Snow in Seattle, Where we Name our Snowstorms

Last week was "Snowpocalypse." Or "Winter Blast 2012," depending on what news station you prefer. In preparation for the week of weather, Patrick, Kili, and I spent Tuesday night in Ballard at The Sexton with Caro, a fiction writer from the program at UNH. (I recommend the brioche slider with house-ground chuck steak. I do not recommend staying for five hours, if you do not want a horrendously high bill and your clothes to smell like bar)

On SnowDayOne, we were stuck. Those hills in Seattle? They'll get you. Here is my street:

That snow closure sign has been waiting at the bottom of the 45* grade since November. NH might call us soft, but NH has things like snowplows and flat terrain.

To induce the feeling of being snowed in, but stave off any cabin fever, I decided to make pot pie for dinner, but had some dill to use.

And, it turns out, some mushrooms & onions. And garlic.And ground beef,

and. Wait. Some yoghurt.

But that, you might argue is beef stroganoff, not pot pie. Not pot pie at all.








Which is why, of course, I simmered it down and stuck it in a pie crust, baked it for a while, and served it with Scrabble. This shot is after my record-breaking eight-letter, all-tiles-using word "greedier" (I had to make up for the time I got beaten by a nine year old...).

To be honest, the pie wasn't an entire success. When the yoghurt baked with the meat, dill, and mushrooms, it kind of...disappeared? For lack of a better word. Rather than a gravy-sauce based off greek yoghurt, with meat & mushrooms in it, it turned out to be a pie full of meat & mushrooms, with a taste of yoghurt. Kili suggested that next time--because it was tasty enough to warrant a next time, even with the imperfections--we serve it with the yoghurt or sour cream on the side, so that the flavor, consistency, and plating look similar to traditional beef stroganoff, just in pie form. This leads to all kinds of exciting opportunities, like hand pies with dipping sauce! And...okay, hand pies with dipping sauce is my only idea so far. But I imagine that the possibilities are endless.

Oh! I almost forgot! It won't taste right unless you follow it up with this:

Obviously.



And finally, some pictures from our snow-week.

Adventuring

Last weekend, Ari, Patrick and I drove east into the Cascades to find snow and sunshine. I told Patrick I wanted to get out of the city, and we were considering making the five hour trek to the ocean, or driving north to Deception Pass, but the mountains are so close by, and Ari's house was on the way, & the allure of two puppies was too much to pass up. We drove east and east and east, past the summit, past Snoqualmie pass and the skiers, past wet trees and shrunken piles of old snow.

Until this last weekend, it hadn't snowed in Seattle yet this winter. Even the mountains were dry. The slopes were sparse and the snow was probably that terrible type that is hard and crunchy--the kind that PNWers complain about, but the kind that East Coasters cut their teeth on. Possibly literally. Ari & Patrick & I drove out to one of those weird lakes that line I-90 East, the ones that have old growth tree stumps sticking out in the middle of them, one of the ones that you see on a hot day stuck sitting in the traffic over the pass and want to get out and jump in.
But we found snow, and sun--and I don't mean that heavily filtered kind that we get on winter most days in Seattle. The sun was bright and huge and fierce, that cold warmth that we got on the sunny days in New England. The kind where you need sunglasses, but you don't put them on because it's cold and you're cold and it's been grey for weeks and you turn your face into the sun to feel it in your eyeballs.

We spent a good while at the lake, trying to toss snowballs into a hollowed out tree trunk some distance away, and mucking around in the wet earth underneath the thin layer of snow. We drove to Snoqualmie Falls afterwards, to stand and watch the waterfall for a minute or two, and then headed back to happy hour at Tutta Bella in Issaquah.
This weekend, Patrick and I drove north and then east on Highway 2 for a ways, impatient for the snow and hoping to catch some flakes before they came to Seattle. We found it--somewhere between Monroe and Sultan--and got out of the car for a minute, before the cold and the cows chased us back west. I've been itching to get out of the city recently, wanting a break from city restaurants and bars and drivers and people. For now, while I'm broke (and still reeling from the 520 toll), short drives will have to do. I'm hoping, soon, to turn them into thrifting trips. If there are furs and vintage dresses to be had in Madison, AL, I'm sure to find at least a good coat in Verlot, WA, am I right?

On Trend

A few days ago, I wore my cardigan backwards to work. Nobody said anything, which is unusual because usually someone says something. I wore knee high knit socks to work a few weeks back, over brown tights and with a dress. One of my co-workers--a girl who is actually younger than myself, not just a stodgy old woman unwilling to except the winds of sartorial change (ha!)--said, "you look...different."

I had seen this backwards Kris Kross look on one of the fashion blogs I read, a girl in San Francisco who walks around in too high heels on a too-regular basis. The day I wore it to work, I saw it on several runway models in spring 2012 fashion shows, a few other blogs, and at least one "trend-spotting" site (hey, I spend eight hours a day in front of a computer. What else am I supposed to do?).

It's a funny thing, how fashion works. One weirdo in expensive clothes gets the idea to put his models' sweaters on backwards and that's "on-trend" for spring. The fashion bloggers & sartorially-minded see the runway shows and start wearing their sweaters on backwards a little early, setting the trend for the rest of us. The people like me--who peruse fashion sites and love clothes, but don't frequent NYFW--see it on models and bloggers and wear it out in real life, to their office jobs as receptionists. By the time spring 2012 is here, backwards cardigans are mainstream, normal, and so hot right now.

For me, the backwards cardigan is an easy way to remix a top, to stretch my modest wardrobe a little further, without having to go clothes shopping again. And god do I love a good low back on anything.