Things We Did During the Blizzard of 2016

As you may have heard, it snowed here in New York this weekend. Like, a lot. So starting Friday night, we stayed inside, waiting on the snow and figuring out what to do. Thankfully, it didn’t consist of anything particularly crazy (though that looks pretty awesome, let’s be real), or even, dare I say, particularly noble, unless you count cleaning up the same set of blocks 500 times in a 24-hour period to be particularly noble.

Anyway, here’s how we spent our snow days. Which, all in all, amounted to a pretty great weekend. We:

Made this sweet potato, kale and white bean korma. It was awesome and I cannot recommend it enough. I switched out the vegetable broth for beef cause that’s all we had and lessened the amount of curry, cause I wasn’t sure if Luca would like it. But he did and it was a hit all around. I made some brown rice on the side, too (which Luca really liked, the little carb addict).

 Watched My Italian Secret, a documentary about Italians who helped Jewish people hide or escape from the Nazis during World War II. The stories were so moving—in one, a doctor made up a disease he said was super contagious so he could admit the patients into the hospital and buy them some time to get papers in order so they could escape. We hadn’t heard about it and picked it randomly, and I’m so glad we did.

 Let Luca play, color and put stickers all over a box—while he was sitting inside it. This is the genius idea of my friend and coworker Julia, who did it with her son last winter. This is also what it means when they say that Amazon Prime pays for itself.

Did 800 loads of laundry. Because boring chores don’t stop, no matter how much snow is outside. Same goes for washing all the dishes.

Ate quinoa pancakes for breakfast on Saturday morning and French toast on Sunday morning. Any morning that we can get away with something that’s not yogurt or barely-toasted English muffins is a win in my book.

   

Watched The Martian—and now I can say that I’ve seen one best picture nominee. My brother-in-law really loved the book and the movie and knew that John would be super into it too. Really good.

Tried to make this spinach, feta and broccoli (we didn’t have asparagus) quiche. Can I tell you something? That step where it says you’re supposed to squeeze the water out? Do that step! Because we kind of skimmed it and it was super runny, especially since we used frozen vegetables. We kept putting it back in the oven, to the point where it was basically burning. (i.e. why I didn’t take a picture of it). So while it tasted pretty good, in the end, it wasn’t exactly the most ideal.

Took Luca out in the snow. It was his first time, since he was so little last year and he was decidedly…ambivalent. Maybe leaning more towards dislike? He kind of just stared at it, trying to walk in his snowsuit. Next time?  

 Stopped by my in-laws for lunch and to “help” with some shoveling. (We did no helping.)

Read lots of books with Luca. These days, he’s way into The Little Engine that Could, Where is Baby’s Belly Button? and Pat the Zoo. I actually managed to get in some reading while he was napping on Sunday afternoon too.

Overall, it was just such a nice couple days at home, getting to catch up on some things and not feeling rushed to do a million other things. We’re headed out on vacation in a couple days so, maybe another snowstorm when we get back?