ENOUGH WITH THE SNOW ALREADY

It 

  Above--natural bling.

 Below--Nature's Munchian scream happened all by itself.

Enough is enough. When DC area drivers of snow ploughs stop working and  offices of the United States Post Offices  due to hazardous conditions it is time to turn of the celestial snow machine. Does anyone know how to do that? If so, consider raising the temp and slowing down the 50 mph window while you are at it. We have been  marooned since Thursday and there is no end of this relentless winter in sight. In fact, the forecast--I am starting to hate that word--calls for more snow on Sunday. 

It is comforting to hear that the National Guard is out helping DC area residents. Here at Little Macondo, we tough it out. My excellent neighbor Traci made a foray into Maryland a couple of days ago in her SUV--I hereby swear never to make  disparaging about humangous cars--and brought  back food for our dog and cats. We the bipeds have no shortage of good nomms. We have fresh maple cashew biscotti, bucatini rigati, fresh salad and baguettes. Our good friend Pyotr shoveled our driveway, brought in firewood-Morsolino, our wood stove is insatiable.  We have books, Robert Hicks's A SEPARATE COUNTRY, for example. Good stuff.  We will get through this.

MIGHT AS WELL EAT WORMS

This from The WaPo,

"Closing the federal government for one day costs taxpayers roughly $100 million in lost productivity." The fed will close tomorrow. I can  just see r Chinese Premier Wen Jibao rubbing his hands gleefully.

Then there is this tidbit,   

Add to the  unpleasant news Al Qaeda's  rusty sword rattling somewhere in Tora Bora. What is more,  the Europeans are unhappy with US.  Oy vei iz mir. Should l pull the covers over my head? Not quite yet. Hang in there. The economy will improve, eventuall. terrorists will see the error of their ways and EUC will mellow out. The snow will melt, the feds will go back to work and all will be well with the world. You don't believe me? All right. Be a pessimist. See if it changes the world for the better.

FOX AMONG HEDGEHOGS

A single geranium blossom on my windowsill. 

Philosopher Isaiah Berlin would call Rachel a fox among hedgehogs. She reads Latin, spins wool, makes the best fig jam and tends an organic garden. When she is not teaching at a grade school in Florida, she writes a delightul blog, Modo Vernant Omnia, where she discusses politics, literature, economics and art. Recently, she blogged about her interest in Star Trek and Leonard Nimoy's photography book, Shekhina. She compared Nimoy's hauntingly beautiful photos with those of Mapplethorpe whose work she admires. I confess that    Mapplethorpe is vastly unfamiliar to me. Once, I happened to glance at his photos at a New England bookshop whose owner did not shrink from controversy.  My feeling at the time was that I had no reason to replace  Cartier-Bresson, and the Hungarian masters, Andre  Kertecz( Kertesz Andor)  and the brothers Capa (Friedman)  and Brazilian Sebastiao Salgado with Mapplethorpe on my list of favorites.

Nimoy's Shekhina is a different story, It is an homage to his Jewish Orthodox childhood and to the feminine aspect of G'd, a courageous choice given that most Orthodox Jews might find semi-nude women an odd representation of any aspect Shaddai .  But Shekhina is only one  just one of Nimoy's projects. The one I like best is his Borghese series that deals with Canova's sculptures of  Paulina Bonaparte Borghese. his Hand series is as elegant and ethereal asthe shots of Georgia O'Keefe's hands by  Stieglitz. But is Nimoy a better photographer than he is an actor/ I could not say.  Once I spent some time in the company a twice Pulitzered photographer who told me that the difference between a good photographer and a bad one is that I good photographer hides his mistakes. Obviously he was being facetious. One does not get Pulitzer prizes by simply  hiding bad photos. The difference between Nimoy's acting and his photography is that the he has greater latitude in his work than he does  in playing Mr. Spock. As far as I am concerned, Shekkhina's cover photo alone--a woman wearing tefilin--is worth all episodes of Star Trek. Rachel will probably disagree. Then again, as a proper fox, he loves  both Nimoy as Spock and Nimoy as the translator of light and shadow into memorable  art.

8.4 million Americans are unemployed. 

SNOW STORM BULLETINS

Eerily beautiful  Nanking cherry branches.

 Sugar maple tree dazzles the eye.

The snow plow has yet to appear in our neighborhood. That is not surprising. We do not have the snow removal equipment for this kind of precipitation. And just as I type this,  I hear tits scraping sound of the  plow as it  labors past our house.  Shortly thereafter we have a brief  power outage. This inspires us to break out the emergency candle, oil lamps, tea lights.  

