Blizzard!

It started snowing Friday night and didn't stop until late Saturday night. This morning I measured 18" in the front yard, and that wasn't even a drift! Things I'm grateful for, given the way we got clobbered by this storm:
- that the Chief had made a grocery run early in the week;
- that he managed to get out of the area before things got too bad;
- that we didn't lose power (and heat!);
- neighbors who helped me dig my car out (the snowplow ridge came to within 6" of the door handles); and
- the friend who called to see if I needed anything, knowing the Chief was out of town and assuming my asthma was a concern since I didn't make it to church; and
- a day off work tomorrow so my "shoveling muscles" can recover a little.
Would be nicer if I were snowed in with someone, but the phone works just fine, everybody and their brothers seem to be spending a lot of time on Facebook updating their status and such, which gets pretty entertaining, and I've got 4 new movies that just arrived a week or so ago.

I spent too much time doing what I always do when "the weather outside is frightful" - I cooked! Lemme tell you, simmer oxtails on the stove for 7 hours and you barely have to look at 'em to get the meat off those bones! The recipe calls for frozen mixed vegetables, of which we had none, so I added frozen peas, green beans, and sliced up some carrots instead. I took some of that soup over to the neighbor who made chicken noodle soup for the Chief when he was so sick with the flu.

I also pulled some pumpkin out of the freezer and made 2 loaves of pumpkin bread, one of which I took, still warm, to the shovel-wielding neighbors. Still some thawed pumpkin left, so I went online and found a recipe for pumpkin pancakes. Three guesses what I'm having for breakfast tomorrow, now that I get to sleep in and can have a nice, leisurely breakfast.

I also cooked some turkey for dinner last night, and have pre-snow leftovers. Add that to the cooking-frenzy output and I now have way too much food for one person to eat before it starts to spoil. I'm hoping to get a friend or few to come by for a meal, will take the rest of the pumpkin bread to work on Tuesday, already gave half the grapes to the shoveling neighbors, froze half the soup I didn't give away, but I'll have to do more if I don't want all this food to go to waste.