Today is the first snow storm of the year in PEI. A bit late for Winter, prior to this we only had mostly rain and above normal temperature. This current storm has closed businesses and schools in PEI, again it is mostly a mix of freezing rain and heavy wet snow. Staying home with no reasons to go out at all.

Yesterday I received in the mail from Amazon.ca, 3 non stick pans for cooking various veg and other things like eggs and food. They are high quality non stick and very nice to use. We do a lot of home cooking and for dinner I will usually have 3 different vegetables. Last night Will had made pizza dough and my toppings were, tomato rosé sauce, pre sautéed mushrooms, thin slices of Brie, thin slices of red onions and green lightly sautéed Broccolini also known as rapini. It was wonderful, I do like Pizza with toppings to what is found in Italy.

I am always puzzled now that the pizza industry is run by big corporations how standardized it has become and what people think of pizza toppings is very limited. Same with the cheese used, you do not have to use only mozzarella, you can use other cheeses or no cheese at all. White sauce is used instead of tomato sauce, in Rome at the pizza stand I remember some pizza were brushed lightly with olive oil and topping with a creamy mushroom sauce or goat cheese and arugula put on before serving, no tomato sauce. Certainly the crust was always either thin Rome style or thick Naples style. The dough was always made that day and fresh, a very un- corporate approach to pizza making. Some pizza will have an egg on top or zucchini slices or fresh anchovy, etc. All cooked in very hot stone ovens for best results.

photos taken from Pizzeria da Baffetto in Rome.

So today Will wanted to make his Japanese White Bread and discovered we had no yeast, so that will have to wait til tomorrow. In the meantime he is making his spaghetti sauce with a mix of ground veal, beef and Italian pork sausage meat. Always good.

The weather is truly awful today, it snowed just a little and now high winds and freezing rain at least until midnight and then some more snow. You can imagine how slippery all this is and dangerous.

The Canada Winter Games are coming to PEI on 18 February for a week. I received the full program today (embargo) it will be published tomorrow. Very busy indeed, lots of music, events of all sorts. The airport announced 11 charter flights coming, hotels are booked and Air Canada is putting on special flight to handle all this abnormal traffic, given that this is the dead season and no one really comes this way. I do hope they get some snow for the period what we have now is really insufficient and we have more ice than snow. There is no sea ice this year, weather is far too mild. It will be 8 C tomorrow, almost summer like, we do have some people walking around in shorts. However we are suppose to get 100 Km or 65 Miles per hour winds and people have been told to be very careful. Such winds can uproot mature trees and damage structures.

Well we shall see what happens in the next 48 hours.