Just look at winter (and shoveling) as a freebie

Shoveling is a brutal workout. Pretty much everyone understands that old men and heart patients should not even be allowed to own a shovel. It is too much work for them and can be deadly. The rest of us, if we are so inclined, get out backsides handed to us...on the end of a shovel.

We have had PLENTY of shoveling to do this winter. I, for one, have shoveled the driveway three (count 'em) THREE times today. I can't really complain, though. I like to think of shoveling as a gift that allows me to "earn" things.

I shoveled twice in the morning. This "earned" me lunch. I met a friend at the C.Hts. Stone Oven (http://stone-oven.com/) Well-made bread, tasty sandwiches, and always really nice people behind the counter. Yep... shoveling was worth lunch.

I had planned on having cauliflower au gratin as a side dish with tonight's dinner, but was thinking about how nice a hearty curry would be. So, I made a sauce Mornay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mornay_sauce) and added two heaping tablespoons of Patak's curry paste (http://www.pataks.com/), and some fresh chopped mint. Delicious as it was, that sauce is not going to make the cover of "Cooking Light" magazine anytime soon...we're talking rich, especially since my base white sauce had a goodly amount of half and half in it.

I have to admit that the fat content of my curried sauce Mornay had me fretting a little bit. As I recently mentioned, I'd like to lose that office fanny I developed. So I talked myself into a third round of evening shoveling. It was the perfect antidote. I huffed and I puffed and got little beads of perspiration around my stocking cap. So, I have now "earned" the right to release any lingering guilt I felt by so enriching my cauliflower side dish. Every bit of that round of shoveling was certainly worth that sauce.

So, I might be the only person in Cleveland NOT complaining about the snow.

Well...there's one more person not complaining:
http://twuntymcslore.blogspot.com
(Check out the impromptu Cleveland Hts. dog sledding adventure!)