It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing
and it was going to snow.

snow day, work on the side. lisab, on stripgenerator

I was of three minds, 

Like a tree 

In which there are three blackbirds.

Noticing.

Today, a friend shared this from Verlyn Klinkenborg, from his A Few Short Sentences About Writing:

"Is it possible to practice noticing?

I think so.

But I also think it requires a suspension of yearning

And a pause in the desire to be pouring something out of yourself.

Noticing is about letting yourself out into the world,

Rather than siphoning the world into you

In order to transmute it into words."

Endorsed by the Megastore.

It's the weather! We'll have the meeting another day!

 

1. Cancellations and reschedulings in advance of snow. I love the new weather. The old weather used to be, basically, a prognostication assembled from the weatherman's lucky chickenbone, spitting into the wind or lack thereof, and someone's achy sacroiliac. Now, they got Doppler and computer graphics and our Google Overlords giving them live feeds from the Universe, so you actually know that there's a snowstorm a-comin'. These more precise predictions occasionally lead the boss to say, hmmmmmmmm! better not have that giant meeting tomorrow.

So even if I spent time at work in the morning getting ready for your part of the giant meeting tomorrow, getting the e-mail saying ALL THE THINGS ARE CANCELLED made me feel like it was a snow day when I was a kid. The rest of the day looked brighter, because I'd been released from the pressure, and I knew I wouldn't have to get up early tomorrow, maybe, and so forth. YES to the new weather, bosses calling the snow day early, and time off for good behavior!

in my neighborhood, yo.

2. The new restaurant nearby. I happen to live in the 'burbs. I am at peace with it. All the people can't live in the cool neighborhoods, now can they? No, they can't, in case you are feeling argumentative--just cut it out.

Anyway. My cultural advantages include being very close to multiple Targets, a deep familiarity with the merchandise at my nearest Old Navy, and the various chain and ethnic restaurants that are at least passable and sometimes good, and a giant multiplex full of the movies. Also a nearby dollar theater that is somehow never just a dollar anymore, but never mind. However, if you're looking for foodie kind of food, it is thin on the ground out here, and that's a fact, so it's danged exciting when a new restaurant opens up, and even better when it proves to be good. A couple of weeks ago we ate at a so-called pub that had the word "fox" in its title. I was hoping for "pub food," but whatever the food was, it was not good, and it made me mad at my neighborhood, which made me doubly mad at the restaurant. But tonight, we got ahead of the storm, so to speak, and went to take out Indian food from the new restaurant nearby, and it was so good, the people! We brought it home and it was a feast on a snowy night, which happens to be another thing we endorse.

3. Snow falling. This is why we live here, right? Snugged up in the house while it falls and falls and falls all night long.

Spring light and dark and snow.

Bruiser is fascinating, just fascinating. 

two noble profiles.

construction.

tickle.

what do these tags say, exactly? 

orchid. 

spring snow. 

spring snow, some more.

I love spring snow, I just love it.

Upcoming:

• getting up at the crack of dawn tomorrow so I can teach my class, then 
• getting up at the crackier crack of dawn on Saturday, so I can fly away to a conference in Philadelphia.

Me: Let's go on a date on Friday. 

The historian: are you sure? you have to get up so early the next morning.

Me: What am I going to do? go to bed early or something?

Historian: [snickers] 

In between now and the crack and the date and the crackier, though, I have to

• make a snazzy conference handout, yo
• teach my class
• attend a meeting
• figure out what clothes I am going to wear, for the love of all that is holy!
• etcetera, soaked in stress and rolled in toasty flakes of anxiety.

And it's snowing. As in to snow: as in, when I was driving downtown to a meeting of this board I'm on, and I was listening to a truly hilarious story about this Quebecois chef who just wrote a book about maple syrup (sample recipe: squirrel sushi--no, the squirrel is not raw, but yes, the squirrel has, apparently, delicious meat because of all the acorns it eats, poor squirrel, and yes, there is maple syrup in the soy sauce. Now: say all of that in a Quebecois accent), and I got about halfway there and I was clearly driving into the snow. The kind of driving into the snow that makes you want to turn off the radio, slow down, notice you're not sure if you're driving in an actual lane anymore. 

