Blizzard Soup

Here in Grangerburg on Tuesday morning we knew from the forecasts about the big snow storming its way out of the Oklahoma Panhandle across the Great Plains, sweeping over the flatlands of Iowa and on into Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. We were waiting for it--with time enough to prepare and to make cancellations. The Nordonia Hills librarian called Tuesday morning and suggested we postpone the talk we were scheduled to give that evening in connection with our book. By evening the TV was listing all the closings including libraries, universities, and schools. I thought, what if we had a sudden emergency, needed an operation or something. I soon put that out of my head.

This morning, after 30 hours of snowfall, we peered through the door of our cabin and saw that it was possible to make an escape to the supermarket and replenish our dwindling stores. Last night Phil and K zoomed into our driveway in their husky snow plow truck and swept the snow out of the drive and into huge piles. Their visit gave us a chance to celebrate Valentine's Day. I filled large cups with hot coffee and served cake warm from the oven and iced with a pecan frosting. Kim liked the rose-colored fancy fur scarf I knitted for her in honor of St. Val, and all agreed on the cake's superior taste. I put that down to the eggs from Carol Thombs' chicken farm. Her birds live in a chicken palace--a warm and handsome barn with a big earthy yard outside where they can scratch and exercise to their hearts' content behind a fence that's safe from foxes.

Comparisons have been made, but I think The Storm of '07 didn't equal The Great Blizzard of '78 in intensity. . In that storm the wind's constant and frightening howling chilled the marrow in our bones. Little birds, hanging on to branches for dear life were blown sideways and sought out holes in a snow bank for protection. In this week's storm all we heard was the sound of silence. Everything was muffled. Nothing moved along the road, and now we could really see it, the amount of snow that fell was astounding. The snow clearing gangs left the roads lined with huge snow banks and up at the Montrose shopping district, mountains of the white stuff were everywhere.

We had just about used up our food by the time the driveway was cleared, but it's amazing what you can scrape up from the fridge and freezer. I magically produced omelets, French toast, BLTs (bacon and lettuce sandwiches), and baked potatoes --and we shared a Stouffer's tuna-noodle casserole. In the end, I scraped together a cauldron of blizzard soup--into which I threw just about everything I had--diced potatoes, carrots, lima beans, butter beans, celery, garlic, onions, herbs from Provence, broth made from chicken cubes, frozen corn on the cob and frozen leftover ham from one of Kim's dinners sometime ago. Paul pronounced the soup as jolly good and asked eagerly this evening if we were going to have the rest of it for dinner.

After shopping at Marc's supermarket for ourselves and Petsmart for Spot, Mimi, and Viola, we worked out that we had spent equal amounts at each place--$50 for us and the same for the cats. Their cans of Fancy Feast andtheir Iams dry food were perilously low, and they needed fresh litter for their boxes. Everything's okay now in Catsville. I looked for a soft cat carrier to take them to the vet for their shots. (One at a time). These are really neat with a zippered top that allows you to drop them through on their four feet instead of struggling to push them in through the door of the hard shell cat carrier. I didn't find quite what I wanted but online I saw a good one at the Petsmart website.

Everything seems back to normal now