Suburban Valkyrie

If you live in the Northeast or Mid-Atlantic states, it is likely snowing right now. Or maybe not.

Depending to which weather forecaster you listen, eastern Pennsylvania, where I live in the Philadelphia suburbs, is in line for anything from a little to a lot of snow.

Forecasts vary from outlet to outlet, and the storm in its intensity had not arrived north of Philadelphia, as of 9:30 p.m.

This has prompted an interesting social phenomenon; legions of people, posting on the Facebook and Twitter feeds of local weather forecasters, bemoaning the fact that this monster winter storm, #Blizzardof2015, has not materialized.

Bemoaning.

"I would like another 2 to 4 inches."

"When is this thing going to start?"

"I hope your forecast (predicting 9 - 22 inches of snow across southeast Pennsylvania) is accurate. I need a snow day."

I need a snow day. Said no poor person ever.

The only people who get snow days are the well-off. (I don't say rich, because I am not rich, yet I am included in this group.) The ones for whom this month's rent does not depend on whether their car starts or not.

For those of us who are part of the knowledge economy, location and time are mostly meaningless to the performance of our jobs. Whether we work from a work-share space in Philadelphia, an "executive" park in the suburbs or a home office makes no difference in the type of work we do. Different work locations may bring with them different conveniences or inconveniences, but the work itself goes on unaffected.

Not so the working poor.

While one woman is crossing her fingers and hoping for a snow day, a single mother a few miles away is watching the forecast with dread, hoping that #Snowmageddon2015 veers out over the Atlantic.

When you work in grocery stores, restaurants, retail shops, coffee joints and other typically low-paying service jobs, not being able to get into work at all isn't a fun day off. It's a day with no money coming in. It can mean the difference between your kids eating cereal for dinner at the end of the month or not eating at all.

Many people work for businesses upon which society depends. Hospitals don't close during a blizzard. Nursing homes don't tell employees to take the day off. As one acquaintance who was trying to arrange transportation to work for tomorrow said, "You can't just call out when you take care of dementia clients. They will continue to need 24/7 help, no matter what the weather is doing."

Extreme weather can be exciting - when you don't have to go out into it. Or when "going out" in it constitutes an hour or so with the kids on the nearest sledding hill.

But every time a storm like this comes our way, I'll be sparing a thought for those people who do have to be out in it - not because they're emergency responders or firefighters or emergency room doctors, all working to keep us safe - but because they can't afford to stay home.

Oh, Mayfair. We may have a problem.

I know, I know. We've been BFFs since Instagram introduced you in December 2012. Sure, Amaro and X-Pro II can hang, too, and Willow and Earlybird are reliable companions, but you're the one I could always count on to perk things up. However, there's a new girl in town, now, and her name is Crema.

She's creamy and dreamy and ethereal and serene and I am smitten.

In December 2014, Instagram introduced five new filters: Slumber, Crema, Ludwig, Aden and Perpetua. They were the first new filters introduced for the platform since Willow and Mayfair debuted two years earlier.

After a couple weeks of playing around with them, I have fully embraced a couple for regular use but have yet to find the perfect photo to use with others.

Here is what each of the five new filters look like on the same photo.

Original photo, no filter:



1. Slumber

From Instagram: "Achieves a retro look of subtle desaturation and hazing. It does something especially retro to blacks and blues."

My take: Nice for architecture and landscape shots. I felt it gave unattractive shadows to most of the portraits I tried it on, especially around the eyes.





2. Crema

From Instagram: "Achieves a creamy, smooth look. We named it Crema because it achieves exactly that - both a warming and a cooling effect."

My take: Both a warming and a cooling? Huh? Confusing word choices aside, this is my favorite of the new filters. It smooths out textures, adds a creamy highlight and is especially flattering to skin tone.




3. Ludwig

From Instagram: "Achieves a minimalist look of taking away most of the colors and then enhancing light. We named it Ludwig after architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe who coined the famous minimalist mantra 'less is more.' It works especially nicely with portraits, architecture, and geometric shapes."

My take: Versatile and useful, it offers the color punch of X-Pro II without the darkened vignette edges.




4. Aden

From Instagram: "Achieves a unique pastel-y look. It works great with portraits, even when there is harsh light."

My take: Meh. I have yet to find a photo that looks better with Aden than with, say, Crema. They may exist - I just haven't found one yet.





5. Perpetua

From Instagram: "Achieves an earthy look with lots of greens and blues. We named it Perpetua because we took inspiration from the Cape Perpetua national forest in Oregon."

My take: Looks great on nature shots.




For this particular photo, I liked the look of both Crema and Ludwig, for opposite reasons. Crema toned down the color and smoothed out the skin tones. Ludwig boosted the color, but the bright red almost hurt to look at.

So let's say I wanted a bit more color in Crema, or a bit less color in Ludwig. No problem. Instagram enables users to adjust the intensity of each filter. Simply tap the filter you want to apply to your photo, then tap the filter again and a slider screen will appear. Adjust the degree of intensity to your liking.

More than just filters

Instagram's update also gave users additional tools to personalize the app. To help users keep their favorite filters at their fingertips, Instagram added a "manage" button that will allow you to hide the filters you don't use. The manage button can be found in the filter tray at the end of the list.

New pursuits fall into my life and consume all of my attention. And so it was that I fell into canning.

My mother had always canned. Each summer would yield dozens of pints of tomatoes and beans and cut crystal jars of ruby red strawberry jam.

I had never expressed an interest in canning - probably not least of which is because I envisioned hours bending over steaming pots in my tiny kitchen, and trying to find different things to do with the dozens of jars of finished products.

