What was I thinking...

Part of this whole cold-snow thing that I have failed to mention thus far is that our water pipes froze…two days ago. Not a big surprise given that they hang from trees coming down the side of the mountain. This isn’t such a big deal, I was prepared for it. (We spent a good part of the summer without running water so I have a little experience…but I’ll save that story for another time). We have about 100 2 liter bottles of water (this is my other stash) on the side of the house, you know, just for a non-rainy, or, as it happens, snowy day. David, being more manly about it, has contributed 4 25 liter jugs to the stash.

So, as I said, I’m pretty good at dealing with the inconvenience of no running water. I have an economical system for doing dishes, flushing the toilet, taking care of personal hygiene and I’ve learned to buy drinking water in massive quantities. It would seem, however, that I was completely out of my mind this morning. What exactly could I have been thinking when I thought doing this:

would be a good idea? BAKING in a waterless house!? And if that wasn’t enough, I added this to the day’s events in Kitchen Cornwell:




(This pot contains very tasty homemade carmel from my great-aunt Lorraine’s recipe…2 pounds of boiling sugar, corn syrup and butter…umm, ok, it’s ugly at this stage but it gets much nicer, really.)

Maybe some of you more accomplished kitchen/cooking/baking people wouldn’t think this was so nuts but, well, I’m relatively new to the kitchen. My baking endeavors are really messy…flour, butter, and sugar bombs, really. I didn’t realize my mistake today until I was well into it already. I heard the ticking. Sure enough, the bomb went off (why is it that no one has come up with a better pie crust rolling surface? One that doesn’t re-roll when you spread it on the table and cover it with flour and dough?). I would love to include a photo of this but my hands were too floury-sticky-yucky to touch the camera and, well, I didn’t have any water thawed (did you catch that little slip in my careful planning? The water jugs were outside where, of course, they froze) so I couldn’t wash my hands.

Seven hours later I have a clean kitchen:

And these:



Christmas treat plates! Ready to take to a post Christmas dinner tonight.

And if the city wouldn’t have run out of street salt for our road, I could have delivered them tonight.