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I just don’t know what to make of the weather we’ve been having this winter. First there was snow before Christmas, a virtually unprecedented event since I’ve been living in Oregon. Then there was the windstorm that knocked out power for so many people in the Pacific Northwest, ourselves included. Then we went to Colorado and got buried under feet and more feet of snow. Last Wednesday it snowed in Salem all day, but only stuck in a few places (mostly where there was bark dust), but it never melted because we had nearly a week of unusually cold, clear weather that actually made the ground freeze hard and stay frozen. Yesterday we woke up to snow and freezing rain covering the ground with a crunchy crust, and we got around an inch of snow during the day. And today, we actually had a weather delay at the university, because all the slush froze overnight and made for a really slippery commute this morning. It’s the strangest winter weather we’ve had since that ice storm a few years back that took out so many trees (the link shows what that storm did to our car).

So between all the driving around in the snow, what did we do while visiting Littleton? I’ll break it down into a few categories, ‘cause that’s just how my brain works…

1. Animal watching

We had great fun watching the flocks of sparrows, house finches and juncos swarming over the bird feeder out the back windows. They persisted in coming throughout both of the storms, and after the first few hours of the first blizzard, my mom went outside to refill the feeder and put out a new one (read: old perch of my parrot, Pogo’s) so even more birds could get in on the fun. You can see some of them in most of Jeremy’s bird feeder photos. We also had visits from several blue jays on several occasions, always readily apparent because they shrieked out warning calls to the little birds to get out of their way just prior to arrival. After the second blizzard, there were flickers hanging out both in the backyard ash tree and on the feeder, and even a little downy woodpecker, who incited a lot of photographic action in the house.

The other stars of the backyard show were the squirrels. We watched them in fascination, as, every time it stopped snowing, they would forge a path through the snow in a brave effort to reach the feeders. We think they were staying in the big evergreen tree in the back corner of the yard, and would virtually swim at top speed through the surface of the snow to the ash tree, after which they had a big decision to make: drop down from the branches of the tree to the roof of the feeder or wade through more snow and climb up? We saw them go both routes, though the former was more entertaining, especially with several feet of snow on the feeder’s roof. It took us a while to realize what had caused the big hole in the middle of that pile of snow.

And I can’t talk about animal watching without mentioning my parents’ cats, Addie and TooCute. They were just as fascinated by the birds and squirrels as we were, and when there was a lull in the wildlife activity, we entertained the cats. TooCute really hated Jeremy and me, and would hiss at us and strike at us whenever we tried to pet her, but she was also constantly hanging around and sometimes even rubbing up against our legs, strangely. The most we could do with her was dangle a gold string in front of her to play, but that was good for hours of entertainment for both cats. I guess we were all easily amused.

2. Knitting

I got in some knitting time over the course of the two weeks we were in Littleton. I was knitting myself a pair of socks from STR Lightweight in the lovely Downpour colorway, using the famous Conwy pattern from Nancy Bush’s Knitting on the Road. The first night there I started the cuff of my second Conwy sock, but after that I concentrated on Christmas knitting. I had ordered a skein of STR Lightweight in Petrified Wood to make socks for my dad (and maybe a skein of the Meteorite colorway for myself, down the line), and it arrived just before we flew out. So I wound up the skein and set myself to knit those socks in the week before Christmas. I didn’t bring any sock knitting books with me due to space constraints, but I had been happy with how Jeremy’s Gentleman’s Fancy Socks came out, so I decided to go with that. The pattern was fairly easy to remember, aside from calf shaping, which I made up to no detriment. I used #1 needles and started with 84 stitches, eventually decreasing to 72 to accommodate my dad’s petite ankles. The colorway received fatherly approval and held up beautifully against the texture pattern and the changes in circumference with no flashing. I used a short row heel and a standard toe, and used up virtually every scrap of the skein, down to the last yard. It was a little nervewracking there at the end, but they came out perfectly, and seem to fit Dad well. I finished them up by the Friday before Christmas, no sweat.

