My faded tulips.

In the early morning winter sun.

Coconut milk whip cream.

A thing of beauty.

Also a thing of profound simplicity.

All you need, really, is a well chilled (-like a couple of days in the fridge-chilled) can of full fat coconut milk and an upright or hand held mixer.

And you're in business.

If you want to go one step further and make things really amazing add in a good splash of pure Maple syrup and a drizzle of real vanilla extract.

So lovely.

You can use it to frost a cake or dollop it over fresh berries, you can stir it into hot chocolate or top off some iced coffee. Or you can eat it straight out of the bowl with a spatula.

As I may, or may not, generally tend to do...

Paleo cookies...

Yum!

E and I walked 7 blocks down from Columbus Circle today to watch the Janesville Fire Department's live-burn training.

It was, in a word, sobering.

And not just the heat and the smoke and the amount of water flooding the street.

The whole experience was sobering.

Watching someone's formerly occupied home literally go up in flames, no matter how old or run down or empty it might have been, is just the oddest thing.

It rattles you, a bit.

Because it seems wrong.

Houses shouldn't burn. Roofs and chimneys shouldn't collapse. Streets shouldn't be clogged with smoke. 

Or so your instincts are telling you.

But this is all on purpose. For a good purpose. For much needed training and experience for these Fire Fighters. But also, I think, for those of us watching it live, or on the news, or reading about it in the newspaper.

Fire is sobering. To see, first hand, what it is capable of, it's energy and nature and destruction, cannot help but stir within you a very deep respect.

This is nothing to mess around with. 

I have always had admiration for what my husband and his co-workers do for a living.

This was different, though.

This wasn't knowing what they do. This was seeing it. And it looked miserable and draining and intense and suffocating and hot and wet and cold and, well, and sobering.