Ice, Ice Baby

sigh

Well, here I sit in scenic Birdseye in the midst of the 90th winter storm of the season. Darlin' Mark is a few hundred miles south in Memphis still working on that sticky situation with the Smuckers folks and apparently headed to a firearms extravaganza of some sort today. Hope the two aren't connected. Anyway, back to the lousy weather. So what's a girl to do when she's sitting at the bottom of the hill all alone in the middle of an ice and snow storm? Apparently try to bake her way through everything in the house.

Must run in the family because Big Sis Marybeth Miller, showing a monumental error in judgement, returned from the shores of the Gulf in Alabama late last night and finds herself in the same situation, different location. Last I heard from her she was getting ready to dive into a beignet recipe. I tried to talk her into stopping here on the way home so we could storm bake together, but Brother In Law Lou wouldn't cooperate. Afraid he'd be trapped in the holler til Easter, I believe.

I began a pre-storm bake last night by turning out a couple loaves of French bread, which worked quite nicely for French Toast this morning. Since that time, I've baked up a batch of gluten free Mint Brownies which are cooling in the kitchen, stirred up cinnamon pastry cream filling for the King Cake Cupcakes, which are next on the list. And have the beginnings of a loaf of sourdough bread trying to find a warm enough spot in my house to get the little wild yeasties up and moving.

I believe my next task will be to fix a Bloody Mary and contact the Spooners, Bill and Margaret, to make the trip down the hill before it's too slick to get back up and take some of this stuff home with them. Maybe if I lure them in with the promise of a Bloody Mary I can get them here. Of course, at some point in time when the snow starts dropping by buckets, Bill will have to come down and stand on his ATV and knock all the snow off my satellite dish on the roof so I can entertain (or torture) myself with more basketball viewing.

At this time, dear readers, I leave you to return to the kitchen to get those cupcakes knocked out, move that sourdough bread through the second stage of it's life and see if those brownies are ready for a taste test. Recipes to follow later tonight when I either run out of butter or drop from exhaustion! I prefer the latter. I've been known to have anxiety attacks from a low butter inventory.