) is spoilt, absolutely self-centred and self-absorbed, in love with the idea of love, and bored to distraction with her neat little life, married to a bumbling doctor in a small country town. She’s the perfect 19^th century anti-heroine, who cures boredom and emptiness with obsessive, suffocating affairs, smothering her lovers with a careful mix of helpless heroine in need of rescuing, and a va-va-va-vooom! bombshell act which leaves them coming back for more (well, for a while anyway). There’s also a very long drawn out (and quite amusing) death scene right at the end - it's wonderful.

I just love this book; and I'm so grateful for a great bedtime read.

Independence. I stopped dragging my feet, and began toilet training my nearly-three-year-old this week – and it’s all gone so smoothly that I’m left with very little mop-ups and a very proud heart. I love Judah’s new found toileting independence, and I love watching him strut around post-toilet, pleased as punch, knowing he’s doing such a good job. I've even overheard him telling his little sister, 'I did it all by myself!' which is just the loveliest thing to hear.

What are you grateful for this week?

Nat

Ps. Linking up with the lovely Maxabella – and you can too! Link your grateful post up with hers here, or write your grateful list in the comments section below x