The cream! The cherry! Not.

I have been feeling woefully incomplete because despite all the snow and sleet and missed school and shoveling and salt this winter, we have, thus far, been deprived of an ice storm. Seriously, what is late-winter fun without everything around you freezing inside a capsule of clear ice within two hours?

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Of course you've been wanting to ice skate down your sidewalk sans skates. It makes you feel so coordinated and secure; you are an effing gazelle.

Naturally you've felt glum that you've not experienced the magic of an ice window for your car. It's an igloo on wheels I tell you! Super cool.

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You have been dying for a twenty-four hour Winter Alert that ends on Monday at 3am, mere hours before your kids' school decides on whether to open, delay or cancel and that coincides with sending your husband off to sunny California for four days and realizing that your Ice Melt doesn't contain sand. No, this fine product melts the ice which then immediately refreezes in the sub-freezing temps with zero traction therein. You have unwittingly made an ice rink out of the fourteen-stair exit from your home. You will be an über-gazelle come morning. Except that you probably won't need to leave anyway because #snowday.

Your dog, sassy and fancy in his old age, will NOT pee outside except for against the one non-brick side of the house, and you will love to look at his splotchy yellow stains frozen in place on your home as if Canine Jackson Pollock took to your deck.

You thank all merciful gods and feline spirits for the fact that, inexplicably, your cat seems to believe he's a snow tiger and begs to go outside at regular intervals. You think, "That cat is mofo crazy, but he doesn't whine, he appreciates leaving the house, he doesn't fart AND when he snuggles with you, he doesn't stink." Much to be said for that delectable combo. You will start to favor him with unbecoming openness.

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You will scurry over to the market and spend exorbitant sums on convenience foods and flowers because FRUIT! COLOR! Who gives a shit where it was all grown? Buying local is so #springandsummertime

You'll cook a vat of pumpkin ravioli in sage butter for dinner because your husband doesn't like it and his absence is an opportunity. Also, carbs.

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You will light a fire with the minimal amount of kindling you have and then use every bit of newspaper in the house to augment because you deserve that festive freaking fire. Not least because 1) you'll fall and die if you go outside for more kindling which is a gauntlet-walk away in the garage, and 2) you are an awesome, whacked-out-from-fatigue-and-talking mother who gave your kids small amounts of melatonin at 5pm, fed them a beautiful, well-balanced meal, bathed them quickly and tucked-threw them in bed at 6:04pm so you could rest for a few. Hey, that shit's natural!

You will really wish you'd had the foresight to buy dessert while you were buying bouquets like you're an effing bride because no one is making anything now. #wine

Happy March, peeps! ~~~~ Please, for the love of all things holy and comedic, find the effing humor in this. It's funny!

On winter

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I have manhandled this year's winter with such imperturbability. I bought the first puff jacket I've been able to even try on since being traumatized by the ugly but necessary forest green, Marshmallowman-Eddie bauer parka I wore in college during Chicago's cold season. It was just heinous but as the salesman told me, "You can't focus on cute. You need to be warm." My little Louisiana self didn't know that yet, but I learned!

During my first Evanston winter, I was the enthused dork making snow angels and grooving on icicles and powdery banks lining the plowed paths. "Doesn't it look magical!" I declared to anyone in earshot. I spent Thanksgiving that year in Minnesota with one of my best friends and was charmed by the fact that we could just start walking on the frozen lake near her house. Her mom made Norwegian lefse which we slathered with butter and cinnamon-sugar before rolling and devouring.

I passed my second and third winters with a great deal less enthusiasm. For starters, Chicago winters don't end when you really think they should. No, like those in Boston, they eke themselves out well into March and often into April, and it's just entirely too much. Summers in Chicago are a thrill for a reason; not only are they beautiful but also people are just insanely excited to feel alive again that they bask endlessly in the outdoors.

During the third winter, the temperatures dropped so low that Northwestern sent shuttle buses out to ferry us to classes. However, the shuttle engines stalled in the frigid air, and so we were left to forge ahead on our own. I remember leaving my sorority house one morning in a hurry, pitiful breakfast of Fruit Roll Up in hand. It froze and shattered onto the sidewalk before I'd reached the first corner, not twenty paces from the door. Complete shock supplanted my irritation. Until it didn't. And finally spring sprung.

I loved college so much but my fourth winter found me desperately ready to leave behind such northern climes. What did I do but move to Philadelphia and then back to Chicago and then to NY and then to Boston, forging my way through varying amounts of wind and snow each and every season. My bitching about it directly correlated with the severity of each city's wintry presentation.

