Thursday 30 January 2014

This much snow requires spicy antidotes

Really big snowblower


What a strange sight we woke up to the other morning.  After huge scraping machines had driven back and forth, over and over, down our quiet crescent, much of the snow was piled in a ridge down the middle of the road.  A second ridge was piled even higher on the edge of the park across the street.

Anyone needing to get out of their home had to drive along a narrow corridor bordered by this strange mountain of snow. The wrong way in many cases.

Finally this behemoth came along, flanked by three massive trucks, each in its turn.

Giant snowblower fills truck in thirty seconds

The yellow machine sucked up the snow and spat it into the truck at its side.  It took thirty seconds to completely fill up one of these big trucks.

Grinding blades churn rocky, icy snow into fine powder


The yellow machine has churning blades to grind the icy lumps of snow.  Once snow has been scraped off an area, it gets compressed, and chunky, like boulders and skree. You wouldn't want to walk over this stuff. It's sharp, slippery and dangerous.  But the churning blades chewed it up and spat it out as a fine powder.

Exactly where this snow is dumped we don't know

Once all three trucks were filled, they went off to dump their load, down by the river, unfortunately.  I'm hoping though that this didn't go there, and to a big field away from a waterway instead.  This snow has some salt in it, from various earlier attempts to melt the stuff.

Trucks returned to finish the job an hour later


Our house is third down from the corner, and once all three trucks were filled, the machine had to stop right in front of us.  The trucks returned for more business about an hour later, and the rest was cleared away.

Then, guess what happened?  It snowed.

I've lived in this city most of my life, and have never seen such a sight before!

Time to return to the kitchen, and the warmth.  Although I could have had my favourite breakfast, channa masala and chapatis, I had this gingered up oatmeal, instead.

Meanwhile I'm looking for a spiced coffee that is served in hotels in Chennai. My friend who is frantic for this elixir insists on calling it chai coffee, but I'm suspecting it must have a different name.  Any advice?

2 comments:

  1. Hi Mary!! Thanks for stopping by my blog. We are having the same snow situation here - even worse is the cold. Its been a winter of below average temperatures and we are feeling boxed in!! Friends who have lived in this city thier whole life are ready to move, lol!! Just wanted to let you know that some stores in the States are now stocking the Murukku Press now. Let me know if you see it at your local store - else I would be delighted to find you one here:)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for stopping by mine! This snow has been really something this year... Thank you for your very generous offer. First I will try again locally. I hope I don't buy one, and then immediately discover my thirty year old press on a back shelf somewhere... Or maybe it's still in a box I haven't unpacked, despite the last move being eight years ago...

    ReplyDelete