Wind of change

There's a damaging gale blowing down the lake at us this morning. From our house, we could see white horses on the surface of the water, as the ice was broken up by the wind. The dividing line between water and ice was rapidly advancing down the lake from west to east, so I went for a walk with the dog to capture the moment of change. This is happening about three weeks earlier than it usually does.

The eastern half of the lake was still fairly frozen, although close to the shore the ice has broken up into large, angular chunks. This picture looks peaceful, but it was so windy at this point on the road that I could hardly stand upright.

A limb of this tree had fallen into the road, so I carefully pulled it off to the side, so as not to impede traffic. Not that I'd seen any cars this morning.

The boundary between the ice and the water was fairly clear:

The waves on the water were echoed in the ice which moved in an much slower wave. One that made me feel slightly seasick to watch.

Just past the join between the water and the ice, the reason for the lack of traffic became clear:

One of our neighbours' trees is completely blocking the road. I couldn't even get past it on foot.

Made me feel a bit silly for pulling that other branch off the road, I can tell you.

Signs of life

It may still be looking snowy outside, but my thoughts are turning to this year's vegetable gardening. I've had onions and lettuce growing on the windowsill of the living room for a few weeks now. The corn salad is looking good:

In past years I've started peas off indoors, too, as I've found that they get eaten if I sow the peas directly into the greenhouse beds at this time of year. I'm doing things differently this time, though. These Lincoln pea seeds were gathered from the plants I grew last spring: I left some of the pods to fully ripen and then stored them over the winter. I did the same with some of the Oregon Sugar Snap II peas. A few days ago, I soaked the peas overnight in water, then drained off the water and waited to see if the peas would sprout.

Now they're actively growing, I hope they'll be less of a temptation to the local rodent population. I'll put them out in the greenhouse at the weekend and see how they fare. Mike dug the last of the over-wintered carrots out for me last week, creating some space in there for the peas. There were over ten pounds/five kilos of carrots to be retrieved.

I think this is one vegetable that we can safely claim to be self-sufficient in!

Messy mix

The weather people don't like it when the temperature is around the freezing point and a system is due to arrive. It makes it difficult to forecast whether people are going to get rain, freezing rain, ice pellets or snow. They always say that there will be a 'messy mix' as the system passes through.

Messy from a forecaster's point of view, perhaps, but my ears always prick up when I hear that phrase, as I know it means there will be a chance of some interesting ice formations for me to take pictures of. Today was such a day: we had freezing rain on waking, which turned to regular rain and then to snow.

On my morning walk with the dog, I found a fence-post decorated with a combination of snow, ice and lichen:

Some aster seed-heads, weighed down and encased by ice:

This Canadian thistle head looks like something microscopic blown up big:

And this seed head of Queen Anne's Lace was somehow still standing upright, where most of the others had toppled to the ground:

Not messy at all, in my opinion!

Taste test

When I looked at this huge pile of citrus skins to shred on Sunday night I felt like Cinderella or some other of those put-upon fairytale characters who are given impossible tasks to do.

But eventually I managed to turn every single orange, lemon, lime and grapefruit shell into shreds for the marmalade. I didn't have time to do the boiling down afterwards, though, so I saved that job until yesterday afternoon, when I was slightly more awake. Somehow I don't think being in charge of boiling pans of syrup is a good idea when you're dog-tired!

My reward at breakfast-time this morning was to test the new four-citrus marmalade alongside last year's Seville orange variety, to see whether it came up to standard. The toast on top has the 2011 batch, the one underneath is the new variety, which came out a few shades lighter than the old one. The taste is different, as you'd expect, but still pleasantly tart and definitely something I will enjoy eating for the rest of the year.

Missed the boat...

...the one carrying Seville oranges, that is. Somehow it's already the end of February and there isn't a Seville orange to be had. This year my marmalade will have to be made from something different. Here are some of the starting ingredients:

I'm going to use the same method as the Seville orange marmalade I've been making since 2009, but this time there are regular oranges, lemons, limes and grapefruit in the mix. They're simmering away on the stove right now in the first stage of the process, filling the house with the smell of citrus. I'll let you know how it turns out...

Cabbage-stuffed pancakes

Tonight's supper was a Shrove Tuesday variation on the cabbage soup I talked about the other week. I chopped up about two-cupfuls of cabbage, fried it gently in butter for a few minutes and then poured in some canned tomatoes which had been blended to a purée. These were home-grown ones I canned last summer (using this technique), which had some thyme and oregano in with them, but a can of regular tomatoes would work fine, too. I added a cupful of red lentils, some salt, pepper and smoked paprika and let that all simmer away for 30 minutes until the lentils and cabbage were soft and most of the liquid had been absorbed or boiled off.