Long story short, I got there and home safely, and when we just took the B for a walk, the snow was almost sheeting down, but a little gentler than that. Shaking my hair and clothes off, I created my own little storm.

Winter: a pro/con analysis.

Yesterday I dreamed that I took a Bichon Frise dog over to Oprah's house, along with all my youngest son's friends and I think my former was in there too. It was very bad manners, clearly--in real life I would never invite so many people plus a dog to Oprah's.  By the way, she was none too happy about that dog.

 Today, the day it snowed, I felt some irritating little illness waiting in the wings. So I read and slept and did some dishes and laundry and laid around some more. We watched a lot of Downton Abbey. The second season is even soapier than the first season. Sudsy. I can't wait for the next episode.

I hope it snows all week.

(p.s.: happy birthday mom!)

My men and my women:

On Sunday, I noted the faintest dust of snow drifting lazily down and asked myself: shall I go out or shall I stay in? and more importantly, shall I bake? As it turned out, I went into the wild world to try to find fancy dresses for granddaughters, and came back sort of wasted. But in the meantime, an idea set my head on fire (sorry, just now watching Glee) and the idea was this: apple turnovers.

Maybe I looked at Tartelette, and there was a recipe for crazy mille feuilles, along with a rough puff pastry recipe, whoa. Maybe it was that there's a bucket of apples in the garage that came from our very own trees.



Maybe it's that every weekend of late, we say "Let's make applesauce!" and then we never do. And maybe, periodically, I need to wrestle with some complicated pastry to prove that pastry is not the boss of me. I don't know.

But that rough pastry recipe called my name. And the context in which it called my name was the turnover.

I have some history with the apple turnover. I think you can still buy those turnover kits made by, what, Pillsbury, in the refrigerator case. Which I have done in the past. In the past, when I was a teenager, I may or may not have made some of these turnovers for a crazy church event where girls brought a picnic something or other and boys bid on the picnics? Can that be real? I think it was, and I'm pretty sure I had some vaguely French-slash-bohemian fantasy that also may or may not have involved some kind of unusual cheese. Okay, closing that memory up for good, and moving on. Where was I? Apple turnover, right.

So, this pastry. After you make the basic dough, all puff pastry requires multiple rollings out, foldings into thirds, rests in the refrigerator, then more rolling out, etc. This is what builds the layers. For classic puff pastry, you make a square of butter and enfold it in the dough, then roll it out, etc. But with rough puff pastry, you incorporate the butter into flour, as if you were making pie crust, add water, gather it into a ball...and then you roll it out, fold, rest, etc. Does this rough version sound easier than the classic? Not really, am I right? Are you even still listening?

Well, let me say that upon the first assemblage, the dough was very rough looking, and I questioned indeed whether it would be puffy at all or whatsoever, or if instead it would be a tough, horrible catastrophe of a dough that would make me sad that I had ever had the apple turnover idea overtake my mind like a fire. But guess what? After the second rolling out, it started to kind of look suave and as if it might contain the possibility of puff.

(but flat, right? can you believe that the above would ever expand into delicate and sophisticated layers? me either, to tell the truth.)

But after the third rolling out, I was all, let's get the apples!

And here's how it all turned out in the end:

Untidy perhaps, but undeniably flaky and delicious. Apple turnovers YES.

Change in the weather.

The wind felt like it was blowing from the north, with us walking into it and it blowing incipient rain or snow in our faces.

I wore something warm, but not warm enough.

In the west, the sky was red or orange or rose--something in that vein--at 10:30 p.m. What's that? we asked ourselves. Was it wind or traffic we heard, or was there a beating of rotors out there? was that light sweeping across the sky?

The dog gallivanted. He raced ahead, dove deep into the yards we passed, turned back on us to play.

The snow is supposed to arrive at midnight. At midnight, there is supposed to be snow.

This week in baked goods.

All week long it has been bagels aplenty around here. First, I bought a bunch--cinnamon raisin for the historian, plain for running/former missionary/college son. Then, when I took said son to the store for other food, he thought we might need some more. This bagel-buying orgy started because of my bagel-in-the-morning habit, which started after my sabbatical when I foolishly agreed to be a faculty l*****. I had to be at school in the m*******, so freaking early so many days, that stopping for a bagel started to seem like my earthly reward.

