Diary of My Country Life-January 24th, 2026

The original source of this blog: https://www.lotusandmichael.com/blogs/diary-of-my-country-life

01/24/2026 Saturday 9-19F Cloudy

To prepare for the coming snowstorm, yesterday we went shopping. The specialty of the market where we used to go was seafood: Shrimps, bass, salmon etc,. Usually I love white meat fish like perch and bass because their meat tastes sweet and clean to me; but strangely, one of my favorite fish is mackerel pike, also called saury, which is a signature fish from Japan and has a very strong fishy smell. When we lived in Brooklyn, every autumn (the mature season of the fish) I bought it often from 8th avenue Chinatown and liked to just pan sear it simply with salt and ground black pepper. 

My husband disliked it because of its smell and the headachy bones. But to me, those were the most beautiful parts of it. The bones were soft, so I peeled the meat with bones off the spine and shoveled it into my mouth. I could finish this whole skinny fish within just one minute. No matter how much I loved it, since we moved to New Jersey, I could not find it anymore. I  was very sad. Mackerel, which seemed to be the big cousin of mackerel pike, was common here. Sometimes when I missed the latter too much, I purchased it as a substitute, even though the meat was too thick and the flavor wasn’t that good.

Yesterday in the market the fresh sardines stored in a glass case caught my eye; their shape and appearance were similar to mackerel pike but smaller in size. Due to the similarity, I purchased a dozen. After cleaning and brining them (toasted salt, Si-chuan pepper corns, and tequila), I strung them with my loofah threads and hung them in my backyard to dry. My planned cooking way for them would be: Sun dry them first, then grill them over lump charcoal. Still salt and pepper as the ingredients, but a few drops of lemon juice should also work well when serving.

Thinking of this dish, my saliva starts to run. But the temperature in the following week will be very low (single digit to under 20F), which means it will take much longer time for my sardines to get ready for grill.

It is said that the snowstorm coming tomorrow would be a severe one. The snow would be 20” deep followed by wintry mix, and the feel like temperature would be as low as 0F. It will be a tough time for my outdoor plants, especially since the cold weather will stretch to more than ten days. Last year, due to the harsh winter, most of my camellias (both spring and autumn bloomers) didn’t flower; my lily-of-the-valley, which is supposed to be invasive and cold hardy down to zone 4, was in a pot and just sprouted two leaves throughout the whole year. If this cold lasts, I don’t feel positive that I am going to have an abundant flower season in 2026.

Alas! I look out of my window: The shrubs and trees are standing in the wind pitifully; abelia and osmanthus should be evergreen but now have lost all their leaves; the snow from this Tuesday hasn’t completely melted yet, and tomorrow morning they will be covered under the new snow…

This winter we had several good snows. When the fireplace is on and the snow is falling outside, view is serene. The whole world turns out to be pure and like a wonderland, and all the dirtiness, ugliness is covered by the saintly white. The trees, especially the conifers, covered with snow, dark against white, look marvelous. I like the picture created by snow. It’s an important feature of winter and is good for the crops. But snowstorms and perpetual cold are harmful. I always wish to have a bigger piece of land (in fact as big as possible), while as far as snow is concerned, I only wish to have shorter and narrower driveway, walkway, sidewalk, and our beloved porch and patios seem to be unnecessarily big 😅.

So if snows are smart, they should behave better—come during the night, stop in the morning; every time they should know how to restrain themselves and snow no more than 8” deep, which won’t cause too much headache for us to clean the necessary parts; and right after snow, the sun should shine and the temperature should raise therefore the snow will go by themselves.

Hope Mother Nature would know this and plan well ahead.