Sorry about your incoming blizzard. Even though I was raised in a place that doesn’t have snow events, we do have extreme weather here in the Gumbo State. Here’s how to handle things like that. You’re welcome.
Advice For Blizzard-Bound Yankees
Posted in A Sense of Place, Food, Little Way Of Ruthie Leming, Louisiana. Tagged blizzard, gumbo, New England, Yankee.
33 Responses to Advice For Blizzard-Bound Yankees
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Ted says:
Not that you’d rub it in. Tonight, poached sole, stringbean salad, arborio rice and a bottle of Prosecco. Tomorrow boeuf bourguignon, accompanied (experto crede) with a bottle of cotes du rhone. Got a problem with that?
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Liam says:
Of the major natural disasters, the ills of a blizzard are mostly due to the loss of modern conveniences.
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Elizabeth Anne says:
There’s a reason we drink a lot up here. A big ol’ batch of beer cheese soup, a loaf of crunchy bread, more beer, and just a wee pint of brandy before tucking in for the night.
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Al-Dhariyat says:
Is it really so hard for y’all to believe that some of us truly like cold weather? I love it! I’d take snow over rain any day. (so would my dog).
We’re going to be spared the blizzard in Pittsburgh but having said that, southern food is fantastic for hunkering down in cold weather. I think I might make some gumbo this weekend.
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Saint Andeol says:
For the love of all that is holy, Rod, please shave your chin so you have the awesome muttonchop/mustache combo. You don’t need to keep it forever, but c’mon, tell me you haven’t thought about it at least once.
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sal magundi says:
“yankees”
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Elijah says:
Thanks!!
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EngineerScotty says:
Lt. Dan, to God: “You call THIS a storm?”
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SDS says:
Aw; light a fire; hang out; play with the dogs in the snow….
It never gets too bad for THAT….. -
Helen says:
Rod, your hair and glasses are truly awesome.
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Fred says:
Paul Sanchez, “Hurricane Party”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V65qP_OlKV0
@Saint Andeol: I second the motion. Rod should sport a “Lemmy”
http://media.classicrockmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/lemmy.jpg
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Charles Cosimano says:
Having been through a few blizzards in my life, the best thing is to relax, watch the chaos and then take your time digging out. But of course as every weather event that hits the northeast is a natural disaster of biblical proportions (they are still harping about that silly rainstorm last fall) it is to be expected that the altars to Baal will be overloaded with sacrifices of snow shovels.
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Lord Karth says:
Once again, the media are hyping this “blizzard” to wretched excess. The main office of the school district I live in auto-called me this morning; they were sending the kids home two hours early.
And this was after the local weather forecaster announced that Central New York was only likely to get 6-12 inches. Good grief and a half; we eat that sort of thing for breakfast around here in the winters.
“Sandy” was nasty. This storm is not so much of a much.
Your servant,
Lord Karth
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W.E.B. Dupree says:
This is off-topic, but I have a question for Southern readers re: the term “yankee”. A dozen years ago, I was working for an L.A.-based company that was filing a TV show in a Southern state, and one of our employees came back from the location and said that the local folks had referred to him as a yankee, which he found confusing, since he was from California. Thus my question: does “yankee” cover all of the USA aside from the South, or only states, say, north of the South and east of the Rockies? For example, is someone from Idaho or Alaska a yankee?
As an aside, when I was a little kid in Texas, a Latino (or “Mexican”, as we always said in those days) kid in my neighborhood referred to me and another friend of ours (a Latino kid from Minnesota) as yankees, but that seemed to fit, as I had been born in New York state, and Texas was (sort of) the South. By contrast, the Latino kid who called us yankees was from Texas and was more of a Southerner than I was ever going to be; his dad even had a gun cabinet full of rifles in the living room, something I never saw in the Midwest or in California.
[Note from Rod: In the South, Americans who are not Southern are, collectively, "Yankees." I meant it in the specifically New England sense, given that the blizzard is hitting New England, and I don't use "Yankee" as an epithet. The most beautiful part of America, at least that I've seen, is Vermont. -- RD]
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Michael Reilly says:
Snow melts. You people are surrounded by alligators. It’s like Jurassic Park down there. No thanks.
[Note from Rod: Alligators I can deal with. It's the mosquitoes that are hard to bear. -- RD]
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A “hurricane” is a fine alcoholic drink. A “blizzard” is a fattening, booze-free ice cream treat from Dairy Queen.
The South wins this round.
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MH - Secular Misanthropist says:
With the background of storm clouds and the items in your hands, you look like the new potions professor at Hogwarts.
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James C. says:
I was throwing a dinner party. Now it’s become a hurricane party. Fortunately most of the guests are within slogging distance! If I don’t lose power, we shall have my grandmother’s famous spaghetti sauce to eat. If I do…well, wine and cheese and crusty bread will have to do.
