Winter's Place
Dear HH,
Today was a perfect summer day, balmy, blue skies, cool breeze, and cooped up moms walking their kids past our house two by two. It was a perfect summer day except it's not summer. It's January.
One of the things I most looked forward to about moving to Denver from Dallas was the snow and, even though the DC area is far prettier than Dallas for most of the seasons, I've been sad about no snow. All week long I've been looking longingly outside hoping it would get just cold enough that the rain would do its winter magic and begin trickling down in snowflakes. It didn't. But it did remind me of one cold winter when I lived in Upstate New York and I had to start my car 45 minutes before I drove it, walking up and down two flights of stairs in my pajamas. After it ran for 45 minutes then I scraped the ice from it. It was an inch thick and I'm not exaggerating. Then I had to drive it to the tiny blue office I shared with one of my favorite people and the heater never worked properly, so we would take turns warming our hands over the space-heater. We decided that all those stay-at-home moms who just loved this winter weather and posted photos of their kids playing all day long and doing things like baking bread and making stew, only loved the weather because they didn't have to go out in it like we did. Then we turned our music up and put some mittens on and tried to be cheerful.
Anyway, this "winter" has me thinking about that winter so many years ago. I've found it hard to be so transplanted, unrooted. You know this. So I suppose since I haven't got any idea where we'll be living in two months, it's fun to think about the places I have lived.
This afternoon I read a bit from the book project I'm currently working on. It was a quote from Thomas á Kempis and it said this, "Dreams of happiness expected from change and different places have deceived many." I felt convicted about it immediately because, well, that is all I've done this year. I have been happy in a few places, felt completely at home, but it is always the people I find who make it that way and not the place at all. And it's been hard to find those people here. I know they are here because others tell me they are, but I think it gets harder and harder to make those sort of friends the older you get, and, well, compounded by new marriage. No one ever told me making friendships would be harder once I got married. Or maybe I didn't listen.
This week is the inauguration and DC is aflutter with the happenings. Nate's building, which is right across from the Mall in DC, was taken over by some Super Secret Happenings of which I don't think I can speak on the internets, but joy upon joy, it meant he could work from home the second half of the week. This morning, before we opened the doors and windows and walked outside, our house felt cold and damp so I planned to make stew for dinner. And, because I needed some cheering up, I made it Beef Bourguignon. Because I can. And you can too. Here's how:
Chop up some beef roast.
Brown your pieces in a dutch oven (don't crowd them and don't cook them, otherwise they'll be tough!).
Remove them from the Dutch oven and plop four-five carrots and one or two onions, all cut up into one inch chunks in that beautiful brown stuff on the bottom of the pot.
After you brown them all for a bit, put your browned meat back in there, as well as a jar of broth (I used one Mason jar full) and two cups of wine (this is a good recipe to use for that bottle of wine you never finished).
Generously salt and pepper, mix it all together, put a few bay leaves and some sprigs of thyme in there, and top it with the lid.
Put it in the oven for 1.5 hours on 275
Chop about a half pound of mushrooms, and about 15-20 minutes before the stew is done, mix those in too.
Once it's all cooked through, take it out, and if you like yours a bit thick (I do), take two-three TBSP of water and two-three TBSP of cornstarch and mix it rapidly and then pour it into the beef.
Serve over pasta or mashed potatoes (we're doing egg noodles tonight).
Trust me, you won't dream about being anywhere else on earth while you're eating this up.
Love,
Lo
