Snow day

I don’t know why we even bother with Groundhog Day. Who are we kidding? There’s always six more weeks of winter. In fact, winter didn’t even get bad until after Groundhog Day. Beginning with the snow I complained about in my last post and this past Sunday, we got (by Terry’s account) 17.5”. Chicago had nine consecutive days with measurable snowfall. Temperatures were below zero several mornings, once going as low as -9°F. I had to leave extra early to get to work on time, and my car turned from red to white from the salt. We had a snow day Friday.  While it is always lovely to turn off the alarm and go back to bed, I will have to scramble a bit to get all the lab material covered before the midterm. I always hope that if we have a snow day, it will be for Lab 3 because there’s only a few things that are on the midterm from that. But Lab 3 came and went, and Lab 4 was the one my Friday class missed. So it goes.

All the snow that caused classes to be canceled came during the night and had stopped by the time I got up for the second time. Because I was going to be at a meeting all day Saturday, I used my free time to get the jump on lunch prep, making yogurt and carrots and celery sticks.  I took the carrot peels to the girls, and only four of them even came out of the coop. As you may recall, carrot peels are usually the Best Thing Ever.

Only four hens would brave the cold and snow to get the carrot peel treats

Sunday morning was brutally cold again. I didn’t even bother to open the coop door, knowing that the hens wouldn’t be interested in going outside. I noticed that Hilda had started a picket fence of icicles in the snow. She removed them in the areas where people and chickens were because, as she quoted from A Christmas Story, “icicles have been known to kill people!”

A picket fence of icicles from the coop

I keep telling myself to stay out of the kitchen. I began last week with four possible breakfasts in the freezer: nutty oatmeal bars, buttermilk waffles, sourdough pancakes, and bran muffins. I finished the bars, but am still working on the rest. Really, this filling the larder has got to stop!

And yet, when I was done with the chicken chores, I just had to get my hands in some dough. Because I also had two loaves of sourdough bread frozen, I decided to make pizza pockets for my lunches. You may be thinking, “Pizza pockets? Who would make those when you can get them already made? Can you even do that?”

And the answers are “Me” and “Yes.” It’s therapeutic, especially the 8 minute knead. Oh, the wonder of bread. I love how it starts as what is usually described as a “shaggy mass” and through persistence and the magic of gluten becomes a lovely, smooth, elastic ball. I simply cannot understand how anyone could voluntarily give up gluten. It is so awesome! Here it is after a 45 minute rise.

Lovely, elastic pizza dough

I divided into 8 pieces and was very proud of myself for controlling a compulsion to get out the scale and even them up to the nearest 1/8 ounce.

Divided into 8 pieces

I then rolled and stretched each one and filled it with sauce, sausage, and cheese.

Filling the pizza pockts

I sealed the seams, cut a steam vent, and baked them. During this time, all the cheese leaked out through burst aneurysms on the folded edge in spite of the steam vent. Pizza pockets with a cheese chip on the side.

Pizza pockets with cheesy aneurysms

By afternoon, the sun was out and the temperature was in the teens. It was a nice day to be out, so I shoveled the deck. Here is the “before” picture. The snow was pretty deep.

17.5 inches of snow on the deck

It seemed light and fluffy, so I started shoveling it down the stairs, thinking that it would fall to the bottom. Not so. It just stacked up. I gave that up and started heaving it over the railing. It was a good workout, certainly. I found that if I cut straight down with the shovel, I could carefully remove the snow in big blocks. The upside was that I got rid of a lot of snow at once. The downside was that those chunks seemed like they weighed 20 pounds. It took me two hours to get the deck cleared.

After that, I slogged out to the solar panels to brush off the lower three rows. That took another hour. I was beat. I came in the house and took a nap. I feared I would be unable to move the next morning.

But the next morning, I was fine! Good for me. I can still do a decent day’s work.