Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks. Rage! It’s another Big Snow Day on the coast of Maine where I’m spending the winter. “Oh, how come you’re not in Tuscany?” ask the people I meet downtown, at least the ones who don’t know me very well.
I lived between stone walls for 25 years in the wilds of Wales - never really managed to deal with it! Just handed a stash of warm woolies to visitors and said "I know, I know!" Food geared to beat the cold, blazing fires, complaints tolerated for 5 minutes a day.
Much snow and very cold here in the Sierra Foothills. I, too, made refrigerator soup which turned out more like a minestrone, especially with some cooked pasta added to my bowl. Baked my version of artisan bread while the oven helped warm my kitchen.
This weather!! Isn't this the winter we have been waiting for! This article is a treat. The journey through the frig makes me laugh. It takes an artist to create such bounty out of various dinner parties. The nature of what we eat ala the voice of Michael Pollan is really the voice of our mothers. I must read the "Milk" book. There are always nuggets in your lovely writing...grand "take aways" to pursue, a must read, a recipe, a laugh about our quotidianum. xo
Today, Manhattanites woke up to a smallish snowfall. I had an early appointment about 15 blocks uptown, so I put on boots, bundled up and hopscotched through the still white powder, feeling a kid-like sense of joy. By the time I finished my meeting, about hour later, the streets were slushy and gray., but I was grateful for the taste of winter. I know to you Mainers this is winter lite but fun.
Ain't that the truth? When we were in the Languedoc for a school year 1978, I went to bed in all my clothes. Got up at 5 to light the fire in the sitting room for the kids at 6,turned on the oven in the kitchen and left the door open (no range). Crazy. They don't know nuffin, mostly.
I dived into this article because I think we should have had similar experiences. We were both little girls in Maine at about the same time, with the same weather challenges, similar food histories, and probably similar memories.
I remember warm kitchens reached after stamping snow off your boots and coats in a vestibule. I carried metric tons of wood when I was big enough, to keep a stove burning all day and night, because that was my chore as the biggest kid. The kitchen stove was oil and gas, hot all the time, and always seemed to be cooking something. Everybody who came by ate whatever was proper for the hour of the day. The cellar was full of canned foods “put up” in the summer, and later a big chest freezer helped in the effort.
There are things I would rescue from that time, more that I wouldn’t. Now I choose my meter thick stone walls that don’t even warm up in summer, a Franklin stufa in the corner of the kitchen, extraordinarily expensive central heating, and much more isolation. Why? Because I’ve never truly recovered from what were sometimes terrifying winters. Blizzards that left 7 feet of snow, and drifts along the roads that reached 12 ugly, gray-stained feet, ice on stairs, wind whipped grainy blasts in my face, and deep slushy pools that looked solid, but weren’t, on Easter Sunday have a grip on my mind that can’t be eased by fish chowder or chicken fricassee. We ate very well indeed, but it wasn’t enough, I guess.
I’m still the person who has to lug the wood in for the fire.
Nancy, you are certainly a wonderful writer and I’d say editor too only in a finished written piece I’m not sure how one knows what editing took place. Having once been an editor of moving images, I have claimed ever since that of all the Oscars handed out annually the one for best editing is the most bogus. We the moviegoers have no idea of what the film editors had to work with to begin with. In any event I really enjoyed reading this piece of writing on a snowy day in Maine.
I lived between stone walls for 25 years in the wilds of Wales - never really managed to deal with it! Just handed a stash of warm woolies to visitors and said "I know, I know!" Food geared to beat the cold, blazing fires, complaints tolerated for 5 minutes a day.
Much snow and very cold here in the Sierra Foothills. I, too, made refrigerator soup which turned out more like a minestrone, especially with some cooked pasta added to my bowl. Baked my version of artisan bread while the oven helped warm my kitchen.
This weather!! Isn't this the winter we have been waiting for! This article is a treat. The journey through the frig makes me laugh. It takes an artist to create such bounty out of various dinner parties. The nature of what we eat ala the voice of Michael Pollan is really the voice of our mothers. I must read the "Milk" book. There are always nuggets in your lovely writing...grand "take aways" to pursue, a must read, a recipe, a laugh about our quotidianum. xo
Today, Manhattanites woke up to a smallish snowfall. I had an early appointment about 15 blocks uptown, so I put on boots, bundled up and hopscotched through the still white powder, feeling a kid-like sense of joy. By the time I finished my meeting, about hour later, the streets were slushy and gray., but I was grateful for the taste of winter. I know to you Mainers this is winter lite but fun.
Ain't that the truth? When we were in the Languedoc for a school year 1978, I went to bed in all my clothes. Got up at 5 to light the fire in the sitting room for the kids at 6,turned on the oven in the kitchen and left the door open (no range). Crazy. They don't know nuffin, mostly.
I dived into this article because I think we should have had similar experiences. We were both little girls in Maine at about the same time, with the same weather challenges, similar food histories, and probably similar memories.
I remember warm kitchens reached after stamping snow off your boots and coats in a vestibule. I carried metric tons of wood when I was big enough, to keep a stove burning all day and night, because that was my chore as the biggest kid. The kitchen stove was oil and gas, hot all the time, and always seemed to be cooking something. Everybody who came by ate whatever was proper for the hour of the day. The cellar was full of canned foods “put up” in the summer, and later a big chest freezer helped in the effort.
There are things I would rescue from that time, more that I wouldn’t. Now I choose my meter thick stone walls that don’t even warm up in summer, a Franklin stufa in the corner of the kitchen, extraordinarily expensive central heating, and much more isolation. Why? Because I’ve never truly recovered from what were sometimes terrifying winters. Blizzards that left 7 feet of snow, and drifts along the roads that reached 12 ugly, gray-stained feet, ice on stairs, wind whipped grainy blasts in my face, and deep slushy pools that looked solid, but weren’t, on Easter Sunday have a grip on my mind that can’t be eased by fish chowder or chicken fricassee. We ate very well indeed, but it wasn’t enough, I guess.
I’m still the person who has to lug the wood in for the fire.
Nancy, you are certainly a wonderful writer and I’d say editor too only in a finished written piece I’m not sure how one knows what editing took place. Having once been an editor of moving images, I have claimed ever since that of all the Oscars handed out annually the one for best editing is the most bogus. We the moviegoers have no idea of what the film editors had to work with to begin with. In any event I really enjoyed reading this piece of writing on a snowy day in Maine.
Wonderful essay! Much to “digest” here. (Can’t resist an obvious pun). Thank you for sharing the comforts of winter.