Snow and Food Fun

[liralen]

What more could one want?

It snowed two or three inches last night. Enough to make things a little slick, but not enough to stop anything or keep anyone from doing what they wanted to do. It was all just a little slower.

Since it was Late Start Day (first Wednesday of every month), I thawed some beignet dough and made them for breakfast for us. Jet loves that, as do we, though the powder sugar clouds do go everywhere. Rather than starting two and a half hours late, though, he had a Green Club meeting an hour before school started. It's a club where the kids figure out how to do things to help the environment for the school and with the help of the school staff. They've run a recycle shoes campaign, worked with them on a Zero Waste Lunch week, and have other things they've planned.

It's pretty cool.

So we dropped him off for his Club meeting and then wandered off on a little food adventure.



The snow made traffic slow, but not impossible. There were small accidents, a few folks spun off the road, but with the flatness of this landscape, folks simply spun into ditches and we only saw one ambulance. The odd thing was actually losing sight of the mountains. It's usually so sunny and clear here that we always see the whole of the massive Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, we navigate by them the same way one could use the sun or the stars, or the Ocean in San Diego.

We went to Arvada and the Penzy's Spices there. I'd run out of the ground cinnamon, and Jet had used the last of his mint hot chocolate. They mix cocoa solids with cane sugar, vanilla, a little cinnamon, and a kiss of mint oil: that's all, and we get a one pound pouch of it and Jet mixes it in hot milk for his hot cocoa. It's very nice and I know there's no weird additives. Nice thing is that I can also buy the cinnamon by a four ounce pouch that I use to refill our glass jars. Less waste in the long run.

We picked up a few other things as well, and then went to Little Anita's at the bottom of the hill for New Mexican style cooking. We both had a chili relleno and enchilada lunch plate, but John got his with just cheese and green chili. I had mine with calabacitas to fill the enchilada and got the red chili. The last time I'd been there, the calabacitas (a mixture of zucchini, mushrooms, and onions) had been cooked so long they're caramelized and were so rich and strong I was amazed. The red chile had been deep, very dark, and had had some of the same long-term treatment. This time they were both nice, but nothing to really get super excited about as they hadn't cooked them nearly to the same intensity.

I was a little sad, but I could see why someone wouldn't want to spend the energy and time to do it as gorgeously as it had been done the other time.

They also had a nice treat in that at the end of lunch, they gave us sopapillas with honey. It made me giggle after the beignets. Fried bread is always a hit. *laughs* Both things are basically little squares of bread dough deep fried and served with a sweetener on top. Powdered sugar on the beignets and honey on the sopapillas, and both sweeteners were good and messy. *laughs*

It was good to have a nice lunch before hitting Costco, as it always saves us money when we go there when we're full and I don't make impulse buys. We had to stock up on Airborne again, and I was surprised to find my contact lens cleaner there in bulk and at a price I couldn't refuse. Also they had nearly a lifetime supply of the shampoo and cream rinse I usually use, but at about a quarter the cost in the smaller bottles. So we got those, along with some chicken thighs, frozen blueberries, and, of all things, a kilo of Green-style yogurt for less than the quart-sized containers in our grocery stores. Whew.

The last was something my parents got regularly, so I knew to look for it, and I was very pleasantly surprised to find it.

Another surprise was finding a liquor store attached to the side of Costco. Colorado liquor laws state that all liquor has to be sold in its own building with its own entrance that can be locked at certain times and it has to be licensed differently in order to sell liquore. God bless US liquor laws, so completely different they are from state to state it's just baffling. Still, we were used to the Costco's in Washington being able to stock wine and beers at good prices, and it was wonderful to have that opportunity again.

Of course, I had to show my appreciation of the HUGE QUANTITIES and buy, of all things, a box of wine. *laughs* Of course, it was a Black Box Wines Cabernet Sauvignon box. Very, very nice. I love that the airless bag makes it so that a box can last a good four weeks, unrefrigerated for the same reasons a can of whipped topping can last months. There's nothing that will bleed back in, no oxygen to spoil it.

John got his beer.

We went back home, through the snow and as part of making room for all the Costco stuff, we went through all the contents of our chest freezer and tossed a lot of things that really should have been tossed and ate a few things that really needed eating.

I wrote a little, John shoveled the front walk and got Jet, who was very, very happy with his new snow boots, and we played a little, watched some Mythbusters, and then had dinner. Jet did homework while I rode the exercise bike as I really, really needed to, and then he and I played a little before he had to go to sleep.

There was half a loaf of King's Hawaiian Bread left from earlier in the week, so I used half of it to make a quick bread pudding for myself with handful or two of tart Montmorecy Cherries from Trader Joes, cinnamon, nutmeg, almond extract, and three-quarters cup of milk with two eggs. I didn't add sugar as the Hawaiian Bread has a lot of sugar in it; but when I took it out after I'd taken my shower, it was lovely, crusty, tender in the center, and not quite sweet enough to contrast well with the cherries, so I added a drizzle of Grade B Maple syrup to it. Heaven...

I love bread pudding, though.

So it's been a very good day.