While that was happening, I cooked pancakes. For four people, I used two eggs, about 2.5 cups of flour and two pints of milk-and-water (I don't do a lot of measuring when it comes to pancakes...). This made eight pancakes, which got steadily smaller in size as I realised I was running out of batter! I stacked them on a plate with kitchen paper in between to stop them sticking together and to make the process of folding them up easier.

Then I made a roux sauce and stirred some grated cheese into it. This is what the cabbage and lentil mixture looked like when it was cooked:

I folded each pancake around a few spoonfuls of cabbage, then arranged them in a lasagne dish and poured on the cheese sauce, scattering some more grated cheese on top.

After about 20 minutes in a 350F/180C oven, here's what the finished dish looked like.

Warming, filling and satisfying food. Perfect for a February night.

Two-day winter

Looks pretty wintry, doesn't it? It was cold and snowy over the weekend, with temperatures struggling to get above -8°C/17°F, but the cold spell didn't last long. It's above freezing again today and I don't think this snow is going to hang around. It's already gone from the road in front of our house.

The ice over the stream is usually deep and unbreakable by this time of year, but it's not very thick at all at the moment - certainly not strong enough to bear my weight:

Such a peculiar winter...

Sky strokes

Had to stop on my way to Deseronto this morning to capture these lovely swirls of cloud in the sky over Lake Consecon:

And a bit closer up:

Just beautiful.

Chickens, inside and out

We keep getting little tastes of winter, followed by warm spells. Yesterday there was an inch or two of snow on the ground in the morning, enough to keep the chickens indoors. It melted over the course of the day and by this morning the chickens were happy to scratch around in the soil of the orchard.

January was stressful in relation to the chickens, as they were being preyed upon by a nocturnal killer. We lost five hens over the course of ten days. Mike spent a lot of time hammering wire over any holes he could find in the chickens' corner of the barn. We think the killer was a stoat (or ermine, as they are known in their white winter coats), as they just drink the blood of their victims, rather than eat their flesh. All the dead birds had damage to their throats but were otherwise unharmed.

Since the carcasses were basically sound, I decided that I should use some of the meat. It seemed a waste to just dispose of the bodies. The hens range in age from one to three years old; they weren't going to suitable for roasting and I therefore decided not to go the whole plucking-and-gutting route. Instead, I removed the skin from their fronts and legs and cut the meat out. I write that very casually, but I felt very nervous and sad about it. I don't look upon the chickens as pets but cutting them up for meat wasn't something I had been planning to do.

The first thing I noticed about the meat was the colour of the fat around the legs: a really bright yellow, not at all like the fat you see on the meat of the young chickens which are normally offered for sale. The leg meat was also much darker, although the breast meat looked much the same. I'd never cooked meat from such a (relatively) old bird, so I spent a little while researching the best way of doing that.

Long, slow, cooking seemed to be the Internet's answer, along with letting the meat mature for a few days in the fridge before using it. I just added water to the chicken legs and cooked them for eight hours on my oven's slow-cooking setting (around 225°F/108°C). Afterwards, I chilled the meat so that I could take the layer of fat off. The meat was very good to eat and the resulting stock was great but I would still much rather have had the chickens alive and well and producing eggs.

It has been ten days now since we last found a dead hen, so we're hoping that the ermine has been foiled in its chicken-hunting enterprises.

Freezing rain

Another morning of freezing rain and no school buses. We seem to have had more freezing rain this winter than any other since we've been in Canada. Although as I type, it's turning into snow. Or 'transitioning' into snow, as the Weather Network people would say.

Sunset, January 22, 2012

Today is grey and windy and all the snow has gone. So I'll cheer myself up with this photo from Sunday evening. I know it looks like I've fiddled with the colours, but I haven't. This was just how it looked.

Winter warmer

It's very lovely outside, but very cold with it. You need a nourishing, central-heating sort of meal on days like this. This cabbage soup is popular in our house and it's easy (and cheap!) to make.

I feel that cabbage soup has a bit of an image problem. There's the cabbage soup diet, for one thing, which I've never really looked at (until right then) but which somehow seems very depressing and January-ish. Then there's the nothing-but-cabbage soup diet of the Bucket family in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I've mentioned before (in the context of the 2009 cabbage glut). Cabbage soup just sounds boring and desperate.

I don't have a cabbage glut this year - it was a bad year generally for the cabbage family in our garden - so this cabbage was one I had to pay for. It's huge though, and this recipe only used a quarter of it. Cabbage is cheap to buy and lasts a long time in the fridge, which makes it a useful vegetable to have around.

