Wednesday, February 19

Cold Comfort

It's a tough time to live in or around Washington, D.C.

Hardware stores are out of plastic sheeting and duct tape. Corporations are stocking up on bottled water and meal replacement shakes just in case. Anti-aircraft artillery ring the nation's capital, and fighter jets patrol the city skyline. The general stress level is way, way up.

Did I mention twenty-six-plus inches of snow?

That's right. Between early Sunday morning and midday Monday, the snow just kept on coming. And coming. And coming. For residents of the usually-moderate mid-Atlantic region, which has already suffered a winter much harsher than most, the amount of snowfall was almost unbelievable. One foot? Done. Eighteen inches? Yup. More than twenty inches? We passed that benchmark six hours ago.

The good thing about the snow was that it completely distracted everyone from any impending terrorist threat. Actually, people actually stopped talking politics altogether, which is rare within thirty miles of the Capital Beltway. Baltimore television stations suspended regular programming, and broadcast hours and hours of impromptu interviews with the occasional man-on-the-street, and pictures of bewildered dogs trying to figure out what, exactly, their owners wanted them to do in this mess.

So it was a toss-up: you could think about dirty bombs and "safe rooms" and why France is such an annoying country, or you could think about how much actual snow was surrounding your car and what a gigantic pain it was going to be to remove it. You could while away your snow day precutting pieces of plastic sheeting to cover your vents and choosing which cans of food you'd like to store in your bunker, or you could actually go outside and start shovelling.

I chose a third option: stay inside, stand at the stove, and churn out as much food as possible.

Snow days always make me want to cook hearty hot filling food, and this historic snowstorm was no exception. I was a woman with a plan: I went to the grocery store early Saturday morning, when the prequel snowstorm was over and well before the real storm began. The Friday-night rush for toilet paper and bread had passed, and the store was actually quiet and well-stocked. I took my time and emerged with a great deal of food/semi-food (food: boneless skinless chicken breasts; semi-food: half-priced bag of leftover Valentine's Day York peppermint patties). I was quite proud of my shopping job, until it was revealed well into the snowstorm that the house was completely out of coffee.

I started the comfort-food marathon with a large pot of chili. It simmered on the stove for about three hours, all told, and was quite warming after I ventured into the elements to take the trash out and discovered that the snow was up to my knees. Then, over the course of the two days left in my snowy weekend, I whipped up some: raspberries and cream, hot chocolate, chile con queso, blond brownies with chocolate chips, Thai-marinated chicken breasts with ginger and lime, oven-roasted broccoli, cucumber salad, biscuits, carrot salad, black bean soup, cornbread (baked in a skillet, of course), and toasted pecans for ice-cream sundaes.

All in all, it wasn't a bad way to spend the weekend, except for the endless loads of dishes that needed to be done. I would certainly rather do fifty loads of dirty dishes than sit and worry and wonder. I found the blond brownies particularly comforting, as they were tasty before they went into the oven (cook's treat!) and after they came out. Next time you have something to worry about, throw some vanilla ice cream on top of one of these warm babies, and call it a day.