Two words -- that is all you need to get an idea of how this day looked here, on the farmette, in south central Wisconsin: it snowed.
When you pile on another half a foot, or maybe it's a whole foot of snow onto an already present layer, you get a remarkably similar landscape:
It's not unlike looking out on the ocean: ten feet deep? One thousand feet deep? It all looks the same from where you are. So you have to take my word for it -- the snow came down and it is deep and heavy.
(Dance, inspecting my shoveling)
And yes, beautiful. Because, as you may recall, Ed and I do love snow.
I'm out early, shoveling the path to the farmhouse and, too, digging out my car. (Ed joins later with the snowblower to blow out the driveway and the path to the barn.) And then we huddle inside, because that's what you do when it snows. And snows. You stay in, eat a solid breakfast...
... and then you bake. Baking aromas and snow outside go well together. [The young family requested brownies for Sunday dessert. Nothing could be easier than brownies. The trick is to find a recipe you love. We'll see if this one, from Alton Brown, based on cocoa rather than chocolate, and with plenty of brown sugar and almost no flour delivers. P.S. -- there is no good way to photograph brownies in a pan. In the same way that a deep layer of snow just looks white, these guys just look uniformly brown.]
(Wait, maybe it's better to cut them up for the photo...)
In the afternoon, we have our breakout moment: we ski. It's still lightly snowing, but we go out anyway, because, well, there's all that snow and there have been years when there hasn't been much at all, and so we are grateful.
Toward evening, I take the brownies and the main dinner items and some fruits and some carrots from our CSA to the home of the young family. Masked bandits on the loose!
At least until it's time to close the door and say good bye...
It's still snowing as I drive home. Go slow, listen to some folk music, stay grateful.
And I am. We both are.
