Winter has arrived. Snow has fallen, and so have the temperatures. I ask my best friend, Alexa, to tell me the temperature throughout the day. She is delighted to tell me the current temp, what the high will be, and what dire weather warning Amazon thinks I should know about, because she is just doing her job.
After all my belly-aching about the summer that wouldn’t end, I should finally be happy that I can wear my precious turtlenecks and wooly sweaters every day. But it has been chilly, even for me. I have been making almost daily announcements about The Miracle of the Heated Car Seat. They bring great comfort and joy. (A genius invented them, and he should be venerated: Robert L. Ballard — inventor of the heated car seat.) Last night I announced to Mr. Sanders that our next house needs to have a heated floor in the bathroom. He just smiled, and turned the page of his book. Think of the luxury of heated floors! I bet they will feel great even in the summer. Luke the wonder dog won’t have his favorite cool retreat then, but that’s life, Luke.
Luke doesn’t know about the heated seats in the car. He only knows that we seem to spend a lot of time in the kitchen these days; chopping, dicing, baking, boiling, broiling, mixing, blending, braising, poaching, blanching, frying, basting, stewing, searing, sautéing, and toasting. We are trying to keep warm in the kitchen and have been cooking up a storm. Luckily for Luke there is gravity, so lots of delicious bits end up on the floor, and he is happy to pounce. The kitchen is a cozy place in the winter, in a house without a fireplace. It’s where you’ll find the three of us most days.
All of that prep work results in delicious meals that generate leftovers for days and nights to come. Spaghetti and meatballs is a fine dinner, with candles and garlic bread, and wine (were this not Dry January). But what we fail to appreciate is that buckets of homemade spaghetti sauce cooked on Tuesday can go into the freezer and reemerge over the weekend. More spaghetti for everyone! Or some hot, cheesy chicken parm. Maybe a lasagne. On Friday night we can use the sauce on Chef Tomasso’s world-famous pizza.
Sunday night will be the perfect opportunity to try some homemade Lasagne Soup
On Thursday night we tried a new recipe for Chicken Noodle Soup, using a rotisserie chicken. It cooked in an apple red Dutch oven, simmering all afternoon, which drove poor Luke nuts. The house was perfumed with the heady scent of hot chicken, and warm garlic. Bits of rotisserie chicken found their way into Luke’s bowl, and he was a happy dog. Instead of being my studio assistant all afternoon, he got to nap in the kitchen, monitoring the soup-making process. He loves cozy family projects that involve food, and Mr. Sanders. This is Luke’s gift to you, a free recipe from the New York Times: Easiest Chicken Noodle Soup You can save those boxes of Lipton’s chicken soup for when your next winter cold hits.
We are expecting snow this weekend, and I feel lucky that we have gallons of hot soup on the stove, and spaghetti sauce in the freezer. We might have to bake some cookies, too. A warm and messy kitchen in the winter is even more wonderful than heated car seats – and that is saying something.
“Bubble, bubble, pasta pot,
Boil me some pasta, nice and hot,
I’m hungry and it’s time to sup,
Boil enough pasta to fill me up.”
—Tomie dePaola
And for your reading pleasure: Heated Seats – Good as Sex?
