you say bison, I say buffalo

It’s not Sat­ur­day night unless you set fire to some­thing, that’s my mot­to. Can I just tell you how close to the house this bon­fire was last night? Nor­mal­ly both John and I are extreme­ly, uh, respon­si­ble, but for some rea­son, we both thought it would be a fine idea to stack up all the tin­der-dry Christ­mas wreaths in our ancient cop­per fire pit, and set fire to them.

The smoke! Sim­ply plumes of it a mile high. I can’t believe none of our neigh­bors called the fire depart­ment. Final­ly I made John shov­el snow onto it and THEN the smoke was tru­ly some­thing to behold. We smelled like the Grim Reaper.

End of sto­ry: it’s out. Of course the snow melt­ed in the pit and then froze to the burned-out car­cass­es of the wreaths so that all John could do this morn­ing was lug it behind the fence and pitch it into the snow. Now we can look for­ward to haul­ing it out in July.

It’s always so hard to believe that six months will pass between now and our next vision of Red Gate Farm. It’s odd to be here only in the most intense months of the year: we arrive in deep snow, and in the green­est days of sum­mer, skip­ping the inter­im weeks of growth and decline. Before we see our beloved house again, there will have been plays and din­ner par­ties in Lon­don, home­work trau­mas, tune-ups at the ortho­don­tist, Lost Prop­er­ty sales, job inter­views, skat­ing com­pe­ti­tions, anoth­er issue of “Vin­tage” mag­a­zine will appear, con­tain­ing anoth­er arti­cle from me. And then it will be July, and we’ll be back.

The fridge is emp­ty, the beds stripped, the can­dles removed from the hydrangea tree, mail stopped, the last laun­dry load done. In a few hours we’ll be pick­ing Avery up from the air­port after her Fab­u­lous Adven­ture (I sur­vived!) and off we’ll go to New Jer­sey to spend the night with our love­ly friends, before head­ing to Lon­don in the morning.

I’ll leave you with our last meal, a very Amer­i­can sup­per, and per­fect for the sort of weath­er we’re all hav­ing, on both sides of the Atlantic. Serve it with a crunchy slaw of red and Savoy cab­bages, car­rots and fen­nel. And I’ll see you from London.

Bison Chilli
(serves 6)

2 lbs ground bison (buf­fa­lo)
1 white onion, minced
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 soup-size can black beans
1 soup-size can red kid­ney beans
1 soup-size can North­ern beans
2 large cans diced tomatoes
1 pack­et McCormick chilli seasoning
extra: chilli pow­der, ground cumin, turmer­ic to taste
sea salt and fresh black pepper
condi­ments: cilantro leaves, sour cream, shred­ded Ched­dar cheese

Brown the bison thor­ough­ly in a heavy, large saucepan. Add onion and gar­lic and cook for sev­er­al min­utes, then add all the oth­er ingre­di­ents and stir well. Cook at a sim­mer for at least an hour. Bet­ter even on the next day. Serve with condi­ments and every­one can choose for herself.

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Warm, hearty, stick-to-your ribs, snowy day per­fec­tion. Bliss!