Cafe 40: Snow Day!

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Snow Day!

I've learned an interesting process here in the south. I always had heard that whenever there was a forecast for snow, all good Southerners hit the grocery stores (FACT!); however, I was unprepared for the school situation. There are two kinds of counties: those who seem to close school at the mention of snow. . .and others who actually wait for the first flakes to appear. Mine is the later . . .thankfully. But they all seemed to jump the gun. I had no idea why until I started working in the schools.

There are actually two factors to a snow day. There is the actual snow/ice factor, but there is also a phone call factor. In fact, the longer the school board waits to close school, the more phone calls they get. For example, on Wednesday, the snow was supposed to get here about 3:00 PM. I started getting a few "is there going to be school tomorrow" phone calls on Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday, we probably had 20 extra phone calls per hour from 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM. And yes, we did close early. . .although the snow didn't get there until 3:00 PM. :)

Anyway. There was no school today; and the roads looked pretty yucky, so I didn't chance driving the 30 miles one way. . . so I had a beautiful lazy, hobby day.

We woke up late, had coffee, and I cleaned the kitchen. While I cleaned, I reminded myself that I hadn't made bread or bagels in a long. . .make that really long . . .time. I decided to mix some doughs, put the heater on in my room (we have our thermostat set on 62! AHHH) so the dough can rise, then watch Price is Right. I mixed the bagel dough and machine-kneaded for 3/4 of the time, then hand kneaded the rest of the time to incorporate the ingredients. I must admit that I would have enjoyed taking pictures during the process, but kept forgetting until I was done. . .oops.

Today, I made Oat Whole Wheat Bread (that didn't last as long as I had hoped), Asiago Bagels, and Chocolate Chip Bagels (for my husband who cleaned the inner workings of my dishwasher so that I could clean my kitchen. :) ).

Oat Whole Wheat Bread