Even More Snow ...

Huge blizzard this past week-- dumped a good 20+ inches of snow on Lexington:

Lots of shoveling to do -- it was practically an all-morning affair.

The kids had a snow day, which they enjoyed thoroughly. Since then the temps have taken a huge dive-- this morning it was zero degrees Fahrenheit when Amy went out to get the paper. I took the kids sledding:

Lydia had some good "air time" -- since she's the lightest of the three of us, she tends to fly the highest off the jumps.

Experimental cooking

I have been meaning to try the New York Times recipe for "no knead" bread, and this week I finally got around to giving it a go. I used 1/3 whole wheat flour, and a little extra water, but other than that, I didn't make any changes. End result:

Very tasty-- nice crunchy crust, chewy & soft interior. I used a first rise of around 18 hours and second rise of maybe 1.5 to 2 hours. The one puzzle was that the original recipe called for a 6-8 quart heavy covered pot, which turned out to be much too big-- next time I will go with a 4 qt pot. There is also another recipe page that has some pictures, which was helpful.

Second cooking experiment: home-made "Nutella". I stumbled across a recipe while looking for other things on the net, but in fact the web is littered with recipes. This recipe is just roasted hazel nuts (about a cup) and a package of dark chocolate chips. Photo:

The color is quite a bit darker than the store-bought kind, and it's a bit less sweet, but it is amazingly good.

Vegetable-Related First Aid Products

My mom, ever the astute consumer, discovered this fine new product:

Yes, pickle-shaped bandaids. The visionary makers of these band-aids have clearly identified a huge untapped market for vegetable-shaped bandages; I can say that as soon as I saw them, I felt an immediate need to run out and buy a couple of boxes. And maybe a tube of mustard-flavored ointment to go along with them...

Beacoup Snow

This has been a wonderfully snowy Christmas and New Years; Ethan and Lydia have been able to play outside in the snow almost continuously since the start of their vacation. Lots of snow up in Vermont:

and plenty down in Mass as well. This past weekend the kids had fun playing around in the snow with their cousin Tobias:

. . . and we also got a chance to see Theo, who is now quite mobile and verbal (provided that you understand his personal dialect):

We introduced Tobias to the kids word association game and also to the "three part drawing game", which was a big success. I can see the potential for many future games along these lines...