waiting for a star to fall

 After several mostly-dry weeks, we finally got some rain...

...and an absolutely gorgeous hard frost.

Still, it's mainly on the warmer side, even though there's usually a skim of ice at the edges of the front pond.

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and as usual, I made a feast.  In college, I used to carefully recopy my notes to get the contents straight in my mind, and I do the same thing with recipes...just a bit messier.

We ate...

...and spent the rest of the day like this:

Oh, I did find a real gem.  I made 6 mini (single-serving) pies - apple, cherry, and chocolate.  I'm not much of a pie person, though, so I added a half-batch of cookies  Now, I've tried dozens of oatmeal cookie recipes in my lifetime, and this seemed unlikely to overtake my beloved oatmeal/coconut/chocolate chunk one.  Somehow, though, it did.

Sally's Baking Addiction Iced Oatmeal Cookies

Plain and unassuming, sure, but with crispy edges and a soft center.  Pulverizing half the oats is a genius move, and the icing that tastes too sweet and sharp on its own somehow elevates a not-very-sweet cookie into something special.  This is going into rotation around here!

Otherwise, we had a bit of excitement this week.  I was outside at dawn, taking photos, when I noticed something unusual in the sky beyond the barn.

I used my Zoom to get a bit closer:

And more:

This was no airplane trail!  I submitted it to the American Meteor Society and got this terse response:

Not a meteor/fireball.  Someone online suggested falling space junk.  I'm dying to know what it was, but googling "strange things falling from sky" produced some, well, strange results.  Hopefully I'll have more time after the holidays to delve into this mystery!

Until then, I'll just keep an eye on the sky.  It's awfully pretty this time of year.

Have a great week!