Philly was not bad at all, but Boston? Awful. You have never been cold like you have if you've attempted to walk across the Charles River in January. Longest walk to class ever, Evanston schleps included. I'd have cried except that my tears would've frozen to my eyeballs and cheeks and then I'd really have been up shit creek.

T and I left Boston around June 10 of 2005, and I swear to you, because I remember this with complete horror, it was 42° F that day. Good riddance, Beantown. I love you, but!

DC is much more temperate, and its four real seasons are such a treat. But in moving here, I became complacent. Forgetting what that long-ago salesman told me, I have repeatedly voted for cute over warm in terms of coat purchases, refused hats, and eschewed long underwear and clunky boots.

Willful but not a complete idiot, I this year decided to jump into winter with both feet. I bought the Patagonia puff, slim-cut because come on. A cute pair of ear muffs hugs my head, and a serious pair of Gore-tex, waterproof gloves keeps my digits toasty. I bought stylish long underwear (stylish is a stretch, but I did my best, and a base layer is awfully nice) and though I still refuse hats in general, I'm willing to put on that old pair of Timberlands that I dusted off after years in post-Boston timeout.

It's made such a difference which, of course, is no surprise to anyone.

That said, as I write this, I look with chagrin at my knuckles. On many, the skin is cracked, thin crevasses on a landscape that just can't stand up against cold and handwashing any longer. My skin is ashy and vaguely splotchy, my nose an homage to Rudolph because of wind shear and boxes of Kleenex past. My shoulders are perennially achy, both from shoveling and hunkering inward to retain any body heat I can. My toes itch, and I'm chalking this up to being constantly bound in socks because the alternative reason might be a foot fungus, and I simply can't abide by that thought.

I continue to fill my bird feeder, because the ruby red cardinals who come to eat provide such a magnificent contrast to the snowy backdrop of my yard. And I continue to enjoy cozy fires on long winter's nights. But I am so ready to feel the sun's warmth in addition to seeing its light. I'm ready to bare my shoulders and wear just a single layer. And sandals! Oh, the beautiful thought.

Bacon fat and hipsters

With an iced tea spoon, I take some strained bacon drippings from the jar we keep in the fridge. T has this cute habit of frying bacon and draining the rendered fat through a paper towel into this clear glass jar which ages ago held jelly. The various layers of cold fat remind me of the stratification of earthly sediment, each ring delineating old and new and dating the time of deposit. When I scoop the cold lard from the jar, it balls like a delicate ice cream. I toss it into my cast iron skillet and watch as it starts to soften instantaneously. Fat can seem so revolting and stubborn but also so graceful and useful.

I think about how I once would have died before saving bacon drippings, much less using them with gusto. I consider that my scoop of fat skating slowly across the bottom of the iron pan (our stove top is slightly off-balance and so I'm often fighting a decline) makes me feel awfully hipsterish. I mean, if I grew a handlebar mustache and started roasting coffee beans in the pantry, we might as well move to Brooklyn. I say that with tremendous affection.

But what really drives me, and the sincerest hipsters who, by the way, are owed a debt of gratitude for making excellent coffee easier to come by, is the simple realness of my task. With my trusty, multipurpose pan and the reuse of a foodstuff that already gave generously once before, I will make something wonderful for dinner.

T is coming home to eat with me tonight, a treat that's all too rare these days. I want to feed us well for doing so is not only pleasurable but also an elemental way of showing love for another. We have both been working so hard, and to sit together and appreciate a beautiful meal, to share that offering and to connect over it feels important and right.

I like feeling linked to things: to processes, animals, people, communities and self. It's important to me to know that the pig whose bacon feeds my family at breakfast and whose fat continues to flavor and nourish our food was happy and free to roam and treated well while alive. I need to know that she was treated humanely, in life and in death, because only then can I cook and eat her in good faith.

When I cook, I consider these life cycles. The way I take from one to give to another and how I teach my family to do the same with the utmost respect. Recently, Oliver said, "This chicken is from a real chicken, right?" And I said, "Yes, honey, it is. So let's give thanks and be sure we make sure that chickens like it live well."

The same should be true with our non-animal, non-familial relationships. The internet complicates the ways in which we interact with people. On the one hand, it enables us to meet people with whom we have much in common except for geography. On the other, it's easier to be mean from afar, hiding behind firewalls and avatars, and so we learn to treat new and promising connections with some skepticism. I remain hopeful though and despite the few bad apples, I feel lucky for all the terrific people I've met and become friends with online. Connection is such a rudimental need, and online capabilities have broadened so many of our worlds.

As the bacon fat heats and becomes transparent, I ready some mustard greens and asparagus, envisioning a saute of both topped with shaved Parmesan, lemon and basil-infused oil. It results in a perfect dish, and we finish the bowl as if it were dessert.

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