While doing some of our Christmas shopping the Tuesday before the first storm, we just happened to go in a yarn store in downtown Littleton, A Knitted Peace. My mom got a pattern and some needles to make hats, and a little kit for me to knit her a pretty scarf, along with a bagful of Rowan Silk & Wool DK in a gorgeous silver color they call clay, earmarked for the Ogee Tunic in Norah Gaughan’s Knitting Nature. I worked up the scarf, which uses a strand of Kid Silk Haze and a strand of Katia Sevilla held together and worked in a simple garter/drop stitch pattern, after I finished my dad’s socks. That took all of a few hours to polish off in an evening. Then I went back to my Conwy socks, and got the second one finished off the night before we left for Oregon. Not a bad way to bookend the trip, though I had a skein of purple Trekking all lined up to (hopefully) do a pair of knee socks for myself. I’m working on those now with #0 needles and a simple clock pattern from Folk Knitting in Estonia for some visual interest.

3. Cooking and eating

We made some lovely meals over the course of the trip, including both old standbys and some new recipes on the menu. I didn’t write everything down, but here are a few mentionables:

• Our favorite pork loin with leeks from Cooking Light: We’ve made this many times and it came out great, as always.
• Braised lamb shanks with porcini: This was a meal just for me and Jeremy, as my parents had a Christmas party to attend.
• Zinfandel-braised pot roast with glazed carrots from All About Braising: The meat was very tasty but the carrots were awesome and we didn’t make nearly enough of them (this coming from someone who doesn’t care for cooked carrots under normal circumstances).
• Rice-asparagus soup with pancetta and pepper from Zuni Café Cookbook: This was a light, tasty soup that we served with a grating of parmesan and slices of fresh bread.
• Vietnamese braised scallops from All About Braising, served with a whole grain asparagus salad with soy-ginger vinaigrette from Once Upon a Tart: I’ve made the scallops once before, and made them here at my dad’s request. My fish-wary mom bravely ate a scallop and didn’t think it was too bad. The barley-wild rice salad with asparagus went well as a side for the scallops, though the amount of dressing called for was excessive, in my opinion. This was our Christmas Eve meal.
• Leg of lamb stuffed with feta and chard: This was our Christmas dinner. It came out so well the first time we made it that Jeremy and I both really wanted my parents to try it, and I think it was a success. We had a beautiful fresh piece of lamb, and leftovers for days. We kept the sides simple and went with mashed potatoes, fresh steamed broccoli, and the red wine jus from the lamb.

We also did quite a bit of baking, though we had planned to do more, and got cut short a bit by the abruptness of our flight on Saturday. Mostly we did Christmas cookies, but a few other items as well:

• Chocolate chip cookies: I used my favorite recipe, which tweaks David Lebovitz’s fantastic cookies with the addition of toffee bits for a subtle extra hit of flavor. These didn’t last long.
• Sugar cookies: These came from a can, but sugar cookies are really just a vehicle for frosting anyway, right?
• Pumpkin cookies: These are one of my favorite cookies of all time, and we made them partly because we had a partial can of pumpkin left from a batch of pumpkin waffles (very tasty, served with maple pecan syrup). They have chocolate chips and almonds in them, and an almost cakey texture from the moistness of the pumpkin.
• Buckwheat cookies: I’ve made these a bunch of times at home, and they are one of my favorites with tea. This was the first time I’ve made them with a mixer instead of a food processor, though.
• Harvest squash bread: My mom had a butternut squash on the counter when we arrived, waiting to be made into bread. We tried it out with this recipe from Macrina Bakery and Cafe Cookbook, and it came out well, after burning a batch of walnuts and pecans based on the amount of time indicated in the book for toasting them. If I made this again, I’d used hulled pepitas instead of the whole pumpkinseeds we had on hand, as the hulls were not the greatest eating, though a good source of fiber, I’m sure.

