Winter - In Which The Waters Freeze and We Make Marshmallows

When we said, "We're looking forward to experiencing an East Coast winter!" Marylanders responded, "Oh, we don't get much snow here.  We tend to have mild winters."

Well, it's been mighty cold and mighty snowy here for several weeks.

First, the temperatures dropped a little below freezing and our front yard wetland became a frozen marsh.



The cold weather stuck around, and the ice started spreading across the big river.  Aidan moved out of his slightly-insulated bedroom in the porch at the side of the house, and set up camp on an upstairs bedroom floor.






Soon the whole river was ice!





And then came the snow!  And the wind!  And a deeper cold!  The landlords asked us to keep the taps dripping so that the pipes wouldn't freeze.  Our furnace burned through gallons of oil, the poor old thing.  It runs constantly.  ('Poor old thing' is soon going to be a description of us.  That's quite a heating bill.)

The first snowfall swirled with the sand of our beach in such interesting patterns, thanks to quite a blowing wind!

A snowman blew in....

And one day, when we couldn't see much past our mailbox, we declared it a snow day.

We had been wanting to make homemade marshmallows for a while, and this seemed a perfect day...

We followed this recipe: Alton Brown's Marshmallows


We got some gelatin soaking in cold water (aren't you just aching for a photo of that?) and we heated up a sweet concoction of corn syrup and sugar.  (Ah!  That should be accompanied by three photos!  Then you could see exactly how the thermometer in the pan eventually moved up to 240 degrees!)  After combining those two, our dear Kitchen Aid mixer whipped a whole lot of air into the mix (on high for fifteen minutes!).

What emerged was a sticky white liquid pile of goop that we quickly poured into a prepared 9X13 pan.  (It had to be quickly poured!  Who has time to take pictures?)  It sat overnight (we sampled a little bit here and there to make sure all was well).  The next day, we could lift out the marshmallow sheet and use scissors to cut strips.  (I will give you a picture of that, because Jon was home and his hands weren't sticky.)

The strips were cut into pieces....

Each marshmallow needed to be dusted and sifted with a little icing sugar/cornstarch so it wouldn't be too sticky.

It's sticky work!






The marshmallows are so very good!  More substantial, and yet more airy and light than store bought ones. 

You should try it!

Happy Winter, Everyone.