Snowpocalypse Continuing

pack square walker
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

Driven by the desperate need to get Christmas presents - also, the desperate need to get the hell out of my house, ye gods - I shoveled out my car and went shopping yesterday. I also took Audrey up to the Long Shoals Road Waffle House where her car had been languishing since Friday morning. The roads were not wonderful, but they were not terrible either, although there were a ton of assholes in SUVs zipping around being all, Hey, look at me! I have never used this car in 4 wheel drive mode before! Now I can cut you off and lurch unevenly onto the plowed highway without looking just as effectively than I did last summer! Even the strip mall parking lots were pretty clear, which was handy, because it turns out that my nifty short fuzzy suede boots are completely useless in the snow, unless, that is, you enjoy wet feet. In which case, you are a duck and my brother wants to have you for Christmas dinner.

Thus I was surprised when I came to work this morning only to discover that a) I live on the high priority side of Riverview as far as plowing goes and the low priority bit, which is how I get to Clingman and thence to work, is, um, low priority and mostly a skating rink and b) most of downtown is apparently also low priority. It was less plowed than West Asheville, which I found surprising, but there you have it: Asheville isn't really used to big snow and given that it only happens every 16 years or so, that is fairly understandable. Baltimore, on the other hand, where it snows every single year and yet the entire city reacts each time as if it had never seen snow before, used to drive me nuts.

But fuck the snow! Let's return to the Christmas dinner controversy! I offered my entire family a choice of 3 possible entrees: standing rib roast of beef along with Yorkshire pudding, which is what my mother used to make and thus hallowed; crown roast of pork, which I have never made but which I thought my son might like, also, my mother made it occasionally, so, you know, hallowed or lasagne, which is what we used to make every Christmas when we were hippies and is thus not hallowed but, let me tell you, is a shit ton cheaper and easier than the above options.

Nobody wanted roast beef. That's okay; it is sort of, well, beefy. Nobody wanted lasagne, which wasn't surprising: nobody ever wants lasagne. Nobody wanted pork roast, which was surprising: I thought the novelty and the pork-ness of it all would make it the winner. So much for my suggestions: what they do want, it turns out, is duck. Perhaps a l'orange, or Peking, or curried. Annie says she used to make duck all the time in New York when she was young and it was easy and delicious. My brother waxed enthusiastic over Peking duck form Chinatown. My son remarked as how Thai duck curry, which he had for his birthday, was about the best thing ever. This was helpful and it caused me to think to myself, where the hell do I get a duck? Just sneak on over to the park and strangle one? Are they hibernating? Do ducks hibernate? I haven't seen a duck in a couple of years, come to think of it, but there are a lot of geese. Do they taste the same? Can I train the dogs to catch me a goose in four short days? Do I even want a duck or a goose or a platypus for that matter, if we're going semi aquatic? I have never yet tasted duck that I liked - and besides, even if I can get one, duck probably costs something like $24.99 a pound.

That is why, fuck it, I'm making lasagne.