Blizzard

Today, we are digging out from quite a blizzard. Its started two days ago, and finally let up about 5am this morning. This is the second straight day my older daughter is home from school... and I cannot recall her enjoying two "snow days" in a row since she started kindergarten!

She braved the storm to help me tend to the horses in the barn; what a help she is! I can now send her out to bring the horses in from pasture or put them out, feed them their grain, etc., with very little in the way of supervision. It does not hurt that I am able to see everything right from the big bay window in the kitchen, and the barn is really only steps away.

I have been spending a lot of time in the kitchen, with the weather like its been. Friday night we had a fiesta! Fajitas, chips & salsa, and margaritas (for Mom & Dad). It was fun. I enjoy prepping and cooking with my family gathered around the kitchen island, visiting... and try to make a point of making Friday evenings special in that regard. We might make homemade pizza or subs, or in nicer weather, grill steaks outside... the whole idea is to sort of gather around and celebrate the family and the weekend.

Saturday I made Italian meatball subs for supper... wow, were they ever good. The meatballs and sauce simmered in the crock-pot and smelled so good all day. Sunday, it was a big breakfast of "Dutch Babies" (a cinnamon/oatmeal pancake that is my mother's recipe... *so* yummy!), eggs and homemade sausage. Tuesday I made a big double batch of oatmeal raisin cookies and we had Adobo Chili Pulled Pork Burritos for supper... and just now I finished cleaning up the dishes from our snow-day brunch; made-from-scratch buttermilk pancakes with side-pork from the hog we bought from an Amish farmer a few weeks back. And tonight it will be the last of some homemade beef stew from a huge batch I put together and froze months ago, along with some homemade buttermilk biscuits.

Not exactly your low-fat, low cholesterol, vegetarian diet... but interestingly enough, both my weight and bad (LDL) cholesterol have been going down and good (HDL) cholesterol going up! I do have a nice treadmill and try to use it every day. It does make a difference, as does the activity of working outside around the farm and in the garden.

Well, better get back to "digging out"... tomorrow it will be back to real-life again, and by the end of the weeks it looks to be warm enough to start melting some of the foot of snow we got over the past few days....