It's not officially winter till tomorrow!

It's still autumn, but did we ever get the snow storm. Dear God, haven't you heard of global warming?! Andy was telling me of a headline he read on the Drudge Report about some of the members who attended the UN Summit on Global Warming. They needed to leave early in order to get home before the big storm hit. Pretty funny. I was reminded of Psalm 2:4 ~ The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them.

I enjoy snow days. It's a wonderful break from the routine of life. I get to stay home in a nice warm house, just puttering around - doing a few odd jobs, reading a good book with a cup of tea, baking treats to warm up the kitchen and make the house smell good, etc. On the other hand, I feel really bad for Andy who has to go out in that cold and wet and shovel our huge driveway. This was a very wet snow so it was difficult work. He labored all morning, took a couple hours' break in the afternoon, then went back out again until dinner time.We had an adventure after dinner. The two of us decided to venture out and go over to the church to change the message on the answering system. It was decided to cancel church services this morning, so we needed to let people know in case they called to check. The roads were somewhat plowed, but the church parking lot had not been touched. We made it into the lot, but then got hung up because the snow was deeper than the chassis of the car. So then Andy had to shovel a path for the car to drive on to get out of the parking lot and back to the street. What normally would have taken 5 minutes, took us 1 hour. We really weren't prepared to get into all that so Andy hadn't brought a shovel or even a pair of gloves. We just hopped into the car and drove on over to the church. Ha. So when we got stuck, he had to wade through all that snow into the church building to get a shovel. He started shoveling, then had to push the car while I steered. We got it out several feet before it got stuck again. So he finally just shoveled all the way to the street. Fortunately, I had a pair of gloves in my coat pockets that I loaned him. Also, fortunately, there was a full tank of gas in the car, and he could come in out of the cold and wet to warm up once in a while. We were hoping we wouldn't have to stay at the church overnight until someone came in the morning to dig us out. We did make it out - glad to come home to a warm cozy house.

This morning, Andy is again over at the church, supervising the plowing of the parking lots and shoveling of all the sidewalks. He left at 6:00 am and I haven't heard from him since (4 hours later).

I did a little shoveling myself this morning, just enough to get to the bird feeders and get a few pictures.

Picnic anyone?

17 inches

snow on the solar panels!

The other day I was compelled to do something about all the food I have in my cupboards and freezer. Some of it has been there a long time and I need to use it up. One of the things I've had in my freezer is wheat germ. I must have bought it to make a special recipe, but then forgot I had it. So I went online to see if I could find how to use it up to free up some freezer space. I went to allrecipes.com and found a muffin recipe. It turned out pretty good. I'm really not crazy about crunchy stuff in muffins, but Andy really liked them. And at least wheat germ isn't as crunchy as nuts! The recipe called for 1/3 cup of wheat germ, so I will probably be making them again because I still have some left.

So for anyone who is interested:

Ingredients
1 1/3 cups whole wheat flour
1/3 cup wheat germ
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup butter, melted
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk (I didn't have any, so I just used milk)
1/4 cup any flavor fruit jam

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin tin with paper muffin liners.
2. Stir together flour, wheat germ, baking powder, baking soda, salt and brown sugar. In a separate bowl, mix together butter, egg and buttermilk. Stir milk mixture into dry ingredients; mix just until combined. Fill prepared muffin cups half full with batter. Make a depression in the center of each muffin and drop in 1 teaspoon of jam. Cover jam with additional batter.
3. Bake in preheated oven for 20 - 25 minutes.
It was also the perfect day to make a pot of spaghetti sauce. Mmmm. The house sure smelled good all day long.