It is Lundi Gras, the eve of Fat Tuesday, and somewhere up North, two ex-New Orleanians huddle together with their bulldog for warmth and fortitude on yet another brutal subzero morning. That’s enough complaining for Monday. Izzy protested our not going to New Orleans this year, first Mardi Gras we’ve missed in seven years, by […]
Tag: Minnesota winter
Thai Coconut Shrimp
Oh, the Polar Vortex. I feel like Scrat from Ice Age. I wish the ice would crack beneath me so that I may travel in a bug-eyed freefall to the other side of the earth, clutching an acorn, or in my case, maybe a loaf of bread. The equator would be a nice alternative to […]
Sun Dried Tomato Soup
Red, without question, my favorite color. Last week in the operating room I arrived at a robust hypothesis as to why I have always been irrevocably drawn to red. I think, evolutionarily, it has something to do with blood. In surgery, no matter how hard I try, I cannot fully repress my physical alarm to […]
White Chili for the Snow Queen
Negative ten degrees. Six now that the sun is up. It is time for some serious soup. And poetry. “One has to keep looking for poetry as Renoir looked for colors in old walls,” wrote Wallace Stevens. This, I think, is an apt motto for those facing Minnesota winters. A poetic sensibility can turn misery […]
Brie-Stuffed Crescent Rolls
On days like Minnesota todays, the light at the end of the wintery tunnel appears to be snowed in. One foot of snow and still going. Izzy is going stir crazy, pulling socks out of the laundry and gnawing on hollow toes. I jumped off my front step this morning, slipped on the permafrost ice […]