Snow Day!

Lon­don came to a stand­still today to wel­come the snow­storm. School closed, which meant my writ­ing class was can­celled. My mind upon awak­en­ing imme­di­ate­ly turned to what food­stuffs I might have in my larder and fridge to keep us from starv­ing. Sil­ly, real­ly, because in this thriv­ing metrop­o­lis, the shops were all open! Some­thing in my Mid­west­ern snowy day men­tal­i­ty must have come to the fore­front, though, and I was tak­en back to all those child­hood days when snow fell and we got to cel­e­brate and play. We head­ed off to Emi­ly’s house up the street to make our Snow Day plans, and end­ed up bor­row­ing cash­mere socks, water­proof gloves, hats and such from that ski-lov­ing fam­i­ly and walk­ing to the near­by park. But you know what? Our own pris­tine gar­dens and streets were nicer to play in than the park that had attract­ed every fam­i­ly in the neigh­bor­hood to make snow­men and let loose their fran­tic dogs. Chil­dren rolling giant balls of snow, John beat­ing Fred mer­ci­less­ly with snow­balls, Annie and me fol­low­ing him around, deter­mined to pro­tect the son and heir and pun­ish the dad. Swans flapped, ducks quacked and stood on first one leg, then the oth­er. John threat­ened to make Fred test the pond ice for sturdiness!

Final­ly it was just too cold and we head­ed home through the still-thick­ly falling snow. Avery stopped at Emi­ly’s house for hot choco­late and marsh­mal­lows, and I made for home and a pot of the MOST delicious:

Snow Day Toma­to Soup
(serves 4)

2 tbsps butter
4 cloves gar­lic, chopped
1 white onion, chopped
1 stem rose­mary, leaves removed and chopped
3 soup-size cans plum tomatoes
1/2 cup sin­gle cream
sea salt and fresh ground pep­per to taste

Noth­ing could be more sim­ple than this soup, it costs next to noth­ing and cooks very quick­ly. You will nev­er buy a can of soup again. Melt the but­ter in a heavy-bot­tomed saucepan, then saute the gar­lic and onion until soft­ened. Add rose­mary and toma­toes, and sim­mer high for 15 min­utes. Whizz with a hand-held blender, then add cream and sea­son­ings to taste. Perfection.

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With this, we had sand­wich­es made of last night’s:

Pork Loin Cooked in Milk
(serves 4 for din­ner, and again for lunch)

1 pork loin (approx­i­mate­ly 1.25 kilos, or 2 pounds and some)
12 cloves gar­lic, 6 whole, 6 chopped coarsely
2 stems rosemary
2 white onions, quartered
12 baby new potatoes
1 liter whole milk

Cut 6 slits deep into the pork loin, three on each side. Insert whole gar­lic cloves. Place the rose­mary on the bot­tom of a 9x13 glass bak­ing dish, then place the pork on top of the rose­mary. Throw onions, chopped gar­lic and pota­toes in around the pork and pour milk over all. Sea­son well. Roast in a hot oven (200C, 400F) for about an hour and a half or until the pork is cooked through. Expect the milk to resem­ble the sur­face of pota­toes dauphi­noise: slight­ly crust­ed and brown, but still deep and creamy under­neath. Rest for 15 min­utes, then slice thin and serve with onions and pota­toes, driz­zling some milk onto the pork slices.

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Today’s sand­wich­es made on whole wheat bread with slices of pork, slices of Wens­ley­dale cheese, red onion, hot Eng­lish mus­tard and rock­et leaves, were LOVELY.

What a peer­less Lon­don day: Avery and Emi­ly sloped back home to watch movies and make Valen­tines, I made a banana-free ver­sion of my favorite banana-apple cake, with pears instead of bananas, extra spices, and it was, if any­thing, even better.

Pear-Apple Cake
(serves 8)

1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 tsp bak­ing powder
1 tsp bak­ing soda
1/2 tsp each: ground cin­na­mon, ground cloves, ground nutmeg
pinch salt
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanil­la extract
2 eggs
2 apples, chopped
2 large pears, chopped
dust­ing con­fec­tion­er’s sugar

Com­bine all dry ingre­di­ents. Beat but­ter, sug­ar, vanil­la and eggs. Mix the dry and wet ingre­di­ents, then add chopped fruit. Bake for about 40 min­utes at 160C, 350F, or until firm in the mid­dle. Sprin­kle con­fec­tion­er’s sug­ar over cooled cake. Serve warm.

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This cake appears to be fool (me) proof. You sim­ply must give it a try.

Tomor­row will, in all prob­a­bil­i­ty, bring a day of school and work. The respite is over. One of the most dis­taste­ful jobs ever beck­ons: clean­ing out the awful cel­lar from all the clob­ber we threw down there when we moved here in May, plus all the junk we’ve assem­bled down there since. Pots too big to store in the kitchen, the card­board box the portable AC unit arrived in dur­ing the hottest days of sum­mer, out-of-sea­son coats (prob­a­bly moth­e­at­en, some of them), pic­nic bas­kets, out­grown horse rid­ing equip­ment. Plus the req­ui­site num­ber of spi­ders, and the lit­ter­box­es. Not my favorite place on earth! But it’s that or try to get up to date on pho­tographs in the pho­to albums: end­less sticks of glue, piles of pic­tures from clear back to spring of last year. I just have not had my heart in it, and yet have kept up to date order­ing prints, so… the day will come.

We are in a tizzy of excite­ment because the week­end will bring a vis­it from my dear Becky and her fam­i­ly, all the way from Con­necti­cut! Avery will be in absolute heav­en to have her dar­ling Anna around, and we plan to monop­o­lize the fam­i­ly shame­less­ly dur­ing their vis­it. So much to catch up on: I’m think­ing a spaghet­ti bolog­nese din­ner to please every­one. In the mean­time, watch out for those snowballs!