Jeremy did a great job of keeping the blog up to date as far as our spectacular winter weather in Denver this December, but he hasn’t quite finished the story, so I’ll chime in to wrap things up in a bit more detail. (Jeremy took lots of lovely photos as well, so hopefully he’ll add some pictorial punctuation to this otherwise very long block of text….)

The first storm that hit the area, several days after our arrival, dumped 24″ of snow on our area. Fortunately, we were able to get the bulk of our Christmas shopping done the day before the snow started, and we stocked up on food too, though my dad and I ended up making a trip in the blowing snow on Wednesday afternoon, to get flour and a few other essentials for Christmas cookies. We weren’t in the grocery store for very long, and when we came out, there was at least half an inch of snow accumulating on the windshield, if that gives you some idea of the rate of snowfall. But we stayed in happily, making Christmas cookies and braised meals, and enjoyed each other’s company, especially since my dad got quite a few unexpected snow days off of work. We lost television when the satellite dish filled up with snow, but we watched movies on DVD and spent inordinate amounts of time staring out the window at the birds and squirrels in the back yard (nearly as much as the cats did).

Once it stopped snowing, we and the rest of the state struggled to dig out and go about our holiday activities. This was no easy task, as the snow plows never did make it into the residential areas of Jefferson County, where my parents live, so every time we left the house, it was like an off-road excursion to get out of our neighborhood and onto the bone-dry main streets. My dad’s 4-wheel drive truck got stuck in the snow just a few blocks from home; the roads were full of wheel ruts, but they only accommodated one car at a time, and when we pulled off just slightly to let another car pass, we were doomed. (Well, maybe doomed is a little strong. Mom and I gingerly walked home for a shovel, praying for cleared sidewalks and not always getting them, and by the time we got bundled up and changed into snow boots for the return trip, the guys had managed to muscle the truck out of the snowbank without us.)

We spent the Saturday before Christmas downtown Denver at the art museum, which was especially fun because a new wing was recently opened. Christmas Eve was mostly taken up with some last minute shopping for Christmas dinner and presents, and the traditional candlelight church service. It snowed another inch or so in the evening, but Jeremy was too depressed by the situation to take a fresh picture of the bird feeder. We had a lovely quiet Christmas with french toast and roasted leg of lamb (I’ll write a separate post about the food, I think) and lots of lovely presents, and got out of the house to watch The Nativity Story in the evening.

After Christmas we started hearing more reports about the second blizzard heading our way. The weathermen didn’t seem to know how much snow we were in for this time, or if it would even hit the Denver area, but we strapped in for another dumping and ended up with at least another foot of snow in our area. This was not great news for our Saturday flight home, especially since, as I mentioned earlier, the snow plows never came around to our neighborhood to dig us out of the last storm. We kept trying to shovel the driveway clear, but once the snow on the sides of the drive reached head-level, there was no place to put it; we were carrying shovelfuls of snow down the sidewalk to dump. My crazy mother convinced me to put on snow pants and boots and wade around in the snow in our yard on Friday. It was over my knees in our front yard and I still wasn’t touching the ground—a lot of work to walk in, and nearly impossible to get up without help after a fall. Where are snowshoes when you need them?

Despite the vast amounts of snow, a plow finally came through on Saturday morning to dig out a few low spots in our street and compact the rest. This second blizzard dumped really varying amounts of snow on the state: we had about 17” of new snow; Golden, where we ate a really lovely dinner on Wednesday, got 28”, and the airport only got a few. The main roads got plowed really quickly, and we started wondering if it had been a good idea to change our flight from Saturday afternoon to Tuesday night. A call to Frontier on Saturday morning at 9:00am confirmed that the airline was functioning at full-steam, but our original flight had filled up. We were offered a flight leaving at 12:30pm or nothing, so we ended up packing everything up on a moment’s notice and rushing off to the eerily uncrowded airport. Having thought we were getting an extra few days to spend at home, this was particularly hard on me, and I spent most of the day with teary eyes. Jeremy was more than happy to get back home and in his studio, though, and the ferrets more than did their part to cheer me up. Now if only I could get over the fact that the vacation is over and it’s time to get back to work…