Snow falls heavily, wind pushing it down at a 45 degree angle. Windshield wipers wipe vigorously. Yellowish headlights and ruddy tail lights cut through the increasing blur. Tires begin to spin, kicking up snow in all directions.
I'm sitting in a cafe in Swampscott, Massachusetts, looking out onto a decreasingly busy parking lot. The lunch rush has come and gone. It's considerably quieter. The sea of peppy pink santa hats, adorning the heads of some high school girl's sports team or something or another, bouncing around the room an hour ago, are nowhere to be seen. I'm on my second cup of coffee and what remain are the last few cold sips, neglected and left untouched.
Water. Necessity for life. A topic that began this blog back in
February 2006. A topic for today, considering the vast quantity of it - in crystalline form - falling from the sky. (As I write, the
Boston Globe website predicts that 10.6 inches will fall in Boston by the time this current storm wraps itself up.)
Snow. Can you eat it?
While Frank Zappa - or, at least, the narrator's mother from the humorous song, "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" - once warned us against eating the yellow snow, the yellow snow where the huskies go, that can't be the entire story.
A quick internet search revealed the following.
1. Back in January 2008, a Japanese climber, lost in the Azuma Mountains, survived on snow for a week after getting lost and running out of supplies. He, obviously cold, hungry and thirsty, was eventually found by an employee of a ski resort and taken to an area hospital to recover.*
2. Back in 1999, a man lost in the Cascades backcountry during a snowstorm survived for 11 days, consuming snow and ice to stay alive.**
3. High altitude climbers rely on snow as a source for water, but they frequently melt the snow into water before taking it in, and the
National Snow and Ice Data Center - part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences unsurprisingly at the University of Colorado at Boulder - reports, on its website: "Clean snow is certainly edible. Snow in urban areas may contain pollutants that one should not eat but they would probably be in such low concentrations that it might not matter. Still, eating snow should be restricted to 'wilderness' areas. Sometimes snow contains algae which gives it a red color. This snow can be eaten and some say it actually tastes 'good' but we have never tried it."
4. Here's a 6 second
video of a bighorn sheep eating snow.
5. Last but not least, hot maple syrup on fresh, clean snow. Enough said.
Well, ok, that's not last.
6. During my search, I was reminded of snow peas. Which I don't, however, associate with snow. I associate them with color, brightness, freshness, stir fry. Why the name
snow then? It seems that various speculations abound, from its late fall/winter hardiness to just plain mystery. But snow peas then conjure the smell, taste and texture of beautifully pan fried snow pea greens, a favorite dim sum accompaniment of mine. A touch of garlic, some dashes of soy sauce, some hot peanut oil and a few tosses in a hot pan. The color is fixed a vivid, fresh green. Done well, the texture is a tenderness rarely possible from cooked greens: melting but not mushy; fully cooked but bursting with flavor, lightly sweet yet rich.
*
source**
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