White Christmas in Walla Walla

We drove over to Walla Walla on Tuesday only to find it blanked by almost three feet of snow. While it regularly snows in Eastern Washington in winter, people in Walla Walla have not seen this much snow for at least 40 years.

Here are some photos I took while on a walk on Wednesday morning.

Snowed In In Western Washington

I interrupt my coverage of our Thanksgiving holidays to bring you a glimpse of the beginning of our Christmas holiday in the Pacific Northwest.

Some background first. Woodinville, Washington, is a Seattle suburb, located to the east of Lake Washington and just north of the town of Redmond. The average temperature in Woodinville for December is comfortably above freezing--high of 46F, low of 35F. It hardly ever snows here, and when it does, the snow melts away in a blink of an eye. They sand, but do not salt the roads here on principal. Given how little snow usually falls here, there is little snow removal equipment sitting around.

When we arrived here on Thursday, there was already over a foot of snow on the ground. Since Saturday night, at least another 6 inches fell. The temperature yesterday barely edged above the freezing point and went right back down to the low of 27F. And the roads... Well, no one is clearing the local roads. There is just barely enough equipment to clear the highways, and state routes. The buses are running with chains around their rear tires.

As for us, we ventured out with sleds.

Thanksgiving Recap--The Corn Bake Recipe Evolution

My family first tasted the corn bake dish while celebrating Thanksgiving with our family friends, the Polskys. The dish is simple to make, and the result is similar to super moist corn bread.

The Original Corn Bake Recipe
1 egg
½ cup (1 stick) butter
1 cup of sour cream
1 can of cream style corn
1 can of kernel corn drained
1 package of Jiffy corn muffin mix

Mix all the ingredients together (I find it easier to mix in the cans of corn and the muffin mix last). Pour into a greased 9 x 9 inch square dish, cover with foil, bake for about an hour at 325F. Then remove the foil, and bake for another 15-30 minutes till doneness at 375F.


The corn bake dish has been a part of every Thanksgiving dinner for almost two decades. However, this year I decided that it was time for a change--I no longer wanted to stock up on Jiffy muffin mix, and I was disappointed to learn that the corn is not vegetarian because Jiffy muffin mix contains lard.

I used this corn bread recipe—the quickest fastest simplest recipe ever for a decent corn bread—as a point of reference. I also studied the ingredients of the Jiff corn muffin mix, which essentially boiled down to flour, corn meal, baking soda, salt and sugar.

After the first attempt, I decreased the amount of corn meal, and switched to using maple syrup instead of sugar or honey. The second attempt was a success, and that is exactly what mom baked for our Thanksgiving dinner.

The New Corn Bake Recipe
1 cup wheat flour
¾ cups corn meal
1 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 egg beaten
¼ cup (½ stick) of butter, melted
1 cup plain yogurt (we used low-fat)
3 Tbsp maple syrup (honey can be substituted)
1 can of cream style corn
¼ cup corn (from a can or frozen and thawed; more can be added to taste)

Mix the wet ingredients. Then mix in the dry ingredients. Pour into a greased 9 x 9 inch square dish, cover with foil, bake for about an hour at 325F. Then remove the foil, and bake for another 15-30 minutes till doneness at 375F.

Thanksgiving Recap--The Stuffing Saga

Did you know that most surveys show that stuffing is most people’s favorite Thanksgiving dish. Stuffing, not turkey!

People in my family are not big stuffing eaters, and I knew that Nick and I would be pretty much the only people eating the stuffing. So the goal became to cook the stuffing to please Nick, and the way to please Nick with food is to make it the way Nick’s family made it. A brief conversation with Nick’s mom revealed that she uses a stuffing mix. This was not good enough, because I was determined to cook everything from scratch. The search for the perfect recipe continued.

Nick’s mom makes a relatively simple stuffing—bread cubes, seasoning from the mix (probably poultry seasoning), celery and onion sautéed in butter, lots of sage. So I had to eliminate any recipe that called for nuts, dried fruit, berries, sausage, mushrooms, or other similarly “exotic” ingredients. The remaining choices were slim. After eliminating Martha Stewart’s recipe that mysteriously required eggs, I was left with a New York Times stuffing recipe where the only ingredient not mentioned by Nick’s mom was vinegar.

I ran out of turkey broth and did not feel adventurous enough to add more water, so the result was a bit dry. However, the stuffing tasted quite good in the spots where I managed to pour enough broth, so the next attempt should be a lot more palatable.