When cabin fever strikes, it is best to convince yourself that life is good. Being stuck at home, snowbound, unable to shovel yourself out to rejoin civilization, isn’t all bad. After all, you can use this time to clean out closets, shred old papers, and watch endless movies on the Hallmark channel. And don’t forget, there is always the proverbial sock drawer.

I was well on my way to becoming curmudgeonly last evening, as I watched the snow piling up, blocking all hope of exiting the garage ever again. I was steadily becoming bad-tempered, disagreeable….ah yes, dare I say, PO’d?

I wasn’t even in the mood to make soup…and you know how important soup making is to me. What was I to do? Should I sit and become more disagreeable, even though there was no one here to suffer from my bad mood? Or should I find an outlet of some sort to focus on until the sun comes up and the snowplows arrive in my neighborhood?
After checking the lineup on television, I decided to settle in for the evening in my big comfy leather chair and watch Modern Family followed by Off the Map. They were a distraction for a while......until the Anaconda scene. A non-venomous snake that lives in or near water and in trees, is the largest snake in the boa family. It had wrapped itself around one of the characters and was crushing the life out of him in preparation of swallowing him whole, I suppose. Thank heavens it didn’t show that part! Anyway, all the funny parts of Modern Family were quickly forgotten….Kay Tucker hates snakes.

I desperately checked the DVR to see if there was anything I had recorded that I should watch….and there it was. The Train is a Burt Lancaster movie made in the 60s, telling the story of how the Germans tried to take all of the masterpieces of art from the museum in Paris to Berlin at the end of the war. It sounded good to me. I lit the fireplace and I knew there was one last thing….a cup of coffee with Bailey’s. I realized it would more sense to drink something warm and very French in honor of all those beautiful paintings.

That is when it hit me…. Cafè Amore! I haven’t had one in years.

One year for our anniversary, I made a traditional French dinner for Arch… Chateaubriand, a seared and roasted beef tenderloin with wine sauce. I also served chateau potatoes, or as Arch said “Ahhhhh, fried potatoes!” It was a great dinner, a fun evening and we both had our first Cafè Amore.

In one of your “good coffee cups”, pour 1 oz of Cognac, 1 oz of amaretto (an almond liqueur). Add the hot coffee, making sure you leave room to top it off with lots of whipped cream! Sprinkle shaved almonds on top of the cream.
So, last night I watched my movie, by the fire, with the snow falling softly outside my window. On the table beside me there was a beautiful steaming cup of Cafè Amore, in which I used the last of my Arch’s Cognac.

If I were to toast the event in French, I would say “A votre santé” (to your health). I would normally give my favorite Italian toast, “Cin cin”. But I just couldn’t. Even though the bad guys were the Germans, my German was no bad guy. So a simple toast of "Auf uns!" was my toast….”To Us!”


Halleluiah! They are shoveling my driveway! Life is good!