A Wintery Blast

I love a storm. My windows are blasted with snow and I can hear the wind piling drifts against the back of the house. It's cozy and warm inside. The wood stove (our primary source of heat) is radiating warmth nicely and my lined Ikea curtains on the patio door have been closed against the onslaught! I know that there are people that need to go out in the weather and I should feel guilty but I don't. I feel safe and warm and strangely cocooned. The best thing to do besides curl up on the couch with a really thick novel and a fuzzy throw is to make a steamy pot of soup and some biscuits. An occasional check of the satellite imagery of the offending squall is a prerequisite as are text messages to check accumulations in other necks-of-the-woods. Otherwise the day is complete!

We haven't had any really good storms lately. The last in recent history was an ice storm in 2007-before that we had one in 2003. It lasted 3 days and cancelled my son Adrian's 6th birthday. He was upset, but I consoled him with the promise that in a string of childhood birthdays, this is the one that would go down in history and be remembered as the one in which the candles on the cake were not a tradition but a necessity. The hydro was out for 2 or 3 days and we had limited wood piled ahead in our basement. The most exciting part of that storm was the adventure of diving towards the woodpile for armloads of wood while ice and small tree limbs from a large overhanging Maple exploded on the ground around us.

We always have heat and we own a generator-albeit a loud one!- so we crank it up in the garage and watch a movie or make a pot of coffee; the drone of the generator competing with the wind and necessitating the turning up of the volume on the TV. Waking in the night to the strange, deadened silence of cessation of wind marks the end of the worst. The sound of my neighbour's tractor backing down the laneway with an 8 ft wide snow blower releasing us to the outside world jolts us back to reality.

When I was a child, we had longer and more deadly storms. One year, in my pre-teen years, we had an ice storm in which the entire area was crippled. There was a huge Willow tree in my backyard that was a close childhood friend. It's large unruly arms were perfect for reading a book in or for hiding from my mother when I was in some kind of trouble. During that storm I lay awake and listened helplessly as it died in the night; ripped literally limb from limb with the brute force of ice and wind. The hydro was out for days and our local town was impassible; trees littered every street and my father and brother went to work with chainsaws releasing hydro lines and trapped cars from the icy grip of fallen trees. My father suffered his only chainsaw accident in that storm (which should allay some of my fears when using one) in all his years of cutting wood when the saw caught on a branch as he was cutting overhead and kicked back, slicing a jagged cut across the back of his hand.

When I was a teenager, we had a blizzard that was so bad, we tied the proverbial rope from the house to pump house to barn so we could find our way back and forth. Livestock always needs to be fed and a sow would invariably decide to litter in the midst of such a storm. That year, the roads were so bad that my dad and I donned snowmobile suits and drove the tractor to town to get supplies-me perched on the hitch for the entire ride-thanking my stars above that I was so bundled that I could not be recognised by my friends! My dad drove snowplow part-time and in that storm a local back-road intersection in a deep gully was blown so full with packed snow that it took several hours for the grader to ram through it to get an ambulance to a sick neighbour. The memories of holding the flashlight while my father fixed frozen water lines with stiff fingers or chopping holes in ice-covered troughs in order to water livestock are buried far deeper than the more nostalgic ones of number of days without school or hydro. I think today, with satellite imagery and better equipment, we are more prepared and can dig out more quickly than in those days. However, the feeling remains the same; some deep, buried instinct causes me to snuggle in and enjoy the warm, cozy feeling of having a roof over my head, solid walls around me and the glowing warmth of my wood stove deep in the heart of my home.

Mother Superior's Best Barley

2 tsp vegetable oil
1 pound boned chicken or turkey breasts, cut into cubes
1-1/2 cups each chopped celery and chopped carrots
1 cup chopped onions
4 cups low-sodium, reduced-fat chicken broth
1 can (28 oz) chopped tomatoes, undrained
1/3 cup pearl barley
3/4 tsp dried majoram
1/2 tsp each ground thyme, sage, salt and black pepper
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add turkey cubes and cook until no longer pink. Add all remaining ingredients. Mix well. Bring soup to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer for 30-35 minutes, until turkey and barley are tender. (don't skip the fresh parsley if you can help it-it makes the soup)
Makes 6 servings.

From: Looneyspoons Cookbook by Janet and Greta Podleski

Whole Wheat Biscuits

1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp sugar
3/4 tsp salt

4 Tbsp cold butter or margarine

1 cup milk

In mixing bowl put flours. baking powder, sugar and salt.

Add butter. Cut into dry ingredients until mixture is crumbly.

Add milk. Stir with fork until soft dough is formed. Turn out on lightly floured surface. Knead gently 8-10 times. Roll or pat dough 3/4 inch thick. Cut with 2" round cookie cutter (I use a drinking glass). If cut in squares or triangles, no re-rolling is necessary since no dough is left over. Arrange on ungreased baking sheet, close together for soft sides, 1 inch apart for crisp sides. Bake in 450'F oven for 12-15 minutes until browned. Serve with butter. Yield: 10-12 biscuits.

From: Company's Coming: Muffins and More by Jean Pare

Ice storm of 2007