This weekend we’ve had quite the snowstorm, which is extremely unusual for Portland.  I’ve lived here for almost thirteen years, and I haven’t seen snow like this before.

Yesterday I was supposed to go to a Christmas party in an eastern suburb of Portland, so I got my car all scraped off and warmed up, and it drove fine (six inches is not a lot of snow), but the air was so cold, and there was so much blowing snow that the windows kept freezing over, and I kept having to stop and scrape them off every few blocks.  That got old really quickly, so I called my friends and said, “I’m gonna have to veto this trip.”  They actually persevered and drove out, but ended up staying overnight (which RockShowGirl and I weren’t prepared to do; luckily we stayed home), and I just got a call from them saying that their car was stuck and that they were waiting for a bus.  Luckily, they just now caught one.

Earlier this afternoon, I wanted to take a walk and get some pictures of my neighborhood, on my way to ApparentlySafestGrocery, since this much snow is so uncommon.   The pictures I took didn’t end up being very compelling, but here’s what the neighborhood looks like.

snowyneighborhood victoriansnow

Some good Samaritan took the liberty of pulling lots of the wipers off of the windshields of cars, so that they won’t get frozen when the freezing rain starts.  Wait a minute. . .what am I saying?  It’s already started.

icedhonda icedcars

Most people are heeding the advice of the weather forecasts and not driving.  In fact, I saw lots of people who appeared to be out walking in the snow just for fun.  One family had a young son who decided to ski, and I thought that would make a nice picture, so I grabbed my camera, and as soon as I did, the kid fell face first into the snow.  I’m not gonna lie; it was hilarious.

eatsnow

So I ran my errand, bought my ingredients, and came back to make dinner, which consisted of mushrooms, red peppers, onions and garlic cooked in red wine, butter, salt and pepper.  The vegetables were then served over a bed of linguine.  (I’ve always wanted to say ‘bed of linguine’, can’t you tell?)  It may very well have been the best dinner ever.  You should totally try to make it yourself; it’s easy, delicious, sexy, and totally improvised.  You just start adding ingredients and seasonings to your own taste, and it’s perfectly acceptable to taste it while you’re cooking to see how it’s coming along.

So now I’m in for the night, but I’ll leave you with a short video to show you what it was like today outside my apartment.   The snow was falling, and the wind was blowing, and it was all very pretty.

The Plan for this evening is to get all bundled up and walk out to Broadway, to take some pictures of the snow and the Christmas lights.  Wish me luck!

OneYearAgo