Journal Entry: Rain and Roux, Winter is coming

It's been pouring all afternoon, rain so heavy it drops vertical lines from heaven to earth.  Ground level is saturated and steamy, and the roads hiss and plash from cars rolling home from the grocery stores.  A surprising number of bicyclists, tented in rain ponchos, patiently hug the curbside rivers of rain and wait for the light to turn.  If this were just two months later, we'd be having a blizzard, and those same people would be out in sorrels and ski sweaters, offering a hand to motorists needing a push from where the snowplows had buried them.

But it‘s still green outside my window, and the low bushes and meandering vines that began to turn last week are few and far between. My Dahlias open their mouths from the thirsty summer we've had here in Minnesota, and the grass is shaggy like a preteen who doesn't want to cut his hair and lose the summer.   

Like the other drivers rolling home from the grocery store, I'm going to cook tonight, if only for myself. My craving for something to prepare me for the long winter will be satisfied by beef stew, studded with carrots and celery, maybe a few peas. I'll make a roux from melted butter and a tablespoon of flour, and whisk it, dreaming, until it turns a medium brown.  There's a bottle of Malbec airing on the kitchen counter to flavor the gravy, and a cup set by in a hand-thrown wine goblet.  Still too warm for a fire in the stove, but I am reminded that I have to replenish my supply of oak very soon.

But not today.

© Liz Husebye Hartmann