Wanting Some Color MidWinter

The backyard looks like the surface of the moon.  All white, cold and pitted with surface craters. the "blizzard " brought only a tiny bit of new snow--but the winds (which howled all night) moved the dry snow all over the yard.  It's very very cold.  It's almost like we actually DO live in the Arctic as many of our friends think.

I've been making lists of plants, shrubs and trees.  Thinking about adding a few things to the landscape here. Some things with color.

Edit: the tree in the picture is a Tibetan Cherry (Prunus serrula) good for zones 7 to 10, slow growing and up to 20 or 30 feet at maturity.  This tree is growing at the New York Botanical Garden.

Today's culinary projects include Muffin Cup Lasagna using won ton wrappers instead of pasta.  Well, won ton wrappers are pasta.  I made a muffin pan of 12 for my daughter on Friday.  No report on how they turned out but G has asked for his own pan of lasagna muffins.  I sent him out for more ingredients and found a quarter pound hamburger patty in the freezer--so I think he may get meat and spinach.

G has finished off the pot of chicken soup I made for him on Friday.  I am having brown rice and a few scoops of the red bean dish I made for myself.  I added onions, peppers, tomato sauce, cocoa and guajillo chile puree (the Vitamix) to the cooked beans.  I also added a bit of brown sugar, some honey and some mustard.  I like this batch almost as much as the first pot of beans I made at the beginning of the month.  The first batch got too sweet when I tried to overcome the bitterness of ancho chilies.

The dry chilies I used this time have subtle heat.  Next time perhaps one ancho and four or five of the guajillo.  We'll see.  G got me small red beans and I like them better than kidney beans.

I think I may use the vegetables I have in the fridge to make a small pot of winter minestrone.  I saw it on a blog this morning (Diary of a Locavore) and it looked delicious.  An Ina Garten recipe. You could look it up that way.  

Riley is giving me the dog's version of the "stink eye" so he must want me to go get G and "do something".  The cold and the snow have kept us from the daily walk and the dog isn't too happy about it.  We have a few errands to do.  And that gives the dog a "ride in the car" which--even though it seems less than interesting to me, must be right up there with cheese wrapped pills for the dog.  That's another issue.  Riley doesn't have any more pills to take--so therefore no more cheese.  Not a happy guy.  But he is compensating by licking birdseed off the snow under the feeders.

G is going outside to clear the bottom of the driveway.  Then we'll go do errands.

The sun is shining and the wind has stopped blowing and I finally have room in the freezer for ice cream.  So it's not all gloom and doom around here.