The Other Side

Tuesday, 2/24

Greetings from the other side of disaster! That is, I hope it’s the other side. What if it’s only half way through and I’m stuck in the middle of it? No, that cannot be. I mean, yes, the pipes froze and then burst and yes, my workshop needs a new ceiling, and Betty’s bathroom is missing a wall, so that’s it, right? All over now. Has to be.

It wasn’t easy to go through, but misery does indeed love company. We weren’t the worst off in town by a long shot. Whole houses were frozen, guesthouses were damaged and restaurants affected. The plumbers who came to fix our problem told horror stories that widened my perspective and made me feel like we are all trapped in a Stephen King novel.

Wednesday, 2/25

The snow that fell last night would have been considered a good amount in the old world, the world BTB (Before The Blizzards). Instead, everyone was talking about how “light and fluffy” it is, nothing to worry about. Perspectives certainly change, don’t they? Still, the new snow does improve the scenery. The old stuff was getting pretty grungy.  Danielle Niles, on Channel 4, says we’ll get more tomorrow. I don’t usually watch her because she says “P-town”, but I’m so desperate for a good forecast I’ll watch anybody in my quest for a snowless future. Not only did she say the “P”word four times, she said we’re having more snow. At this rate we’ll be skiing on the dunes in our tankinis!

The good news is, Tuesday night was supposed to have been the lowest temperature since 1898 here in Provincetown, and we didn’t have frozen pipes! So, I guess we really are on the other side of disaster. Maybe. 

WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY?

What an exciting day! I was making coffee this morning and out my kitchen window I saw the largest fox I have ever seen. He was in the driveway checking out the birdseed Betty puts out, but I guess he didn’t like it, because he trotted off to the next yard, where we got to watch for about 20 minutes while he dug a deep hole in the snow there.  He seemed to be playing. He’d dig for a little bit and then come out of the hole and jump straight up in the air a few times, and then go back into the hole and dig some more. My friend Tony says he was hunting mice under the snow.  What a treat to see him so relaxed. He had no idea he was being watched, and so acted very much at ease.  Finally, he just trotted off, maybe to try mouse hunting somewhere else. Thank the Goddess for our wildlife! I’m so blessed to live in a place where I can watch!

They had gorgeous asparagus at the Stop & Shop yesterday, so I got some and made the following pasta dish:

Makes enough for 2

10 spears of young asparagus  (Try to use pencil-thin spears)

12 raw shrimp, cleaned and de-veined *

The zest and juice of one lemon

4 TBLSP olive oil

2 TBLSP unsalted butter

3 med cloves of garlic, diced

Salt and fresh ground pepper

Hot pepper flakes (optional, but delicious-just don’t overdo it)

Whole wheat linguini

Freshly grated parmesan cheese**

In a medium skillet, heat 3 TBLSP olive oil. Add diced garlic and toast, stirring frequently, until golden. Remove from pan and drain on paper towels. Reserve.  Chop the asparagus into ½ inch pieces and sauté until al dente. Season it to taste. Meantime, cook pasta to taste in 2 quarts of boiling, salted water.  When the asparagus is nearly done, add the shrimp and lemon zest to the skillet and cook until the shrimp are pink and firm.  Add the butter, hot pepper flakes and lemon juice, and about ¼ cup of the pasta water. When the pasta is nearly cooked, transfer it to the skillet and toss well. Cook until the pasta is done to your taste. Finally, add the freshly grated cheese, toss and serve.

*My brother taught me to always have a bag of frozen, de-veined shrimp in the freezer. I get the 21/20 size, and when I need some I just shake some out of the bag into room-temperature water and let them de-frost.  If you really want to enhance the shrimp flavor, cook the shrimp in hot water until they are pink. Reserve the water. Shell the shrimp and put the shells back into the water and boil for about 3 or 4 minutes, then strain and discard the shells. Use the water in place of the pasta water mentioned above. If you do it this way, add the cooked shrimp to the skillet at the same time you add the linguini. Love those frozen shrimp.

**Feta cheese can be substituted if you prefer.

Remember to get some good books on your ereader and charge it up in case the power goes out in the coming storm….

Blessed be,

Phoebe

Well,  I guess the snow is getting to me.  I really wanted to be above it all, shouldering bravely through the blizzard, never given to remarks about the weather like everyone else I know, but Mother Nature finally won,  as she so often does. When the four walls began to close in on me this afternoon, I retreated to the one place where no blizzard, no hurricane, no heat wave or cold snap can touch me: my kitchen. It wasn’t the first time. Since the snow began I have produced a dazzling variety of dishes including beef stew, roast chicken and a snappy three-layer dip on Super Bowl Sunday. Today it was cookies. I was going to make a batch of tollhouse cookies, but I started playing around and came up with the following recipe. Give them a try. This recipe makes about 4 dozen, and they are, of course, best eaten the day they are made, though they will probably keep for about a week in a sealed plastic container.  I don’t have a name for them yet.

NAMELESS  CHOC. CHIP COOKIES

2 sticks unsalted butter

2 eggs

2 ¼ cup flour

¼ cup good cocoa powder (I like Droste)

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 TBL spoon vanilla

½ tsp. espresso powder

½ tsp. ground cinnamon

½  cup granulated sugar

½ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

White choc. Chips

Dark choc. Chips

Dried Cherries

Chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350 and prepare a cookie sheet with cooking spray and parchment. Cream butter and sugars together until well mixed and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing until incorporated. Add vanilla.  In a separate bowl, mix flour, salt, baking powder, espresso powder and cinnamon together. Add to wet ingredients in three batches, mixing well after each addition. Add the last four ingredients, amounts to taste.  Drop by teaspoonfuls onto cookie sheet, leaving room for spreading between each cookie. Bake for 10 min, transfer to rack and cool.

