A Snowed-In Friday Five

As we enter the waning weeks of autumn, with the first "sticking snow" just over the horizon (and perhaps some readers are already experiencing a white landscape),the  RevGalBlogPals Friday Five asks us to imagine our ideal snow day.

It feels odd responding to these questions during one of those misty Indian-summer November days when the temperature is expected to push 60 degrees -- I'm overlooking a lawn of green grass and an open pond -- but I know that in only a few weeks everything is going to change...

1. What is your favorite movie for watching when curled up under a wooly blanket?
Hard to say. I like classic movies; I like quirky movies. Probably, though, in the dead of winter, some northern European exploration of postmodern existential angst would not be my first choice of film. Or anything that an 18-year-old boy would watch. Or anything that a 5-year-old would watch. No; no movies that leave me wondering, "What in the hell was that?", or with the impulse to step in front of a train. No glorified video games/soft porn. No movies heavy on fart-and-belch humor, with protagonists who sound like the sort of smartass 10-year-old kids who need to be sent to military school in North Korea for a few years. Nah...how about some screwball Thirties romantic comedy, or Hitchcock thriller, or interesting indie film with a real plot and characters I wouldn't mind knowing in real life.


2. Likewise, what book?
I'd love to say I can happily curl up with a volume of Tillich or Luther's Works or the writings of the early Church...but actually on a snowy day what I really like to read are cookbooks -- big cookbooks with big, colorful pictures -- or gardening books with big, colorful pictures. It's true; deep, deep down I'm shallow.

3. What foods do you tend to cook/eat when it gets cold?
At our house we enjoy soup on cold days. I usually also get a jones for childhood comfort food -- pork roasts and mashed potatoes and fricaseed chicken. (Don't tell my doctor.) I like baking bread on frosty days. And toasted cheese sandwiches -- another excellent snowy-day choice, especially with the soup.

4. What do you like to do if you get a "snow day" (or if you don't get snow days, what if you did)?
At our house it's much like the answers to 1, 2 and 3...although Fellow Traveler will usually suggest venturing out sometime post-blizzard to survey the landscape: "Why have a Jeep if you don't use it?" (I've not yet driven the Prius in a blizzard, but suspect that it really isn't a vehicle of choice for this sort of adventure.)
5. Do you like winter sports or outdoor activities, or are you more likely to be inside playing a board game? Do you have a favorite (indoors or out)?
If it's sunny and pleasant post-snowstorm, we sometimes like to snowshoe. We now have a dog who, so far, as demonstrated that we can't trust her for even a second outside without a leash, so the snowshoeing might be a challenge this winter. Board-game-wise, we enjoy dominoes and Scrabble.