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.