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It's snowing again.

Briefly we had rain that melted away the snow on the driveway. Lots of farms actually had spots of ground without snow. Muddy, I'm sure, but all the livestock looked happy to be out trying remember how to graze.

I bought basil and cherry tomato seeds that I plan to start in pots this week. Hopefully, they can stand up to the sulfur water we have in the faucets here. Surely I will not be buying bottled water just to have fresh home grown basil.

Winter does give some amazing views. Brett and Honus went for a hike and found views that look like this:


To fend off the winter blues, I have been making fruity crepes:

This plate is frozen strawberries and canned mandarin oranges. I drained the oranges and put the syrup in a saucepan on medium high heat. While I was making the crepes (1/2 TBS melted butter, 1 egg, 1/3 cup milk, 1/4 cup water, 1 TBS sugar, 1/3 cup flour, and a tiny pinch of salt. Pour into a medium heat crepe pan or small non-stick skillet and let cover the entire pan. When the edges start to brown, slide out of pan onto your plate and fold into quarters. I can get four thin crepes or three thicker ones out of this recipe.) I put the frozen berries into the hot mandarin syrup with a splash of vanilla extract and a little lime juice and let them simmer. The berry texture wasn't great: kinda mushy and the whole dish was overwhelmingly orange flavored. Next time, I'd cook the berries less and try to tone down the orange flavor. Probably only use half the mandarin can and make the syrup with half the juice. I'd also like to pop a little acid flavor in there- more lime juice?

But doesn't it look yummy? And less than a $2 for the plate!