But still, even if we get 3 feet in Boston, as a native upstate New Yorker—born in the snowiest city of the United States—I’ve seen worse. How about getting out of your house after a storm via the second floor window?
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Mike says:
We lived in upstate NY for a few yrs near the Canadian border; we had well over 7 ft of snow one winter. It started snowing before Halloween & we had big snowfalls through April. We had to dig a tunnel for the home heating guy to deliver our oil and our dairy farmer neighbor helped us to eventually free the garage door and get out our cars. In spite of this it was a beautiful place to live; we could see the Green Mountains of Vermont from our second floor & could partake in the joie de vivre of Montréal in less than an hour.
Now we live in CA & a little rainfall and temps less than 70F are vexing to natives- what a big,diverse world! -
J.J. Gonzalez Gonzalez says:
I think it will be good gumbo weather where I am too — lows in the 50s. Brrr!
“… and a bottle of Prosecco.”
YES! It will be cold/warm enough for that too.
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That’s for the northeast. In the midwest, we got about three inches. I haven’t even bothered to shovel away what the snow plows turned over.
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re: the term “yankee”.
I was once in New England for a visit. To be a Yankee there, you had to be Protestant. Catholics born and raised there didn’t qualify. I suppose it’s because their people arrived after the Civil War, and the Protestants were descended from Mayflower families. My host pointed out to me all the people in the neighborhood as: these people are Yankees, those are Catholics…
In my experience with Southerners, Yankee and Damn Yankee are pretty much synonymous. If you come from a state they don’t like — and they don’t like California — you’re a (damn) Yankee. Technically, California is “Northern” as it was Union territory. So there’s a good case.
Someone I knew from NY called Kansans Southerners. From her perspective it was southern in latitude plus they didn’t have Bronx accents. In her mind, they certainly weren’t Yankees like she was.
Now Cubans will call anyone north of Havana a Yankee. And for them Yankee and (damn) Yankee are synonymous too! Oh, how that rankles a full-blooded Southerner.
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mwing says:
On Yankees, I think it’s sort of like this- from outside the US, Americans are Yankees, from inside, people from the North East quarter, from there, New Englanders, from there, people whose ancestry in NE predates the revolution and who are not Native Americans. Up here, as you might guess, “yankee” is never used disparagingly- it’s not used much at all- and if it were we wouldn’t even even get the intent. No one from New England would call a person from California or Minnesota, or for that matter New Jersey a yankee unless they had moved from here. If Mark Twain had written a book called ” A New Jersey Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” we would be rolling our eyes. Also, it is true that we do not party in response to extreme weather events. I don’t know why, maybe we should. Cheers! This storm has finally gotten going, and there is a really impressive amount of snow in the air.
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JJ Gonzalez Gonzalez ~ you’re right, of course. The word yankee in New England mostly presupposes white and Protestant- and not so much Catholic French Canadians, for example. I don’t like that, but it’s true.
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The Massachusetts governor declared a state of emergency around 4:00 and all everyone had to be off the roads except for emergency and medical reasons. That’s probably for the best because what made the blizzard of 78 so bad was all the cars getting stuck and rendering the roads unplowable.
I went out to shovel at 10:00 pm and about ten inches has fallen so far. The next three hours are supposed to be the worst and then it will slow down. So I figure a total accumulation of 20 inches is likely.
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scotch meg says:
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! And please, tell me what elevator music there is for hurricanes that can compete.
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Sands says:
Well, it must be nice to still have, in your mid-40s, enough hair producing follicles to sport a rock ‘n’ roll haircut.
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JonF says:
Hope everyone farther north is doing OK– you all have power and are cocooned away at home, snug as bugs in a rug, with plenty of beer and comfort food.
I do wish my friends in parts distant would consult a map: Baltimore is not a synonym for Boston, nor are the cities anywhere near each other. My Facebook was brimming over this morning with anxious well-wishers hoping I was not snow-bound. I had to patiently explain that, No, Baltimore got warm(ish) rain and wind, but not a flake of snow.
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Well the storm is almost over and the current depth is about two feet with drifts up to three. My driveway is beyond what I can clear, so I called a plow service and they’ll be here after they’ve finished up with their other duties.
We still have power so this is mostly an inconvenience, but an estimated 650,000 do not which can get pretty grim if your pipes freeze. Mitford Connecticut got 38 inches so Boston and its suburbs got off easy.
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Ivan K says:
Love the picture. The Harry Potter of Hogwarts-on-the-bayou, bread stick wand and gumbo cauldron in hand, ready to cast a spicy spell.
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I bring tidings of hope to the snowbound. Home Depot now has garden seeds, and summer bulbs, out for sale. Big Lots even had root stock roses in.
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BradleyP says:
My word! This photo needs a caption contest.
Except for power outages, roof collapses, traffic accidents, and shoveling induced heart attacks, a blizzard is a fairly benign extreme weather event. I’ve been through a bunch of these (including the blizzard of ’78), so I’m fairly sanguine about life returning to normal in a day or so.