White snow and red cranberries

What a wintery week! This wasn't the first snow (it's been snowing since November, at least here on the hill), but this was the first problematic one.

I didn't even make it to work on Monday. I didn't think my little car would make it down (or up) our hill safely, and even if it did, it sounded like the commute was terrible. I had to use some of my vacation time for Monday, because I was only able to work an hour from home.

My dad called early in the morning and said that the snowblower hadn't been working, so I set out to shovel the driveway by hand. It was more than a foot deep (I didn't measure, but it had to have been), so I could only do a little bit at a time or it would be too heavy. This picture shows how much I got done in an hour. Or maybe it was two hours.

Shoveling was definitely my workout for the day. After three hours of shoveling, I was less than halfway done. Our neighbor across the street (whom I hadn't met, since I'm a terrible person) offered his snowblower, so I accepted. But I'd never used one before, so when he saw me struggling, he came over and did the rest of it. It was very kind and saved me hours of work.

However, by that point the driveway needed to be shoveled again, so I thought I'd bring out our own snowblower. I figured that it hadn't been working because the snow was too deep; but I later learned that my dad thought it wasn't working because he had one of the switches flipped the wrong way. I got it started, and I was able to get a lot done that way. I figured while I was going downhill with it I might as well do our neighbor's sidewalk. Then I had to turn around. And since I hadn't used it before, I didn't know that you could switch between one wheel functioning (to turn) and both wheels functioning. I only had one wheel going. And let me tell you, pushing a snowblower with one working wheel up a snowy hill is no easy task. When I would push on it, it would push me down the hill, rather than the snowblower up the hill. Somehow I eventually got it back up our driveway, and I was furious with the machine. I later felt a little silly when I learned how to turn both wheels on. I probably spent around seven hours (or more) in the driveway that day.

However, I was reflecting that it's not really something I minded doing at this time of year. I had Christmas tunes playing from my phone in my pocket, and I wasn't at work, and I had wassail in the slowcooker. It was kind of pleasant. Much better than shoveling in depressing January and February.

The next day I went to work late, and I had to brush all the snow off my car. (My niece had brushed off some of it the day before, but there was still a lot on it.) And once I got the snow mostly cleared off, the tree dumped more snow on the car--and on me.

I was lucky enough to be able to go to the Mormon Tabernacle Christmas concert on Saturday night. We applied for tickets both at my house and at my sister's, and my house didn't get any but my sister's did. I used the tickets with my niece, while my parents went to the standby line and also got in.

I was amazed with how great it was. I mean, I knew it would be good, but I didn't think it would be that good. Between 2011 and 2013, the guests were operatic, and the 2013 guest, Deborah Voigt, was especially awful. Last year's Sesame Street guests were charming, and Santino Fontana was fine. But Laura Osnes was surprisingly good and had a great voice. There were some opera guests, and while I honestly think people only like opera because they're trained to, these weren't as bad as some are, and it fit with the Handel theme of the show. They had an entire segment on the story of Handel's Messiah and how it was performed for charity. I found it very inspiring. I always listen to Messiah at Christmas and Easter, so sometimes I get a bit tired of it, but I was reminded how beautiful it is.

My one annoyance was that they sang "Over the River and through the Wood" and "Jingle Bells," which were originally written for Thanksgiving. There are already hundreds of Christmas songs, so why do they have to purloin more from the small canon of Thanksgiving music? I don't mind "Jingle Bells" as much, but with "Over the River" they replaced the word "Thanksgiving" with "Christmas"--thus consciously trampling all over my favorite holiday!

And I just want to say something about cranberries. Cranberries are nice and festive (in cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving and in other settings at Christmas), but plain they aren't very good. Last week I made a recipe from my vegetarian cookbook, panfried squash with cranberry and orange sauce. In October I made a similar recipe and I wasn't a big fan, but it was OK. This time, the whole thing was disgusting. The cranberries gave it a sour, bitter taste. And for the previous recipe I used a pumpkin, which was fine, but this time I used a kabocha squash. I literally gagged on it. At one point I moved the squash out of the sauce, but there was a piece hiding out in the sauce, and when I ate it I gagged again. And to top it off, the brown rice I was using was stale. You can bet I'm not making it again. (This happened in time for last week's post, but it didn't fit with the theme.)