Late Winter Treat

February in the Midwest is definitely the “ugliest” time of year and my least favorite. Here in Indiana it tends to be snowless, cold, and brown generally. It is the time of year when I yearn for the greening of spring, warmer temperatures, spring bulbs blooming, and trees budding out for the season. Enough of winter!

However, once in a great while, we get another treat from winter: a fresh few inches of pristine snow. It truly is lovely to see the brown dormancy of nature covered one more time in that beautiful white blanket, even if only for a couple of days.

Today, I was fortunate to have time off from work and took advantage of enjoying the scenery and doing some things inside that made me and the house feel cozy and warm. After a quick walk around outside, I headed in to pour a fresh cup of coffee and plan my day.

First up, a fresh loaf of homemade wheat bread sounded good. Excitedly, I gathered up the ingredients and went to work. After some time, the bread in the oven began to fill the kitchen with that wonderful fresh-baked bread smell. Well, it did smell good; the taste was another story. I sliced a piece and took an anticipatory bite. Yuck! I made the rookie mistake of not checking the ingredients carefully and using cooking oil a bit past its prime. Dang! Even though the recipe called for only a quarter cup, it was enough to disperse that “yuck” flavor throughout the loaf. Into the garbage went the whole loaf.

My second endeavor for the day turned out much better. I needed to make room in the freezer for some ordered pork, so I grabbed several bags of frozen strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries to make and can jam. What an easy and relatively quick process that yielded eight half pints of mixed berry jam and seven half pints of strawberry jam. Now, only if I had some warm, fresh baked bread….

What a great day to bake (unsuccessfully), can, and do miscellaneous things around the house. Thank you mother nature for the late February gift.