It's snowing here in Boulder County right now, but we're only expecting 3" or so, all told. We get snow on a fairly regular basis, so unless I've just been hiking in a snow storm that arrived a few hours early (it happens!), I usually just cook what I normally would on a cold February day - such as Tuscan beef stew with polenta (Cook's Illustrated recipe for the stew, which I've adapted for the Instant Pot, over Instant Pot polenta - thanks, Emma!! https://food52.com/recipes/82529-instant-pot-polenta-recipe); or Archana Mundhe's Butter Chicken https://food52.com/recipes/78019-archana-mundhe-s-instant-pot-butter-chicken (where the butter is actually coconut cream - amazing - with frozen chopped spinach thrown in at the end for a one-pot entree, served over black cardamom rice made in the Instant Pot the day before); beef stew made with leftover chunks of beef from the Tuscan stew served at our dinner party last weekend; or roasted salmon with roasted rosemary potatoes and pan-roasted broccoli - to name some fairly typical storm-worthy meals served here lately.
And for the record, if I'm really cold from a bike ride or hiking when the weather comes through, and dinner's not already prepped in advance (it usually is), I work with what's in my freezer, fridge and pantry to put together a hearty stew-like soup - along the lines of this old favorite, https://food52.com/recipes/9726-french-country-soup - these days featuring local grass-fed pork sausage (Skypilot Farm) and kale I grew last fall, which I blanched and froze for use through the winter and early spring. ;o)
Mine grows in a garden, not a pot, and it is amazingly easy to grow! You could, however, grow it in a large pot, though you'd end up with large plants that wouldn't produce as profusely as the rows of smaller plants I grow in my beds.
I don't thin the plants much, so my rows of kale look like a jungle. I pick kale (red Russian and lacinato) all summer and into the fall, blanching it, then squeezing out the water to compress it into small blocks, which i freeze immediately. I must have frozen 70 or 80 blocks in 2021.
We use it on pizza and in all kinds of soups and stews. Kale tolerates cold well, so I am able to pick through early November. (We didn't have any snow last fall, so I'm not entirely sure whether a good snowfall would end the growing season - but I'm guessing it would not!) ;o)
When? Depends on where you are. What? Just have enough food, including shelf stable supplies, to tide you over any power outage. Other? Candles and flashlights.
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And for the record, if I'm really cold from a bike ride or hiking when the weather comes through, and dinner's not already prepped in advance (it usually is), I work with what's in my freezer, fridge and pantry to put together a hearty stew-like soup - along the lines of this old favorite, https://food52.com/recipes/9726-french-country-soup - these days featuring local grass-fed pork sausage (Skypilot Farm) and kale I grew last fall, which I blanched and froze for use through the winter and early spring. ;o)
I don't thin the plants much, so my rows of kale look like a jungle. I pick kale (red Russian and lacinato) all summer and into the fall, blanching it, then squeezing out the water to compress it into small blocks, which i freeze immediately. I must have frozen 70 or 80 blocks in 2021.
We use it on pizza and in all kinds of soups and stews. Kale tolerates cold well, so I am able to pick through early November. (We didn't have any snow last fall, so I'm not entirely sure whether a good snowfall would end the growing season - but I'm guessing it would not!) ;o)
What? Just have enough food, including shelf stable supplies, to tide you over any power outage.
Other? Candles and flashlights.