snow and squash

The sun's shining a lambent winter white through the clouds this morning, just over the mountains, hazy in the distance. We've had snow: piles of it, but intermittent, leaving us with less than an inch at a time. But it has finally stuck, and we find more each morning when making each trip in to work (and often back from work), hazardous with the stupidity of people not used to these conditions driving tons worth of steel and gas and combustibles.

Yesterday at 4:30 or so I ran into one of my colleagues leaving. Her husband is a meteorologist, and she told me that he had called and told her to leave work right then, since they were expecting a squall of white-out conditions between 5 and 6.

Of course, that was when I was leaving work. But right after I was told, I warned my next-door office neighbor here at work--the other writer, who's from New Jersey (south Jersey, as she states so emphatically). She just about panicked there in front of me. She hadn't had much experience with driving in snow: her area simply didn't get it much, and when it did, things just shut down because they didn't have the equipment to handle it. Then she came here for college, and didn't have a car here during her college career. It was only when she began working here (a year or two ago?) that she had to drive in snow.

If I could be so blunt, it's situations like this that contribute to the problem. It makes me glad I learned to drive in Wisconsin and had to learn how to deal with snow: at least now I feel pretty confident that I don't act like an idiot in it.

When I left, it was certainly snowing, and certainly slippery in spots, but absolutely nothing that should cause the tangle of traffic I had to deal with once I got to the main drag I was headed towards. People with plenty of room (and/or no one in front of them) cars and cars ahead of me (which I could see because of the hills around here) hitting the brakes hard whenever they felt the slightest bit of slippage, only making things worse for themselves. People so anxious to reserve their spot in the line of cars crawling along that they charge forward when the light turns even if someone else is fighting a skid during a right turn into their lane.

It made me late for yoga. I'm not bitter, just irked. Others were later than I, and I didn't interrupt since the instructor delayed for those who were stuck in traffic ridiculousness. Could be worse.

Snow aside, somewhere along the line, I got hooked on squash: it's become almost a comfort food for the winter--warm and sweet and filling. I blame our CSA for providing such awesome winter squashes, but we only get one every two weeks. I finally broke down and actually bought one from the grocery store yesterday--a butternut, and while it was good, it just didn't compare. I made my usual squash mess late last night: it'll probably last me a week, and I'll enjoy the heck out of it every time. It's basically cooked and mashed squash (is that redundant? mashed squash?), sauteed onions, toasted almond slivers, and ginger. I threw some carrots in last night's version, having remembered the fantastic carrot ginger soup from Stone Soup and how well that worked, and it worked in the squash dish as well. I think I'll continue to do that. The carrots and onions (as well as the squash, usually) all come from the CSA, and it's good to be able to put them all to a creative use.

Now I just need to figure out something to do with all the potatoes that we're getting. On the up side, I generally don't have to worry about them going bad.