Let it Snow!

I woke up this morning and my half-closed eyes looked between the cracks of the blinds and I saw snow. The scene reminded me of Christmas movies, ones where there is no snow on Christmas Eve, but when people wake up the next morning there was a Christmas miracle and it snowed six feet worth overnight.

(I just think this picture is so cute)

I have underground parking, and the beauty of this is that I don't have to scrape off my car in the morning. And my car is warm without me having to idle it. (And right now my key fobs have been driving me mental by not working half the time, so that is a good thing)

The snow and road conditions didn't bother me until I had made it to Tim Hortons. As I slowed down to pull into their parking lot, my car resisted stopping and was sliding. I am enough of a coffee addict that my biggest fear was that I was going to slide past the parking lot entrance, and not that I was going to crash into someone else.

My day at work was fairly uneventful, but it was long. I left at 18:45 after having started at 7:15. Side note: I prefer the 24 hour clock. If I can get my clocks to read 24 hours, I do. Those of you who don't know how to convert the 24 hour clock into the regular boring time, you subtract 12 from the number. 18-12 = 6, therefore I left work at 6:45 pm.

The ride home was terrifying. One of my biggest fears is winter driving. I have been in several car accidents in the winter (NONE OF THEM BEING MY FAULT!) So I am a big bundle of nerves in the winter. My car also has a mind of its own. Even if I start from a complete stop at an incredibly slow rate, I will always spin out.

Now at this point I was at work for a little over eleven hours. I'm stressed out. And work also had me out in the snow and it got into my shoes so my feet were so cold they hurt. I wanted nothing more than to get home and never leave my place again.
I stopped at Sobeys first. I love Sobeys. I go there probably 4 or 5 times a week, and I pretty well know where everything is. So much, that when I make a grocery list I can pretty well put my list in order. I don't just mean produce, to meat, to deli, to frozen section. I mean I can put the produce in order of where the produce is located so that I just walk down the sections without having to backtrack. (yes, I do know I have no life)

I thought that the most perfect way to get over this day was a hot bowl of soup, with homemade biscuits, and blondies to finish out the meal.

For the soup, I made a soup adapted from a cheese and potato soup in a Williams-Sonoma cookbook.

Cheesy Potato Soup

Ingredients:

4-6 slices of bacon, chopped

2 leeks, thinly sliced and rinsed

3 large baker's potatoes, peeled and cubed

3 cups chicken broth

2 cups milk

1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese

To make:

1) brown the bacon to your desired crispness in a medium saucepan. Remove bacon and set aside on paper towel to drain

2) In the leftover bacon fat (remove some of it if there is a lot), saute the leeks. Note, you should include the white, the light green, and the darker than light green part of the leeks, but not the dark green part.

3) add the potatoes to the pot and stir so that each cube gets coated in the bacon

4) pour in the chicken stock and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down and simmer for about 20 min to half hour, until the potatoes are fork tender. Maybe simmer is the wrong word, keep the heat on about medium.

5) When the potatoes are tender pour in the milk and bring the soup back up to a boil. Remove from heat. At this point I use a potato masher to mash up the potatoes. I like my soup to have pieces of potatoes and leeks. If you like yours completely smooth you can blend it.

6) stir in the cheese

7) divide into bowls and top them with the cooked bacon.

I also made biscuits tonight, and the recipe for biscuits left me with and extra half cup of whipping cream. I didn't want it to go to waste so I used 1/2 cup whipping cream and 1.5 cups of milk instead of the 2 cups of milk in the soup.

I have made this soup about eight or nine times, and I have to say this was the best one I have had. I am crediting the cream for this, and it is unlikely I will make this soup without the cream in the future.

The biscuits. I was nervous about the biscuits. The last time I attempted a biscuit, they turned out more like rocks. My sister called them biscotti biscuits. They were not good. Tonight's though, were amazingly good. So light and fluffy, and they were EASY. I hate baking and this recipe was simple for me. Chef Michael Smith's Cheddar Biscuits can be found here

Lastly... the blondies. Blondies are most commonly described as brownies made with brown sugar, not chocolate. I made Toffee Crunch Blondies. The blondies have chocolate chips and toffee bits in them, and then are topped with more toffee bits. Now, the recipe states that it makes 36 bars. I don't know who was deranged enough to cut them so tiny that one would get 36 out of a pan, but I made mine so that I had 16.


Tonight's meal was so good that I couldn't even wait until tomorrow to blog about it. I have plenty of dishes waiting to be written about, but this one pushed its way to the front. I was dead tired (still am) but I fought to stay awake long enough to post this.

Now I am heading for bed.