Corn Chowder and Yeast Rolls

We had our first snow a few weeks back but it has since come and gone along with most of the snow from this past week.  Do these count as first snows?  Absolutely!  My grandfather, Vasco Carter, would say, "When a cat can leave footprints in the snow it counts as a first snow."

First snows take me back to a time when my mother, two brothers, my sister and I were living in a one-room cabin on my grandfather's land out on the Bucksport road in Ellsworth, Maine. We were waiting for my father to finish his tour aboard ship with the U.S. Navy.  We were only going to be in Maine for a few months and we, us kids, prayed for snow before we left for our father's next duty station in Puerto Rico.  It is important to know that we had been in Florida prior to our coming to Maine therefore we had not seen snow in a very long time.   So we prayed hard for snow.

One early afternoon we got our prayer answered with a beautiful heavy flaked snowfall.  As we bundled up to go out and play, in borrowed winter clothes mind you, our mother told us to "play out" until she called us in for a special first-snow supper.  

As we played outside, squealing with delight trying to catch snowflakes on our tongues, gathering as much of the accumulating snow as we could into snowballs and snowmen, we would stop every once in a while and peek in the window of the cabin to see what our mother was busy fixing supper.  It was not long before we could no longer see inside as the windows were steamed up from whatever she was making for our first-snow supper.  When our mother called us in we were happily soaked, chilled and hungry.  

I will never forget the sight and smell that greeted us as we came into the cabin.  The oilcloth- covered table had been set with steaming bowls of corn chowder and in the center of the table a plate was piled high with hot yeast rolls.   We could not get our wet clothes off and hung up by the woodstove fast enough.  As we sat down to eat we bowed our heads and thanked God for the food our mother had prepared on the wood stove, for our father so far away, for our family who loaned us winter clothes and most of all we thanked God for the first snow.

To this day I think of corn chowder and yeast rolls whenever I experience a first snow.