I awoke to frost on the ground this morning, the first to really encroach into my yard and garden. Then at the Daily Grind we unpacked Christmas shipments and started getting into the festive spirit, dreaming of beautifully decorated homes and sparkling lights.

Wait a minute! Hold your horses! The leaves aren’t yet gone from the trees and we’re thinking about Christmas? Still, it did raise the question of winter and its changes.

At the Star, our winter menu focuses on comfy, hearty fare. In town, people don’t go out as often; everybody hunkers down in their cozy nests. We change our hours, closing on Mondays and closing at 8:30 in the evening from Tuesday to Thursday. We create new hot drinks and revive some old ones. We lower the lights and light the candles.

This year, we are going to try a couple of new things. Because of a power outage on Thanksgiving Sunday, we couldn’t offer our turkey dinner, so we moved it to Tuesday and dubbed it Turkey Tuesday. The response was so good that we are going to institute Turkey Tuesday every week starting next week  ̶   hot turkey sandwich at lunch and turkey dinner in the evening.

Because we are always mindful of our community members who live alone, are aging, or simply don’t want to cook, we have also decided to offer frozen microwaveable dinners. The meals will have the same attention to quality and detail we show at the Star, will be affordable, and will be gluten and lactose free. We will sell them either by the single meal or in a weekly program and will even deliver a weekly supply of meals within Maple Creek. We have ordered the containers and are in the process of testing some recipes. We’ll let you know when we start this exciting new way to enjoy our great food.

So, yes, the season will soon change, but with the cooler weather come some exciting new projects and ideas. After all, I love turkey, don’t you?