The weather here has been particularly annoying lately and we've all been stuck inside way too long. To cheer us up, The Crew decided it was time to whip up some treats and have a spooky movie night.
Burt can always come up with great excuses to experiment within the spiritual realm and indulging in fancy snacks. Who could resist an old-timey whiskey concoction with a name like Downtown Toodeloo, not to mention that handsome cyclist on the label?
Locally, our weather has been very strange this year. Yesterday, it rained all day on top of the nine inches of snow recently deposited by the "historic three-day storm". It was the same one that caused so much grief across the country. In this neck of the woods it was just another blizzard but it still caused a lot of extra work and anything fun was cancelled. Not that it really mattered because no one wanted to be out driving in that!
Having a foot of snow on the ground isn't really a bad thing. It's the perfect cover up for trashy eyesores like empty planters and all those leaves that magically appeared as soon as we thought we were done raking last fall. As far as I'm concerned, it's welcome to stay around until it warms up, provided it stays off the streets and sidewalks and remains white. A good covering of snow is great at keeping everything bright on these endlessly overcast days, too.
Since there was no running to the store last night, the refreshments for this spur of the moment movie night were limited to whatever we had on hand. Kib googled the booze and discovered it was actually made in Wisconsin using local maple syrup, honey, cranberries and cosmic elixirs (probably from Elmwood, our state's UFO Capital). In the nineteenth century pharmacists and tavern owners served this sort of concoction as medicinal liquor to treat colds, allergies and depression. Hmmmm.
After a lengthy search for a suitable cocktail recipe and discovering they only had two of the four ingredients, a dried up orange and some questionable cherries, they settled on drinking it neat.
Kibitz did not approve.
(True to it's historical description, it was fruity, very sweet and did taste a little like medicine.)
For snacks, The Crew opted for baked brie topped with fig spread.
Burt sliced up a baguette and an apple for dipping. The carrots and tomatoes came along for the ride because what veggie doesn't taste better after being dunked in cheese?
Why is it impossible to find a tray when you need one?
After all that preparation the movie we'd decided on wasn't streaming ANYWHERE! So we ended up watching Hallowe'en Party, based on one of Agatha Christie's Poirot novels, through PBS. It was very entertaining, packed with jack-'o-lanterns - and dead bodies, but then it was a "cozy mystery".
Overnight the rain turned to snow, temperatures dropped into the mid 20's and the storm passed on to the east to mess up New England and Canada. While checking out the current conditions/possibility of getting out of our driveway this morning, I noticed an extra-terrestrial looking object down the block. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a snow plow attachment for a truck that someone had probably had to abandoned because it was frozen to the street, ha! Good thing the snow is over for a few days.
I hope you are all doing well and having a good week - no matter what your weather is like!
Thanks for stopping by, see you soon.