The soup is very simple: onions, garlic, carrots, cabbage, lentils (for a bit of protein), some good stock (I used ham stock) and tomato sauce (in this case it was some of the sauce I froze down in the summer, but a can of crushed tomatoes would work just as well). You just fry the diced onion, garlic and carrots in butter or oil, then stir in the shredded cabbage, add the stock, lentils and tomatoes and then simmer for 30 minutes until the cabbage is tender. Let it sit off the heat for 10-15 minutes to get to a comfortable temperature for eating.

I was making bread anyway this morning, so I used some of the dough to make rolls to eat with the soup.

Ice trees

I nearly always have my camera with me when I go walking, but today I didn't take it, thinking that there wouldn't be anything new to see as the weather had been still and clear. But tiny, delicate ice formations had grown up overnight, so I had to go back to the house and find my camera. I should know by now just to always take it with me...

Proper winter

Now, that's more like it. Lots of wind and steady snow all through yesterday have left us with a much more normal January landscape.

The blown snow makes interesting drifts and coats objects in unpredictable ways. The grass at the back of this next photo stands clear, while the bent blades in front of them have been caked with snow. To my eyes, there's something arachnid about them.

 Snow-spiders.

Undecided

The weather still hasn't quite managed to get into full winter mode. This morning we woke to freezing rain and the cancellation of the school buses. You could probably hear the children's cries of disappointment over missing a day of school from where you are. Then the rain turned to snow, then back to rain again. It's very strange weather, as though a control switch somewhere hasn't quite clicked over to 'Winter' from 'Fall'. It reminds me of last summer, where it took a long time to get properly hot.

Getting through winter

At this time of year, my mother's great joy was in watching the slow lengthening of the days. She was always happier once the longest night was past and she could report to the rest of us the hours of sunset and sunrise in the newspaper as they slowly notched respectively forwards and backwards to mark the arrival of spring.

I do that too, to some extent, although the newspaper has been replaced by various websites which give the same information. The other indicator I keep an eye on is the average daily high and low temperatures. Right now we're at the coldest point of the year. For our nearest weather station (the forces base at Trenton), the lowest temperatures are -3°C/26°F as the average daily high and -13°C/7°F as the average low. The period of time when this is the case starts on December 27th and ends on January 15th, when those figures both rise by one degree centigrade. We then stay at the -2/-12 point until February 3rd when the averages go up again.

During February the changes happen more frequently, so that by the end of that month we're at an average high of 4°C/39°F and an average low of -6°C/21°F. It's probably very sad of me, but I've even marked these changes in temperature on my calendar as a way of helping to negotiate the month.

Do you have a similar coping mechanism for the cold, dark stretches of the year?

Please don't comment to tell me that you live in an area where there aren't any cold, dark months because that really won't help me at all. ;-)

Sparkly

That's the lake near our house. Still unfrozen in early January. That's not something we've seen so far since we've been living here. It usually freezes over at around the time of the winter solstice and then melts again at the spring equinox. I thought it would freeze last night, as the temperature dropped to -15°C/5°F, but here it is, still sparkling the sun back at us.

The stream has frozen again, making its usual interesting shapes. I like the rabid-jaw effect of the ice in this shot:

Crème brûlée weather

We had about an inch of snow on Thursday night, followed last night by a short period of freezing rain. Walking outside this morning is like stepping through the crispy layer of a crème brûlée into the soft snow underneath. Very satisfying crunchy noises ensue.

Winter has its compensations.

I'm now congratulating myself for my laziness in not shovelling the front steps yesterday: it's a lot easier to shovel snow with a thin layer of ice than it is to remove a thin layer of ice from a hard surface.

Advancing ice

Yesterday there were hints of ice at the edge of the stream, nothing more:

After a very cold, clear, night, the ice is now covering the stream completely:

Any blades of grass sticking out above the surface have been caked in their own covering of hoar frost. I never get tired of this effect. Makes me think of aerial photographs of pine forests...

Boxing Day bonus

The mild winter (still no snow!) means that some of the greenhouse vegetables which would normally have been killed off by frost are still producing food. After the rich main meal of Christmas Day, it was time for something a little lighter for our Boxing Day lunch. I was able to harvest salad onions, some lettuce and dill, along with some young spinach leaves (these were about the only thing which would normally still be alive at this time of year).

