A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water. ~ Carl Reiner

It's March 4th in Arkansas. The weather is supposed to be weird in March. One day will be warm, like last weekend when the temperatures climbed to 72 degrees. The next day it will only be in the mid-50's.

This morning we awoke to this vision:



Yes, it's snow. It was snowing when we woke up and continued to snow all morning. All of the local schools are closed. All of the bread and milk is gone from the shelves of every grocery store in town.

That's what they do here to prepare for a storm. It doesn't matter what kind of storm it is ~ rain storm, ice storm, snow storm, thunder storm ~ people here do the same thing. Everyone flocks to the grocery store to buy bread and milk. Why only bread and milk? The simple answer is: I don't know. That's just what they do here.

Tom and I have often speculated why Arkansans, when faced with a storm, rush to the store and buy nothing more than bread and milk. Maybe to make bread pudding. Or maybe milk toast. With an egg or two you could make French toast. That's really all we've ever come up with, but we've never been able to reach a reasonable conclusion since all of those dishes would be rather tiresome after a mere few hours. As a matter of fact, I don't think I could even swallow milk toast, but then I'm a gastronomically snooty native Californian so that pretty much explains why.

So, I didn't plan very well. I'm out of milk. But my freezer is full of several kinds of bread: whole grain, focaccia, biscuits, French bread, sandwich rolls and cheese/garlic muffins. I might even have a bagel or two in there somewhere. But, without the milk, there will be no bread pudding. However, I have a pot of split pea soup cooking on the stove. I have taken some beerocks (pockets of yeast dough stuffed with hamburger, cabbage and onion seasoned with pepper) out of the freezer.

I think we will be fine until the snow melts by late this afternoon.