I hope you like them. If you can think of a name for them, I’m open to suggestions.  I look forward to your comments. Now if I could just think of some way to cook SNOW!!!!! Meantime, here's a picture of the Nameless Cookies:

JANUARY BLIZZARD

I love the winter here. I even love the snow, though the older I get, the harder it is to get around in the snow. Still, I wake up most mornings and run to the window like a child, hoping to see that all-changing coating of white. I have enjoyed snow in the two margins of my life. During my adult working years I was required to shovel, put chains on the car, and grapple with layers of clothing and rebellious boots, but now, as when I was very young, someone else does the shoveling and grappling, and I can remain in my nightie and bathrobe all day if I want to, because I don’t have to go out in bad weather. Much better.

One winter, sometime in the late 80s or early 90s, we had the most snow I’ve ever seen here. I remember the weatherman on Channel 5 showing a graphic demonstrating the snow depth was more than Wilt Chamberlain’s height. For those of you who don’t remember Wilt, he played for the Celtics and was the tallest man I’ve ever seen. That winter our backyard filled up with snow to just below the level of the back porch, about 6 feet. Our Chihuahua, Robert, had never seen snow, and apparently thought the ground had mysteriously risen somehow because, with a little bark of joy, he leaped off the edge of the deck and disappeared from view, leaving only a dog-shaped hole in the drifts below. He somehow managed to burrow his way to the stairs and emerged on the deck, cold and embarrassed, a minute or so later. He never did that again. That year we had snow on the ground from November until the end of March. A real New England winter. Robert’s companion dog, Pearl, a large black Lab, could be seen leaping hugely over the mounds and pushing large hills of snow around with her nose. I can still see her rolling around making doggie snow angels.

When my then-partner, (now Wife) and I opened our real estate business in the Circular Cellar, we thought it was quite picturesque and unusual. After all, one of the largest circular cellars on Cape Cod is a conversation starter, for sure, but we failed to consider the ten steps down from the sidewalk, and what would happen when that stairwell filled up with snow. When it did, right up to the top, it took a whole day and several hearty and helpful souls to dig it out. That year we had five-foot high snow walls separating Commercial St from the sidewalks. Nobody said “Oh, we don’t get much snow out here…”, though I distinctly remember being told that when I first arrived in Provincetown.

This time, we’re supposed to get two feet of snow and 80 mile-an-hour winds. It’s already begun. There’s about an inch on the ground and no sign of it stopping. I’m all snug in my house with the fire going, and oil lamps at the ready should the electricity fail. We have plenty of food and the neighbor has graciously allowed us to hook up to her generator so we’ll have heat if we need it. Nothing else to do but hunker down and wait till it’s over. Stay safe

Welcome to my world.

Welcome, welcome, Dear Readers. Hope you like what you read here. These are stories based upon my many years as a resident of Provincetown, MA, at the tip of Cape Cod. If you’ve been here, you’ll recognize some of the places and maybe even some of the people. If you haven’t been here, why not? I wonder. At the very least the scenery is magnificent, and I can pretty much promise you you’ve never been anywhere quite like Provincetown. It’s worth the trip, out to the tip. (Okay, that’s it. No more rhyming. I swear.)

I have lived here on and off since 1968, when I arrived in the spring to visit an old friend and stayed to make it my home. I went away several times in the early years, but I always seemed to come back here, so I finally gave in and became a full-time resident in 1979. That probably sounds like a long time ago to you. It seems like yesterday to me. The town was different then, for  sure, but underneath all the recent glitz and glamour, she’s the same tatty old girl she was when I arrived. That’s why I love it here, I guess. The things that really matter don’t change. The beach is still the beach and the bay is still there, sunshine gleaming off the water on nice days, a treasure of diamonds for free. I hear a lot of complaining about the changes over the last 10 years or so, but I also haven’t forgotten that most of those changes are things we used to wish for. Hum-m-m. I can still see the old town, lurking beneath its new suit of clothes, so to speak. Everywhere I look I find renovated facades and sheet rock where once there was horsehair plaster, but I only have to look a little deeper. The schedule hasn’t changed, for example. It’s still crowded in the summer and quiet in the winter. I almost wrote “dead in the winter”, but that isn’t true. Provincetown is anything but dead in the winter. Oh, sure, places are closed and there aren’t any parades, but plenty is going on. All one has to do is look at the bulletin board at the Stop & Shop, where announcements of pot luck suppers, trivia competitions, ceramics classes, cooking exhibitions, theatrical auditions and a plethora of other activities invite participation. A person could go from dawn to dusk without a moment to spare here in Provincetown in the winter. That’s always been the case, in my experience, and I think it’s because Cape Codders as a group have never been ones to sit around wasting time.

Another thing that hasn’t changed, thankfully, is the sense of community here. When I left to roam the world it was the first thing I missed. We take care of each other without even thinking about it. That’s not true everywhere. I think it was why I was so lonely in New York, and Chicago. I am never lonely here.

Whenever I tell people where I live, the first question is “What ‘s it like in the winter?”

This blog will attempt to answer that with anecdotes from my past. Names and places may be changed or left out in the interest of discretion. I promise to tell you when I’m doing that. If you think someone in a story is you, don’t ask. I won’t tell. And let’s not forget the stories are filtered through years of –well, years, so if time has distorted the memories, forgive me. I’m doing my best. Again, I hope you like it.