I don’t live in a cold climate. In fact, the heat here in the summer has been considered oppressive by many. I’ve likened it before to being trapped in your home in cold weather because you just can’t go outside and do anything.
Well right now, my backyard looks like this:
Notice the rain gauge? That’s all ice, in fact, my 90lb golden retriever looks like this when trying to roll in it…
She’s not even falling through a little bit. That’s about three inches of ice back there, and our back door was frozen shut Friday morning, so we had to send her out the window next to the door. She was not happy about that.
We saw this coming, and prepared. Everyone makes soups, chili, stews, whatever and hunkers down for the day or two we will be stuck inside. Only now we are trapped even longer. They are hoping to get the roads cleared up for Monday. They are shutting down all the highways at 6am tomorrow morning to try and clear something called “cobblestone ice” off the freeways. This is something usually formed on large bodies of water and it makes a real mess of stuff. At least that’s what Google told me. And Google is always right. I learned to be a doctor there.
We are hunkered down with everyone else. I’m not going as crazy as some because, I don’t mind staying inside in the climate controlled house, and I don’t really like to get out even when I can. I’m extra social that way. My son was sick a few days ago when it was 80 (the day before the ice storm hit) so he could not go out and play. Now he sits inside, staring longingly at his playset in the back yard. It’s covered in ice, and don’t get me wrong, I have thought about how much more fun the slide would be now that it’s coated in ice, but I just can’t let him run free on the ice out there, and his dad says it’s too cold to go out. I got him long underwear, I don’t know why he says it’s too cold. Well, except for that wind chill of 3 this morning.
Yesterday, I spent all day decorating two cakes. They were practice for my class on Monday. If we get to go.
I made two kinds of buttercream and splattered one all over my kitchen…… Twice. I really hate Italian butter cream. Its very sticky by the way. Egg whites, sugar, and butter; that will never come up from under the burner on my stove.
Here is what they look like btw:
After all that madness, I was not cooking. Today, however, I was going to cook. I didn’t know what, but I was going to.
I got some meat out that I got from Burgundy, it was pork, but I don’t really know what it was. When I called and asked for pork butt, they told me they were out, but asked if I wanted to try this. The best I can describe it, was like stew meat, but pork.
I started to cook the meat, just browned it in he pot, without cooking it through. Then I sliced up some veggies to braise it in. About that time, my dear husband came in and asked what the plan was for dinner. My response was “errr, plan?” I didn’t know how to tell him I had no idea what I was making, and just making it up as I went along. In fact, I was still wondering if I was going to make a soup or not.
This is what I ended up making:
And here is how I made it:
Sear the pork
Pull it out of the pan
Add:
Red onion -sliced
3 cloves of garlic
3 carrots chopped
Apple sliced
Cook down a little bit
White wine to deglaze
Chicken stock to almost top of veggies
Put meat back in
Squash:
Dice it up
Melted 2 tablespoons of butter
Sauté squash in butter and season with:
Cumin
Nutmeg
Salt
Cranberries
If you are wondering why this is much more organized than my other recipes, it is because my husband liked it enough, that he made sure I wrote it down, actually he wrote it down as I told him what I had done, and he even emailed it to me afterward. I’m not sure if he’s telling me to blog more, or cook this again.
The pasta btw, is a gluten free garlic something or other, which it could give or take. You could use which ever noodles you like.
So much for my cold weather soupstravaganza, I made this up today…..
Tomorrow I chip the ice off my grill and make burgers!