We have been hearing a lot about a winter storm fast approaching our area. It’s nothing we haven’t heard before and maybe it’s the lack of excitement here at the dining room table but I decided to panic, maybe just to remind myself I have a pulse, not unlike a murder mystery dinner for stay-at-home-moms and really embrace this beefed up blizzard alert.

I do wonder though if the grocery stores during a post-Christmas, January lull have opted to perpetuate the storm to move some merchandise and boost sales. They seem to be among one of the biggest industries to benefit from the pre-plopping of snow. They must also consider lost revenue on those days no one can leave their homes to shop so by using coercion, trickery and a few loss leaders to draw people in, tossing fake snow at you from the roof of the entrance, instilling a little extra fear, they can make up for a few, shrivelled sushi platters expiring while the snow piles up.

Batten down the hatches you say?

I’m in.

I opted to go with a conservative nine bags of 1% and two, 2L jugs of homogenized milk crammed into the fridge.  While we’re cooking our way through the milk calendar, naysayers will be frantically searching their junk drawers under fifteen gently used chopsticks, ketchup samples, one of those smeared with its own contents and too many elastics to ever make sense, for non-dairy, non-refrigerated creamer. With more than enough fixings for milkshakes and a make-your-own-yogurt station, what will the rest of you be doing?

Canned black beans. I look forward to the day I am out of fresh food and need to rely on my creative juices to make a meal out of one of the many cans of black beans I have stacked in our pantry cupboard. I buy them, I stack them, I close the cupboard. I think this may be the week of the can opener. Maybe this storm is being sponsored by the canners of black beans and this is just what they have been waiting for. They’ve calculated a disproportionate number of recycled chick pea and corn nibblets cans and if they don’t start seeing some empty black beans soon, people will lose their jobs—supply and demand.  I’m going to rediscover the black bean and all the textural wonders I’ve been missing.

It interests me to see how others have mapped out their food strategies for the next few (potentially) stormy days. A number of people are planning to indulge in things like Kool-aid, pretzels and chocolate icing in place of a proper meal. I get the black bean thing but I can’t understand when snow became synonymous with children’s birthday party food or a University dorm room on a Saturday night.

Greg will be growing his beard until the snow lets up. Any excuse (including snow days, civic holidays, Groundhog Day…obviously) to take a day off from shaving.

Snuggie. What better time to celebrate “Family Snuggie Day?”

A time to allow and embrace the use of the word staycation.

I have my family, I have a snow-blower (and he knows how to use one), I’m up to five push-ups (two sets—one of three, one of two) I have Netflix, storm shutters and sand bags in place, black beans and milk.

Winter, bring your worst.