"Guard your snow shovel," counsels a friend. Good advice. There seem to be no snow shovels left at Lowe's Wal-Mart and general stores in our area. Crikey!  Occasionally, hooligans steal wood and snow shovels in our fair village .I am not worried.   The attack cats will deal with  thieves, should they show up. As a last resort we can unleash the Great Dane, but I doubt that it will be necessary . Purloiners of wood usually come in the dead of night to load their ill-gotten logs onto their cars. I'd like to see them drive through six inches of this wet stuff. More than one foolhardy driver has failed to negotiate our driveway in  good weather. Six inches of snow make  it  impassible. Goody. 

Hmm...not so goody that I seem to have  the flu. Oh well, I suppose I will be helicoptered out to the hospital if need be. For the mo, the family plies me with hot tea and soup. If neither cures  the cough, fever  and achy break feeling, being cared for helps the morale.

Local papers have photos of empty shelf after empty shelf in our supermarkets. What a bonanza for Safeway and Hell Mart. We stocked up early. The infanta baked bread today using a modified recipe from the King Arthur Flour site. Delish.

DC airports are closed, I hear. Apparently MARC commuter trains will not be running though a freight train just went by. More anon. 

A RECIPE FOR THE SNOWBOUND

The mother of two fawns debates how to deal with the snowstorm while her offspring wait for instructions.

Yes, it snows in enormous buckets. Schools and offices all over the Mid-Atlantic close, traffic snarls, and  your family clamors for the kind of meal arcttic explorers dream about. Do you worry.  Of course not. There is no need to sacrifice Bambi. As a provident shopper you stashed a roast in the freezer, right? We did. Ours weighs 4 pounds. That is the right size for three meals and a few sandwiches, if your family eats only moderate amounts of red meat. You may season the roast with fresh herbs. We use a homemade mix of dried herbs.

HERBED ROAST BEEF WITH ONIONS

4-pound beef roast
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 large onions
1 tablespoon  herbes de Provence http://anuncommonplace.blogspot.com/2009/03/shpeecy-shpices-how-many-of-tou-out.html
1 and a half cup red wine,
2 teaspoons salt
Half a teaspoon  pepper


Heat oven to 350F
Peel and slice four large onions. Mix  one tablespoon of herbes de Provence with one cup of red wine, two teaspoons salt, half a teaspoon black pepper.
Place two tablespoons of olive oil in a Dutch  oven. Sear roast on all sides. Remove from heat. Pour red wine and herb mix over roast.   Add onion slices. Cover and bake at 350F for for an hour and a half. Uncover and bake for an extra half hour, basting with  red wine, if necessary. Serve with sweet potato oven baked fries and  red cabbage salad

STAPLES FOR THE SNOWBOUND

When the weather channel predicts a major storm we follow the usual drill--fill the wood box, recharge the cell phone, locate matches, candles and flashlights, recharge laptop battery, fill large containers with water, move the car to the entrance of the driveway, check food supplies. All this in case the we have power failures and  interruption of  water supply. Then we check the pantry to make sure we have essential staples on hand.  If there are power failures, we  can make bake apples, soup,oatmeal, rice, potatoes and pasta on Morsolino, our trusty wood stove.
These are some of the items we like to have whenever we expect the sort of snowfall predicted for the rest of the week--two feet and counting,

Apples-- pies, upside down cake ( see earlier post),  baked apples stuffed with raisins and walnuts, grate and add to  cabbage slaw, oatmeal, pancakes.
Butter--cakes, bread, cookies.
Raisins--add to  baked apples, breakfast oatmeal, oatmeal, snacks, rice pudding.
Cinnamon--add to pies, cakes, oatmeal, rice pudding.
Eggs-omelets, apple cake, bread.
Red cabbage--make Hungarian cabbage and  apple soup, add to stir fries, slaws and green salads, lentil soup.
Carrots--add to lentil soup, stir fries, apple, cabbage and raisin salad.
Onions--add to lentil soup, Hungarian cabbage soup, salads.
Garlic--add to pho ( Vietnamese soup) and serve for breakfast.
Ginger--add to pho, stir fries, baked apples, ginger cookies..
Oatmeal--make bread, season with cinnamon, top with walnuts and serve for breakfast.
Lentils--Lentil soup, walnut lentil salad.
Flour--bread, cookies, pancakes.
Molasses--ginger cookies.

Potatoes--add to soups, make baked potatoes, scalloped potatoes, mashed potatoes, oven fries.
Rice--Serve with stir fries, lentil salad, lentil soup.
Sweet potatoes--Bake and  pureed with orange juice,  make oven fries.

Vermicelli rice  noodles--pho, pad thai, stir fries.

Unless our server crashes, we will be posting recipes for cold weather cheap eats throughout the storm.