I know, I know. Going to work doesn't mean earning an extra earthly reward. Your paycheck is your reward for going to work. But I am just telling you: this is how the bagel habit got started. Stop judging me.

So, my bagel place had this promotion--every time you bought something, you got a punch in your little card (shaped like a bagel--cute, but you had to fold it in half to put it in your wallet. A folded bagel, with punches in it. This I faithfully kept for twelve full punches). Once you got the full twelve punches, you got a free baker's dozen of bagels! Calloo callay, oh frabjous day. All of a sudden, having piles of bagels around seemed like the thing to do.

Anyway, now we are down to less than six plain bagels, which might be worrisome if I hadn't just recently baked

• a chocolate cake last Sunday;
• a pumpkin pie on Thursday; and
• bread today.

I already told you about the cake. There's still a little left, and it is still more than edible, that's how good the cake is.

The pie is maybe the best pumpkin pie I have ever made. Let's see if we can figure out why, shall we?

• I baked it in a tart pan, ergo more elegant and possibly also--and paradoxically--cuter.
• I roasted the pumpkin the perfect amount of time, so there was no faint redolence of scorch.
• there was cream.
• there were perfect eggs.
• there was a delightfully buttery crust.
• I baked the pie the perfect amount of time--the custard did not crack and it was perfectly creamy.
• the pie had the exact right amount of crystallized ginger. I think this factor was aided and abetted by the extra amount of flat space made possible because of the tart pan. The ginger was more evenly distributed per bite. I could draw you a diagram, but I don't have time for shenanigans like that.

Anyway: that pie was grand. It was the kind of goodness that makes you want to make another pie tout de suite. But now that pie is gone.

First of all, some of it was eaten on Thanksgiving. I kind of like the fact that my family, overall, loves the pecan pie more than the pumpkin. For myself, the pecan pie is a tad too sweet. Anyway, this demographic data means that there is usually some leftover pumpkin pie to bring home from the feast, and that means pie for breakfast, yay! Pie for breakfast leads inexorably to no more pie, however, and that's exactly where we are.

But today was another snowy day (not to say "snow day," alas.), so I decided to make bread. Whole wheat bread. I took the slow rise method (not a scientific slow rise like those very serious bread bakers advocate. I aspire to their scientificness, but I really wanted to eat bread today, so I just used a little less yeast.), which meant that there was a wheat-y smell in the kitchen for several hours. I used two different kinds of Montana wheat flour and a little (very little) rye. This bread tasted delicious. We had it with our dinner.

All this baking is preparatory to the orgy of baking I hope to undertake for the fun of it over the next few weeks. If there happened to be enough snow falling at the exact right times, I could even start it right now.

This dinner brought to you by Google.

As you well know, we had a snowpocalypse last night, which meant that there was serious doubt about whether the historian and I would make it home from our movie double-header downtown in one piece. The odds were more significantly stacked against us because we were in two separate cars. That's because I spent some artistic time at the Roasting Company. I swore to myself that I would draft the current poem I've been working on, or know the reason why. That's because I had my writing group today, at my house, and that's why the snowpocalypse had especial significance: because what if I couldn't arise at the crack of dawn to go buy special ingredients for things I had never made? because what if my writing group food were just ordinary stuff that I already had? The Horror.

I know that was a lot of becauses, but sometimes there happens to be a long chain of causality, okay? a chain which led me to the inevitable conclusion that I should be sensible for just about the first time in my entire life, and figure out something to make out of the bountiful ingredients already in my well-stocked house.

So, the assessment of possible already-there ingredients included:

• arugula
• pears
• a soft persimmon
• a suspiciously soft blood orange
• broccoli
• potato chips
• a shocking amount of 2 liter bottles of various caffeinated soft drinks
• granola bars
• pasta of all kinds, including those pasta side dishes in a bag
• (in case you can't tell, college-running-post-missionary son and I went to the store on Friday)
• various legumes
• a bunch of cheese
• some smoked salmon
• chocolate

At first, when I thought I might run to the store at the crack of dawn, I was thinking I might make a version of this delicious Thai soup I had at Cafe Trang this week. Alas, no time for lemongrass. So I thought perhaps I would invent some kind of fancy chowder that used smoked salmon? But then I thought, I know: I will Google Orangette to see what she has to say about all of this. And that's how I ran smack into the best idea for a day when your trees are laden with snow and you feel lucky not to have spiraled off the road into a wintry death: red lentil soup.