The dill and onions were chopped up and combined with a block of cream cheese and some lemon juice, salt and pepper to make a quick and easy pasta sauce. Once the cooked pasta was coated with the sauce, I stirred in some leftover smoked salmon, cut into strips. The spinach was sliced into thin strips and mixed with the lettuce leaves and some chopped cucumber (not from the greenhouse - but it was Canadian!) to make a green salad to go with the pasta.

Then we completely ruined all that lightness and freshness by having Christmas Pudding for dessert. I didn't serve it yesterday, having finally learned from long experience that no-one is capable of eating it on Christmas Day.

Christmas dinner harvest

There's a hard frost forecast for tonight and tomorrow, so just now I seized the window of opportunity of a mildish spell (a bracing 0°C) to dig up some winter vegetables for our Christmas dinner. I got a big haul of sunchokes and a good handful of Cavolo nero from the barnyard and some carrots, sage and parsley and the last of the beets from the greenhouse.

The Cavolo nero (black Tuscan kale) has been the surprise hit of the winter garden. It has a sweetish flavour and has been holding up well outside to the frosts we've had so far. It's good steamed or used in a stir-fry. Most of the other brassica crops did very badly in this year's cold and then very dry late spring, but this kale managed to survive all of that. I'm impressed by its resilience and will definitely grow it again next year.

Non-white Christmas?

The Weather Network produced a story based on statistics released by Environment Canada on the likelihood of a white Christmas in various cities across the country. We don't have any snow on the ground at the moment and there isn't much in the forecast, as the end of the Fall season continues to be milder than usual. I went out for a bike ride yesterday, which isn't something I'd normally expect to be doing in mid-December.
The tree-foraging detail was out in force on Saturday. We repeated last year's self-sufficiency trick of cutting down one of our red cedars for our Christmas tree. Much more fun than picking up one wrapped in netting from a shop!

It seems that this might be the first Christmas for us in Canada where there isn't snow on the ground. Which doesn't bother me in the slightest, but has got me thinking about why it's such a big deal. When did people first start making a fuss about whether it's going to be a white Christmas or not? Is it all because of the song, 'White Christmas'? Was that the trigger? Can we blame Irving Berlin for this obsession? Or is this desire for snow on the ground older than that?

UPDATE: The BBC Magazine has a piece about Charles Dickens this week, which firmly places the blame on him:

Specifically, the idea of a white Christmas - which was and still remains a relatively uncommon occurrence in much of the UK - appears in A Christmas Carol as if it happened each and every year.

In his biography of Dickens, Peter Ackroyd wrote: "In view of the fact that Dickens can be said to have almost singlehandedly created the modern idea of Christmas, it is interesting to note that in fact during the first eight years of his life there was a white Christmas every year; so sometimes reality does actually exist before the idealised image."

I had a quick look at the Project Gutenberg version of the book and the word snow appears 12 times. Generally he's not romanticising it, though: he describes it quite realistically and is mainly using it as a contrast to the warmth and comfort of indoors and the high spirits of the people.

By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty heavily; and as Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets, the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlours, and all sorts of rooms, was wonderful. Here, the flickering of the blaze showed preparations for a cosy dinner, with hot plates baking through and through before the fire, and deep red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut out cold and darkness. There all the children of the house were running out into the snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, and be the first to greet them.

and:

The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon the ground; which last deposit had been ploughed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and waggons; furrows that crossed and re-crossed each other hundreds of times where the great streets branched off; and made intricate channels, hard to trace in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles descended in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great Britain had, by one consent, caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear hearts’ content. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain.

 The phrase 'white Christmas' doesn't appear at all in the book. I had a look at the Google Ngram viewer, which searches across the text of books published between 1800 and 2000. It's case-sensitive, so I searched for both 'White Christmas' and 'white Christmas' and these were the results (click on the image for a closer look):

The red line is 'White Christmas', the blue one 'white Christmas'. A Christmas Carol was published in 1843 and, sure enough, the phrase starts appearing at about that time, increasing in popularity until the big bump after 1941, when Irving Berlin's song was first performed. It's not a very scientific analysis, I know, but perhaps the original concept does owe more to Dickens than to Berlin.

Resurrections

The French tarragon which looked so woebegone a few weeks ago has come back to life after some intensive care in the kitchen:

And the remaining tomatoes are slowly ripening:

The greenhouse tomato plants were killed by frost in the last week of November and I spent an hour or so this morning clearing the plants and their supports from the beds. But it really hasn't been very cold yet this November and December (tempting fate by saying that, I know). I'm still picking broccoli florets from the plants in the greenhouse and the Tuscan black kale outside is producing well.

Yesterday morning brought a hoar frost. It turned these swamp milkweed seed pods furry:

And made the asters look like they were flowering all over again.