We've been staring down the barrel of a winter storm warning for a few days, a warning on the books ever since the prior storm dumped on us on earlier in the week. This weekend was predicted to be extremely cold with a lot of snow. And oddly enough, the forecasters got it largely correct. Saturday the 13th, the snow really started ripping just before dawn and continued for the next 24 hours, a big, big powder day with plenty of wind and arctic temperatures.
All in all, it was just a day to hole up inside and let the storm rage while we sat under blankets by the fire, made some great food, and watched a little playoff football. My short perusal of social media led me to believe that pretty much the entire town was holed up at home as well. I don't believe that even the Mt. Bachelor ski resort was open in the face of this storm. I saw some pretty gnarly footage of the chairlifts iced up and swinging wildly in the wind.
As nice as sitting bundled up by the fire sounds, the day was punctuated by my shoveling the walk and the driveway three times, dawn, noon, and dusk, and really getting cold. Worse, all this shoveling really exacerbated my hurt back to the point where I can barely walk now, days later as I type this. I'm now in about day 10 of a big flare-up. No fun this feeling of being sliced unanesthetized with a flaming knife.
The temperatures Saturday ranged from a high of 1F at dawn to a low of -7F just after sunset and I could only be outside for a few minutes before the pads of my fingers went from stinging cold to numb and insensate, despite my gloves.
I was wearing my US Army combat gloves, the heaviest ones I own that still allow my fingers some mobility and still, ten minutes of shoveling was all I could take before coming in to warm up. For weather like this, I really needed my thin merino base-layer gloves with some big overmitts, but how to shovel with this set-up?
After the first shoveling expedition of the morning and a couple cups of delightful coffee, the first inside order of business was to get something delicious cooking for dinner. Fortunately, I had the foresight the night before to put a couple of pounds of Great Northern beans on to soak. In the winter, I always try to keep the pantry stocked with dried beans, just for times like this storm day.
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| White Chicken Chili About to Start in the Slow Cooker |
Ann had mentioned wanting white chicken chili the day before (hence my soaking the beans) and I happened to have a big tray of chicken thighs that I was going to roast. I repurposed four of those chicken thighs for the chili, leaving the other six for roasting later in the week.
My idea of white chicken chili is white beans, onions, green chiles, cilantro, and garlic, all put in the slow cooker early in the morning and ready to eat by dinner when the chicken falls off the bone into the creamy beans.
In this case, instead of the yellow onions that I normally use, I had a large leek and half a bunch of green onions that had no other purpose, so into the pot they went. And I remembered that Dyce had given us a pint of New Mexico green chile, so that went in as well, with only half as many poblanos as I would normally use. Those New Mexican chiles had a bit of a sting to them!
A few hours later after smelling the beans and chicken starting to cook, Ann and I got pretty darned hungry, so around noon, it was Mission: Lunch. For New Year's Eve, we had planned a really impressive latke board to take to Dyce and Rob's to celebrate the New Year. I had prepped almost everything necessary for the board before the night got called off on account of illness, so we had lots of components already made in the refrigerator heading into this storm weekend.
These items really needed to be consumed before they went bad, so we set about eating them (but still holding onto the caviar in hopes that we can still share it with the guys in the next week.) Ann proposed for brunch that I do something using the smoked salmon that I had brought in from Scotland for New Years and using the loaf of bread that we had slated for another dinner that got axed for illness.
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| Smoked Salmon Smørrebrød |
Given that I had already prepared two great schmears for our latke board, a smoked salmon mousse and an egg mousse, I set out to make smoked salmon
smørrebrød. Smørrebrød are wonderful and beautiful Danish open-faced sandwiches that started as butter on bread, but have evolved into a thing, now fully part and parcel of Danish culture.
The smørrebrød that I made for our lunch consist of smoked salmon mousse, smoked salmon, egg mousse, cornichons, and dill. The smoked salmon mousse is cream cheese, dill, minced capers, and locally hot-smoked salmon. The egg mousse is soft-cooked egg yolks, mayonnaise, dill, minced cornichons, minced capers, salt, and a touch of pimentón for a smoky
je ne sais quoi.
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| Chardonnay by the Fire |
While I was busy assembling the smørrebrød, Ann opened a bottle of wine, a Walter Scott Chardonnay. I wasn't really paying attention or even thinking too much (the pain from my back taking center stage) or I might have warned her off Chard to go with our smørrebrød. Even though Willamette Valley Chardonnay is relatively lightly oaked, oak still clashes mightily with fishy fish and smoked salmon is fishy fish. Oak makes the fish even fishier to the point where it's not fun.
While Ann offered to open something different (a sparkling wine would have been excellent), the solution was simple. Eat first, drink after.
At dusk after shoveling the walk and driveway (this really was snowblower snow) while watching the snowmobiles zip up and down the street, I came in to find that Ann had made us a cocktail to sip while we watched the AFC playoff game. Using the new high-end cocktail set that I gave her for Christmas, Ann mixed cocktails of mezcal, tequila, Ancho Reyes, agave, and lime and served them in a coupe rimmed with smoked salt. This was her best effort yet in that the acid balance was perfect.
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| Ann's Mezcal Cocktail |
We don't watch a lot of football because we cut the cord a long time ago and are not willing to pay for the right to watch games. Also, we can take football or leave it. This is the first time that I can remember that a game has been live-streamed on an outlet that we get. From the get-go, the Chiefs crushed the Dolphins to move on to the divisional round of eight.
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| Watching Football on a Nasty Day |
The announcers, in the pre-game yammering, were making a big deal about the weather in Kansas City delivering one of the coldest game time temperatures in NFL history at -4F. For giggles, I checked our temperature here in Bend (on a day when our high was 1F): seven below. I know what the players were feeling; I had been shoveling in that weather all day.
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| Cold, Cold Evening |
As the game was nearing half-time, I served up white chicken chili from the slow cooker. It's hard to imagine a better dish than this on a very cold night. In fact, it was so cold that we opted to stay downstairs and watch the game by the fire, rather than go upstairs and watch it on the big TV. We keep it intentionally warmer downstairs where we spend the day and cooler upstairs where we sleep.
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| White Chicken Chili |
When we went to bed after the game and after some more TV, it was still snowing, but it was definitely not dumping as hard as it had earlier in the day. Overnight, we added another 4-5 inches to our total accumulation, necessitating another early morning shoveling in the frigid air. Fortunately, 24 hours after the storm hit, it was no longer snowing, a flurry or two here and there excepted.
After coming in and warming my stiff fingers by the the fire, Ann and I enjoyed coffee by the fire and stayed near that fire all morning. If my back were not currently ripped to shreds, we would have been out snowshoeing through all the gorgeous new powder. It sucks to be sofa-bound after a big storm has just dumped oodles of fresh powder!
Late morning, Ann asked me to make some eggs with the smoked salmon leftover from yesterday's smørrebrød. As I headed in to the kitchen to get started, I saw the partial loaf of bread also leftover and quickly a plan came to mind. I still had lots of both chives and dill leftover from our aborted attempt to make a latke board for New Years and I decided that the chives should go in the eggs and the dill into a savory French toast.
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| Eggs with Chives, Smoked Salmon, Savory Dill French Toast |
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| French Toast Almost Done |
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| Dill French Toast Topped with Smoked Salmon and Chive Scrambled Eggs |
After all the powder had blown off the tree limbs, we had a freezing fog event that deposited stunning ice crystals on all the plants. Our front yard was a veritable winter wonderland and I leave you with these parting shots.
Now that we have all this spectacular snowshoeing-depth snow, if I could just get my back straightened out to the point where I could walk....
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