Last summer, my colleague Rose introduced me to Food in Jars, the book penned by food blogger Marisa McClellan - who also happens to live in the Philadelphia area. I was immediately smitten.

McClellan, who lives in an apartment in the city, focuses on canning in small batches. Many of her recipes yield only a couple pints of this or four half-pints of that. The smaller amounts somehow made the whole idea seem less intimidating.

She demystified the whole process of canning, especially the equipment needed. In the end, it turned out that I had much of what I needed already on hand and I only needed to buy a couple items to launch the Great Canning Experiment of 2014 in my own kitchen.

Into my Amazon cart went a granitewear canning pot. A trip to Target yielded small, 4 oz canning jars (OH SO CUTE) and various implements. The utensil set - a jar lifter, lid lifter, headspace tool and wide-mouth funnel - was a particularly good buy at something like $6. I also picked up a copy of the tried and true Ball Blue Book guide to preserving.

For my first attempt, I chose one of McClellan's recipes that looked simple enough but offered the promise of tantalizing flavors - Blueberry Ginger Jam.

Ingredients include blueberries, sugar, fresh ginger and crystallized ginger. My mouth watered just reading the ingredients list. I could just taste that flavor explosion.

Key to the success of this project was going to be the freshness of the blueberries. As with most dishes, the simpler the recipe, the more important it is to use the best, freshest, most flavorful ingredients. Since I don't grow blueberries, I had to find an alternate source.

Living in Bucks County, Pa., offers no end to the options for fresh, local food. We buy our milk in glass bottles produced at the dairy (Penn View Farm) in the same township where we live. Within a 7-minute drive from my front door, we can get pulled pork and maple-glazed, spiral-sliced ham from Blooming Glen Pork, grass-fed Angus beef from Tussock Sedge Farm. And whenever I want fresh, in-season, local produce, I stop by Bolton's Farm Market, literally 4 minutes from my house. A quick trip to Bolton's on this particular day yielded two dry pints of fresh-picked blueberries.


McClellan's recipe - Blueberry Jam with Crystallized Ginger - was simple. If you're interested in checking it out, it's in her Preserving by the Pint book. You may be able to find it in a local bookstore. There's a link on McClellan's blog.

As for my experiment with it, everything went as planned. I was pretty focused on the process and didn't stop to take enough photos. But you get the idea.



The result: 4 tiny jars of amazing flavor.

Do you want to save money and eat better?

Organization efforts in my house are far more likely to "stick" if the newly imposed order is enforced through the use of labels. Our recent freezer reorganization was no different.

Having access to a freezer is a glorious thing. It's a First World, somewhat middle-class luxury that so many of us take for granted.

A freezer can save a family a ton of money; buying large amounts of food when it's on sale makes great sense, if you are able to freeze the excess. Why pay $4.99 for chicken breasts, ever? Buy 10 pounds when they're on sale for $1.99 a pound and freeze them.

A freezer also allows even those of us who face harsh northeastern winters to eat amazing, fresh-from-the garden produce all year-round. Homemade zucchini bread in January? Absolutely. Sweet corn chowder in February? Yes, ma'am.

Unless, of course, you treat your freezer the way I have in past years.

You buy extra food, put it in unmarked plastic bags, and shove it in the freezer where it sits for months or years, slowly accumulating layers of ice crystals, until it becomes completely unrecognizable, not mention inedible.

Our freezer has needed to be defrosted for a couple years, but finding the time, the will and, frankly, the cooler space to protect the food that already was in there, was a challenge. A visit from my mom changed that, though.

She came bearing good humor, a will to work - and three full-sized coolers.

The defrosting process was a pain. It took hours, and involved chipping, scraping, and eventually whacking at the slowly melting ice mounds with a rubber mallet.

When it was finally done, though, I had a beautiful, clean, empty freezer. And before I loaded it back up again, I put some thought into how I wanted to organize it so it would best serve our family.

A quick trip to the nearest dollar store yielded colorful bins of various sizes.

I knew I would need some open bins that I could fill to overflowing with staples that we always tend to have on hand.

I also knew I wanted some smaller bins for random items of varying types - mozzarella cheese, guacamole, whatever.

Below is a shelf-by-shelf explanation of what I put where, and why.

• Top shelf: two open bins, one for chicken breast, one for ground beef. We buy these staples when they are on sale and package them up in quantities that make sense for our family of four (two chicken breasts, one pound of ground beef, etc.). The bins are open on top so we can fill to overflowing if needed. The space in between the two bins, I left open. That's where I lay bags of summer veggies and fruits flat to freeze solid before storing them upright in the bins below.

• Second shelf: four smaller stacking bins. They are currently filled with beef (a roast, some cubes for stew), seafood (shrimp, fish fillets, a random lobster tail - yeah, I have no idea where that came from or how long it's been there), and meatballs. Again, space in between the bins is used as a temporary freezing spot before items are packaged for storage.

• Third shelf: six stacking bins of two sizes. The larger ones are currently filled with chicken strips. The smaller ones are for vegetables and fruit.

• Bottom shelf: two large open bins. One for popsicles and ice cream bars and other treats, one for potatoes (hash browns, steak fries, etc.)

Once I decided where I wanted everything to go, I needed one crucial element to make sure the order stayed orderly - labels. People in my household whom I will not name but to whom I am either married or have birthed have a tendency to, well, not put things back where they go. If most things are labeled, it will be awfully hard for them to argue that they didn't know where to put something.

I could have just grabbed a Sharpie and a paper label and slapped it on the bin, but when you have tens of thousands of dollars worth of craft supplies - and a serious obsession with pretty paper - that is just out of the question. Hence, the cute freezer tags.