I miss winter

Last year we had about two weeks of winter, in January. This year we had a little more wintry weather, but no snow until February, and I couldn’t even help shovel because of my wrist. Which is healing, but slower than I’d like.

And it was really just one snow, which came the Wednesday before Valentine’s Day, Feb 12, and then it got really cold, but starting last weekend it started warming up and we got some rain and a few 50° days, and now there’s no snow left.

I miss winter. I miss having snow on the ground from December to March. When I moved here from Pittsburgh, where winters were grey and slushy, I thought the bright sunny sparkly days after a snow fall were one of the best things about Wisconsin. And there’d be that time late in the winter (like about now really) when you could recognize everyone by their coats which had become a second skin. Now it’s up and down and it can’t stay cold and you’re always changing coats and misplacing hats and gloves.

It was such a big thing when the thaw came and things you hadn’t seen under the snow for months reappeared. Now they never go away.

Climate change.

Which is not going to get any better under the current administration. It’s been a terrible week. I don’t understand how people can watch ordinary employees walking out of the USAID offices with their coffee cups and boxes of stuff, crying, and think that this is somehow dismantling the deep state. These are ordinary working people, who took the same deal I did – work for the government, it’s less money then the private sector, but you have good benefits, and you get to feel like you are helping people. And job security (ha).

I’ve been cooking a good bit, so nice to have two hands again, but somehow after six weeks in the cast and hard to hold the phone I’ve gotten really bad about photographing what I’m cooking.

Last Friday I got in touch with the farmer Anna, Meredith, and I had ordered a half pig from, in the past, and ordered another. So, in Saturday I roasted the last piece of the last pig, a shoulder roast. I made focaccia and mashed potatoes with onion apple gravy and salad, just a plain one with oil and balsamic, to go with it. No pics. I shredded the meat and made coleslaw and we had BBQ sandwiches on the focaccia. No pics. Then last night I made stovetop mac and cheese, and I had mine with pork and pickled onions and jalapenos on top and Mark had his as a sandwich with the mac and cheese on the side. No pics, but mine looked kinda like this, less piled and the meat’s in the sauce rather than drizzled.

I over-documented these cookies, peanut butter with leftover holiday m&ms and a few chocolate chips. Jasper liked them. And then I ate way too many of them Wednesday, after Jasper went home.

I made practice babkas last weekend, practice for my class coming up March 11. The dough is my giant cimmy bun dough. The chocolate filling is based on a Milk Street and the strawberry cream cheese is King Arthur. I’m going to do the strawberry cream cheese as is for the class – it’s cream cheese, powdered sugar, and freeze-dried strawberries, crushed into a powder. The chocolate was supposed to have chopped chocolate (I was actually going to use mini chocolate chips) layered on, but I forgot to put them in, so I need to to not forget. I also want to try the chocolate one with almond butter instead of tahini. And instead of powdered sugar glaze on top, streusel for the strawberry, and a sugar syrup glaze, which is traditional with babka, for the chocolate. I’m going to make a batch of the dough tonight, and tomorrow make a King Cake with it, it’s the same dough, with an almond and bread- or cake-crumb filling, and try the chocolate babka with filling with almond butter. And not forget the chocolate chips.  

Jasper was here Wednesday, the rainy day, and we went to bagel store and the library to play.

OK, I guess that’s it, back to waiting for the next terrible headline, but I’ll be making babka dough and cornmeal blueberry muffins to comfort myself. And anyone else who eats them, too.