I had this realization a few weeks back that so much of my cooking is utilitarian. Not joyless necessarily, but more of the "let's get these guys fed" variety. I'm often trying new entrees out for us, and our balance of old favorites vs. new flavors is pretty good, but it's rare that I'm cooking something that's not meant to be put in front of our family in time for a breakfast, lunch or dinner.

My friend Megan, in Nantucket, is an amazing cook, and it seems like every time we chat she's making something that's, wait for it, not dinner. Cinnamon rolls, fancy appetizers, amazing cakes, you name it and she's on it. When we were there at Thanksgiving, a chef friend of theirs brought by some pickled fennel as a holiday gift, and I was all over that mess. Meant to be eaten with shaved parmesan as an appetizer, I really had to work hard not to just stand at the fridge and eat that stuff straight from the jar. I love fennel.

So I had this thought. Okay, why did the fennel have to stay in Nantucket? (Sob.) And even though it's not technically dinner, why can't I make my own? So I did some research, and pickling. Well, ugh. I'm a pretty lazy cook, and all that canning business is so not up my alley. Plus the waiting. Not so good at that either.

And then I ran across a recipe for a quick pickle. With a quick pickle, you skip all that messy processing stuff and you only have to wait an hour to get to nibbling. Victory! I tweaked it to my liking, and that's what I'm going to share with you.

Quick Pickled Blood Orange and Fennel adapted from Serious Eats

2-3 small fennel bulbs
2 Tablespoons Kosher salt
1 Blood Orange, sliced thin
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Approximately 1 Cup Blood Orange Vinegar

Wash fennel bulbs and remove the stems. Cut in half and remove the core. Thinly slice the halves on a mandoline.

In a bowl, toss sliced fennel with the salt and let sit for one hour.

The fennel will produce a lot of water, so remove it from the bowl and rinse off the salt in a colander. After it's rinsed, return the fennel to the bowl and toss with orange slices and black pepper. Pack the mixture into a mason jar, using the narrow end of a chopstick or a skewer to pack it down into the jar.

Pour the vinegar over the fennel and orange mixture until covered. Close the jar and refrigerate. The longer it sits (up to 48 hours) before you break into it, the better. Can be refrigerated up to two weeks.

Serve on salads or with a cheese plate. Especially good with parm, or standing at the fridge, straight out of the jar.

Hey! It snowed! Seriously people, two snows in back-to-back weeks; I've never seen anything like it in the decade we've been here.

I'd suspected we were going to have a hard winter (and I'd been telling anyone who'd listen, really), and if a polar vortex and back to back snows are an indication, than go me. :) This one was fun to anticipate because as it got closer, the snow totals they were predicting for us went higher and higher. We generally get *a* snowfall here each winter (just one last year that melted by the next day, and I was out of town for it!), but rarely do we get significant snows. Too far south, too close to the coast.

But when the storms come at us from the south (be they hurricane or blizzard), we tend to get hammered, and that's what happened this week. Lo and behold, we woke up to 10 inches and our cities are pretty much shut down. It didn't get out of the low 20ºs yesterday, and the low this morning was 7º, our coldest morning in nearly 20 years. Schools were closed yesterday and today, and the streets are still snow and ice covered. It should warm a little today, melting some of the snow, which is good. We have to get Callum tomorrow!

That's my only regret. That he wasn't here to see it. They had snow in Richmond, but not as much. He'll get more. I feel sure.

I took two long walks with my camera; it's so nice to see my familiar spots covered in white. And these are the pictures I thought I'd share. Special and unusual for us. Next week, I'll show you our hounds in the snow because that was pretty funny too.

It's only 11º now, and our family room is F R E E Z I N G. I'm waiting for Neel to wake up (his work is closed too) and make me coffee. Another good day on the docket, I think.

quick pickle {life}

oops, it did it again {life}