weekend of wet walks

Wherein this outdoorsy blog turns into a food blog because of the "spring" weather.

After a glorious week of sunshine and temperatures above 60 F, winter returned to northern Utah with a vengeance, just in time for the first day of spring.  (Meanwhile, down in Moab, it was 70 and sunny.)  It had been windy all day on Friday as the cold front moved in.  Saturday morning, all the forecasters and Cottonwood Canyons ski areas were warning people: even though the canyon roads were dry in the morning, they were going to be wet (or worse) by afternoon.  A last chair/best chair scenario for those skiing but a nightmare for those trying to drive back down-canyon after a day on the hill.  The mountain cams showed heavy, wet snow coming down and with base temperatures above freezing, it was going to be a wet, wet day.  That, combined with the foreknowledge of a crummy return drive, kept H from skiing.  And as the canyon traffic accident reports started popping up in the afternoon and into the evening, he felt he had made the right choice.

Banana nut muffins

Even down in the valley it was a pretty miserable day.  Milt and I cut our morning walk a little short since even though it wasn't raining when we started out, and the rain wasn't supposed to start for an hour, we got drenched and a little chilled.  He doesn't mind walking in the rain, though (unlike Becky, who very much disliked it), and I think he really likes getting toweled off afterwards.

Like we need to eat more cake

The weather mandated a home-stay day.  While H awesomely swept (garage, mudroom and kitchen) and vacuumed (bedroom, living room, office and guest bedroom), I made banana nut muffins, a chocolate bundt cake with chocolate ganache, put away all the clean laundry that had been sitting in a pile for the week, conditioned the wooden cutting boards with coconut oil (they look like new! almost!) and made soba noodles with broccoli, snow peas, spicy baked tofu and a red curry and peanut sauce. 

I like this hot sauce for my avocado toast

Sunday's weather was positively schizophrenic.  Again, I checked the weather - "flurries" for the next hour - but Milt and I weren't three blocks from home when it started snowing so hard I wished I was wearing ski goggles.  It had reduced to actual flurries about halfway through our walk and by the time we were heading downhill into the home stretch, the sun was breaking through and I took my mittens off - although the damage was done and we were wet and a little chilled.  For the rest of the day, it alternated between snow and patches of sun.  We snuck out of the house for a couple of hours around noon, leaving the dog snoozing on our bed, to go have a beer at the Hog Wallow.  It made us a little twitchy to be out in public but staff and patrons were all conscious about distancing and we left before too many skiers showed up for some apres.