Did I have red lentils? I did. So I made this soup and commend it to you for your wintry hours.

Then, I took the arugula and some mint I had, washed and tore it up into a bowl, then slivered up a teeny sweet orange pepper I had languishing in the fridge, and two pears for sweetness. A vinaigrette, with sherry vinegar in the vinegar slot and a little garlic and a little mustard to sharpen it up, and that was a good salad. I also put some delicious crackers on a plate with Point Reyes blue cheese and the smoked salmon.

For dessert, I made chocolate cake. While I had Orangette doing my research for me, I used Orangette and chocolate cake as search terms, and came up with this recipe. And of course I made adjustments. For the flour, I used a little bit of organic unbleached white, some white-wheat, and some delicious unbleached cake flour. Instead of canola oil, which I did not have, I melted some butter, and why not? Also, I happened to have some full-fat buttermilk which was thick and gorgeous and made this cake a champion. Finally, I did not have any cream so ganache was not possible. Instead, I had the teeniest amount of vanilla ice cream, so I put a spoonful of that and a spoonful of blackberry jam (mine) next to the little cupcake, unwrapped on a plate. And those three flavors--the dark dark of the chocolate, the milky ice cream, and the purple fruit--were divine.

So after the writing group friends left, singing son gave me a call. "Are the Jazz playing tonight?" he asked. I told him they weren't. "Well, what are you having for dinner?" Soup, I told him. And so he and his little family came over, and my writing group repast did a second stint, and it was just as good the second time.

Adjustments.

I don't know if anyone noticed this at all, but today it was very cold outside. Also, super snowy. I noticed this from all the windows in my house whence I checked out conditions whilst waiting for it to be safe for me to drive, or for the approaching hour of my first meeting, whichever came first.

Meanwhile, a mouse ran up and down the corridor, considering with apparent interest the humane mousetrap with a fresh peanut butter-coated saltine in it, without ever actually crossing the threshold of it. Without becoming "trapped," as it were. Running up and down the corridor, in plain view. All, "I love this corridor with its fresh scent of peanut butter and saltine. So much better than that cold-ass field out back!"

Meanwhile, I checked all the humane mousetraps every twenty minutes or so. I have so much faith in them! And so many mice to trap!

I'm still getting used to going outside again, after my long confinement in the House of Contagion. Very cold, for one. Snow-packed. Disorientingly bright. I need a pair of those Victorian sunglasses, the kind that protect your illness-addled brain from The Brightness.

Meeting, meeting, and the drive home. I came home to find that we had caught the (a?) mouse. I made dinner for the second night in a row, so that's something. We ate the very last one of the Chad-procured tomatoes. I let it sit quietly nestled in its bag for days and days, which turned out to be the optimal condition for it ripening to absolute perfection. We ate it with our baked penne and it was a last lucky hit of summer. The ne plus ultra of tomato, in December, on a snowy night.

Meanwhile, another mouse has been running up and down the corridor, disdaining the humane mousetrap while admiring its fragrance, congratulating itself on its excellent taste in shelter.

Glistening.

The historian's daughter and partner are in town for a few days. We went to breakfast, then took a walk around Liberty Park, which was nothing short of glorious:


Liberty Park Snow Day from lisab on Vimeo.

Conversation.

Historian:  [seeing a corner house with only the front walk shoveled]:  Huh. They only shoveled the front walk.  I know, a corner lot, that’s a lot of shoveling, but still--I lived on a corner lot for twenty years and I always shoveled both sides.  By hand, no snow blower, which is probably why I’m in such good shape for my age.

Me:  That, and your pure heart.

Historian: Yes, well, I think both are necessary.

Dog in the snow.

This isn't too long, and you get a sense of Bruiser in snowplay action. Mostly, I'm just pleased that I got Blogger to accept my video. Pardon any fatuous comments made by the videographer. Also, sorry about the brief moments when there's no dogs, only snow. What can I say, I'm a rookie.