One of the nice things about February being such a short month is, pay comes in a bit early. Which meant we got to do our monthly shop before we started running out of too many things!

The trip to the city wasn’t quite uneventful. Not far from our driveway, there are open fields on both sides of the road. We’ve had some very high winds for the past couple of days, but not a lot of snow, so I wasn’t expecting to hit several small drifts across the road in a row.

Then we reached the big drifts.

At least one vehicle had already driven through, but our van is not a particularly jacked up vehicle. There was definitely going to be some scraping of the undercarriage happening.

On my first attempt, I thought I might be able to break up the higher snow in between the tire tracks.

We got stuck.

The girls were able to push me out, in reverse, then they broke up the drift between the tire tracks for a bit, to make it lower so we wouldn’t be scraping out the bottom of the van quite so badly. Once they got it down a bit, I drove through – and kept driving through the next big drift before stopping in a clear spot, to wait for them to catch up to me.

We had considered turning around to take a different route, but there was nowhere I could back into to turn. I’m pretty good at driving in reverse, but not through snow drifts and on such a narrow gravel road! The ditches on both sides are steep, deep and hidden under snow. I wasn’t taking chances!

So we continued onward. The rest of the drifts where not as bad. Then we got between trees again, and suddenly the road was clear until we had to turn. I was cringing every time we went through a drift, though, and I could hear it scraping the undercarriage. 😦

When we got to the next town and stopped for gas, I made a point of walking around the van and trying to see if there were any issues underneath. I couldn’t see any, thankfully.

My nerves were still a bit frayed for much of the drive in. We’ve had so many things go wrong with vehicles over the past few years, I’m more paranoid than I used to be! 😀

This Costco trip was a flat cart trip! We stocked up on things like dry cat food (3 big bags), butter (10 pounds), meats (a variety of fresh, frozen and cured), more dairy (cheddar for cooking, a nice wheel of brie, cream cheese, sour cream, whipping cream… no milk, though; we still had enough at home), eggs (2 trays of 30), and so on. What we didn’t get there were the fresh fruits and vegetables, though we did get some frozen. For the fresh stuff, we prefer a particular grocery store that has more variety. I’d rather have smaller amounts of lots of different things than bulk amounts of 2 or 3 things.

This is also where I finally got something we’ve been looking to pick up for a while, now, and finally had room in the budget for. This particular grocery store has aisle after aisle of international foods (as well as a more varied selection of cheese! 😀 ), and in some, related cooking utensils.

We got bamboo steamers.

I wanted to get a larger sized steamer, but there were only lids. We ended up getting 3 smaller sizes steamers, each one of which would comfortably hold 4 dumplings or a couple of bao, and a lid.

Which meant we had to get something to steam!

We got a variety tray of dumplings, made in house, plus some frozen pork bao. I can hardly wait to have some!

This time we even remembered that none of us would have the energy to cook supper. For the girls and I, we got sushi trays, and a giant lumberjack sandwich for my husband. Yes, we can get both locally, but they are no where near as fresh and well made as what we can get in this place. Especially the sushi.

When coming home, we also remembered to take the other road around. It’s a good thing we did, because no snow plows had gone by! There was drifting on the final stretch of gravel road we took instead, but it’s a much wider road, and there was plenty of room to drive around.

With a fully loaded van, I drove into the yard, to back up to the door.

Did I mention drifting?

Yes, most of the area we cleared with the snow blower was still clear, but to back up to the house means going slightly uphill. There was just enough snow blown in that I was starting to get stuck. I was able to back into position without needing to be pushed, but I look forward to when it warms up again in the next couple of days, and I get break out the snow blower again. My paths around the house are partially drifted over, too.

The mentioned to the girls, as we were driving out, that I hope we’ll have the budget for new tires before next winter. It would be good to have actual winter tires, instead of all-season. What we could really use, however, is a jacked up pick up truck! One we can attach a plow to the front of (we saw a few of those along the way, today!). With a cab, of course. Living out here, vehicles like that are no luxury!

Something to add to the list for when we win the lottery. 😀

It feels so good to have the fridge, freezer and cupboards all stocked up again. Of course, there are always things that get forgotten, even though we had a list. We remembered to get hot dog wieners and hoagies for a cookout, but forgot the buns. There are also some non-grocery stuff we need to pick up, but after several hours shopping in two different grocery stores, we didn’t have the energy to go to yet another store. So we will head into the city again, in a couple of days.

As for tonight, we get to try something new.

Those bamboo steamers!

I found some instructions online for first use of this type of steamer. They need to be washed in hot soapy water, first. After thoroughly rinsing them, they need to be soaked in hot water for half an hour.

My time went off while I was writing this post, and the girls are already in the kitchen, taking care of things.

I’m going to go join them now.

Dreaming of freshly steamed dumplings! MMMmmmm!!

The Re-Farmer