Hunker Down

I’m cold. The sky is overcast; the ground is covered in filthy, crusty snow. It rains, freezes, snows, melts – all of them every week, over and over again. My driveway’s become a skating rink, some unspecified accident waiting to happen. The sun hasn’t set after 5PM for three months now, and firewood’s running low. We’re hunkered down.

January and February are hibernating months where we live (why oh why, didn't I move back to California, when I had the chance?). We’re past the holiday festivities, but the vernal equinox is still unforeseeably distant. Seasonal Affective Disorder (literally, SAD) manifests in some very specific behaviors, patterns which have become ingrained during our years here.  

For one thing, nobody goes out much. If you drive through our town at 6 in the evening (pitch black, remember), it may not surprise that the sidewalks are empty; but neither are there any other cars on the road, moving or parked. Restaurants – if they’re not simply closed for the winter – are having their slowest months. Where you can barely elbow your way through the summer mob is now a ghost town. Many years we don’t even catch a glimpse of our friends or neighbors until Easter.

On the other hand, the grocery stores are jammed (even though the produce section is a sad parody of its summer self). So it seems likely that most of these folks, like us, are cooking against the storm, designing their menus – whether by instinct or intention – to be warming, filling, comforting buffers against that depressing mess beyond the windowpanes.

In that spirit, we’re sharing some recipes that have helped, and are even now helping us to survive these dark months. Though not intentional, there seems to be a strong Pilgrim motif running throughout. On the other hand, that shouldn’t be so surprising, given where we live, and the fact that they, too, had to do some extreme hunkering. If only they’d known about meatball subs…

I’ll let Mark tell the tale of one of our favorite hunkers;

My husband says…

It was March 31, 1997 (many of you will already know where this is headed). Kar had planned a trip with her mother, to France, to hunt for antiques. Their plane was to take off that evening; so Charlotte – our daughter, five years old at the time – and I drove them to airport.

On the way, some big, pretty snowflakes had begun to fall. It was a bit late in the season for such, but not completely unheard of. We dropped the two travelers off, and turned around for home. One of Charlotte’s favorite restaurants was a local Chinese place, and as it was too late for me to cook anyway, we decided to treat ourselves to dinner out.

Meanwhile, the snow was getting quite heavy indeed. By the time we’d gotten to the restaurant, it was dark and the wind had gotten wild. We sat by a window with a great view of the Essex River, and watched, munching won tons and spring rolls,  as our pretty little late-season flurry became a full-fledged, howling, gale-force blizzard. Quite a dramatic sight, and fun – for a while.

However, snow was accumulating rapidly; lightning kept striking somewhere very close, accompanied by really scary explosions of thunder. I bundled Charlotte into the car, and drove us very cautiously the half mile or so home.

At that time, we lived in what had been, before we renovated it, a barn. It was extremely sturdy, but in a high wind creaked in a way that was somewhat ominous, if you weren’t used to it. Since most of the joists and rafters were exposed, little plumes of 150 year old dust would occasionally come floating down, as well. But it was our home and we liked it: warm, cozy and safe from the crazy stuff going on outside.

Then the power went out. Now Daddy was faced with the challenge of finding a way – without light or heat, and in the midst of a raging, thunder-cracking blizzard – to make all of this fun for a five year old.  

It was far too windy to light a fire. So, we found a big serving platter, stacked it with every candle in the house, set it on the bedroom floor and lit them all. Next, a foray by flashlight to gather and bring back all of Charlotte’s favorite books. Whence we commenced to reading them, lying on our stomachs in the candlelight, over and over again, as necessary, until the storm blew out or we got sleepy, whichever came first. 

But as wonderfully contented as those few hours were, the best was yet to come. Because, you see, Kar’s plane hadn’t been able to take off at all. So, after a long and terrifying ride home (in a cab whose driver must have been insane to even try), Mom unexpectedly and magically appeared at the door, to help us read Angelina Ballerina in the dark, with candles, on the floor.

And that’s how we survived the April Fool’s day blizzard. Best hunker ever.