Looking for big winter in small places and filling the hole with sausage, kale and beans
This morning the windows on the south side of the house are encased in a thick layer of bubbly ice. It’s freezing rain on top of an inch or two of snow and is meant to turn to all rain and then back to ice pellets and then to snow again by afternoon. But no real accumulation. How I long for a big snow. A colossal snow. A blizzard like the blizzard of ‘78 where we had to remove the storm door and bring it inside in order to begin to shovel our way out of the house. The snow came 3/4 of the way up the door.
Maybe I’m just wishing for another reason to stay at home (of course I’m wishing for that. Think of all of the things I could accomplish). But winters haven’t been as wintry for the last few years. If it’s going to last this long (and it will, it lasts so bloody long in comparison to the other seasons), it would be nice to have some opportunity for sledding with the kids—that doesn’t melt away the day after it hits the ground. I haven’t seen any of the area ponds stay frozen yet this year, and never see kids ice skating.
It seems like my childhood winters had a blanket of snow on them for two solid months, and every day the whole neighborhood gathered at the top of the big hill by the Taunton River for all-day runs. I spent day after day gliding around on Sturdevent’s Pond when I was a preteen, fantasizing that Robbie Benson or Shawn Cassidy or Leif Garrett sliced back and forth behind me, watching my every move and falling helplessly, hopelessly in love with me. And then I’d attempt a spin and fall straight out of the pages of Tiger Beat Magazine and onto my bony little ass.
Will global warming ramp up in my lifetime to the point where I am able to garden in winter without a heated greenhouse? As much as I love the thought of filling my salad bowl year-round with succulent lettuces, I hope to Maude that I never see a tomato flourish in my February garden.
That’s what pantries are for—we’re supposed to enjoy the less-heady, preserved fruits of our summer labors in the winter.
I think tonight I’ll celebrate this in between time. I’ll stew two overstuffed quart bags of blanched winter greens that are still in the freezer—one each of kale and collards. After I get a pot of brown rice started, I’ll sauté a pound of sliced chicken sausage in the dutch oven with a small chopped onion until the sausage is browned and the onion golden and soft. Then add two cups of cooked Great Northern Beans (also ready and waiting in the freezer—or they were until I set them on the counter a minute ago to thaw) and a quart of chopped tomatoes and garlic (I have one jar left from two years ago, found far back on a shelf). I’ll toss in a little kosher salt and cracked black pepper to taste, then let the whole thing simmer for about half an hour on medium-low heat. Once the rice is done, I’ll scoop that into bowls, then top with a heaping spoonful of the greens, sausage and beans, then shave some Asiago cheese and a small swirl of basil and olive oil (that I also just took out of the freezer). Doesn’t that sound warm, but wintry? Now come on snow. Work with me here.
"In summer we live out of doors, and have only impulses and feelings, which are all for action, and must wait commonly for the stillness and longer nights of autumn and winter before any thought will subside; we are sensible that behind the rustling leaves, and the stacks of grain, and the bare clusters of the grape, there is the field of a wholly new life, which no man has lived; that even this earth was made for more mysterious and nobler inhabitants than men and women. In the hues of October sunsets, we see the portals to other mansions than those which we occupy."
~Henry David Thoreau
