One kind word can warm three winter months.  ~Japanese Proverb

I took my family to Iowa for Thanksgiving. Many of you know that I am a gourmet cook and this Thanksgiving was for sure my chance to show the “cook” part of Gourmet Cook! My eldest sister has been having health issues and was not going to be able to cook for her rather large family. None of her children are cooks and so I volunteered to make Thanksgiving Dinner. It turned out to be Thanksgiving for 26 people and that was a hoot! I will get some pictures of the food up this week. I spent the day before shopping and planning my menu and then bright and early at 4am on Thanksgiving day the cooking started. It turned out great and certainly no one, not even the stray vegetarian, went away hungry!

The trip back was very special. We had made the trip by car for many reasons. We wanted to visit some friends and family along the way; we needed to carry lots of stuff and I wanted to test some traveling equipment. We also thought that no matter what the weather did, we had the car to handle it.

I bought my wife a nice used Volvo station wagon earlier this year. Since this car is in very nice shape and virtually new, it never gets used. That does sound odd doesn’t it? Anyhow, this was the Volvo’s first long winter trip and it did very well, at least in most ways. The 4wd system is very sure footed. Considering we drove thru blowing snow and / or whiteout conditions for most of the trip, this was great. We did have an issue with heat however. There is some part or switch or computer chip that is whacked with the car and the faster we drove, the colder the engine got. At 35 mph or less, no problem. Above 35 mph, the engine temperature would rapidly drop off the chart and the heaters, front and rear, would stop working. Since the outside air was 10 degrees to 15 degrees most of the trip, this made for a miserable trip. We would drive, in terrible conditions, slowly…which is probably good anyway…and every hour or less we would stop. We would get out and walk around in the balmy arctic air while the car idled and got hot. Then we would hop back in and drive to the next wide place in the road. Not my favorite trip. My 5 year old daughter found the entire trip a grand adventure and I worked as best I could to model this same attitude. Iowa is 10 hours or so at the 80 mph that I normally drive. It is just a little bit closer than forever at 35 mph with an added stop every hour!

Anyhow, we are glad to be back. Our house looked better than it had in many months after the long tour of duty in the Volvo and now to get the Volvo in to the shop. Where my family comes from in Northern Sweden, it is reputed to snow 300 days of the year. I bet their Volvo’s have really good heaters.

Winter is nature’s way of saying, “Up yours.” ~Robert Byrne