Snow, Christmas - Suck it Up

I just love creating these Flickr slideshows. Here is a slide show of pictures I took on my drive home in the snow on Tuesday. It ends on the Queensway because the camera battery died. Not because of an accident or anything.

The title of this post comes from a Rick Mercer rant about people getting worked up about winter weather. [go toSeason 5, Episode 9, Mercer: Rick's Rant]
Meanwhile, my friend Agatha is concerned about Christmas stress. I am much to polite to say "just suck it up and put on a toque" to Aggie, so instead I have two websites to refer her to.
The first is the Canadian Health Network's Managing Holiday Stress. They have excellent advice like:

Share your vision and delegate, delegate, delegate. Get input from family and then nail down who's responsible for what. This will alleviate uncertainty, one of the things that drives stress universally. Make it clear to your husband, for instance, that one of his jobs this year is to pick up the gift to send to relatives in Newfoundland. Then forget about it.

[The CHN is an excellent resource for Canadians that is on the Tory chopping block. It's not as sexy an issue as Copyright reform, but if you want to find out more, read this Globe and Mail article and check out the comments.]
But I have something for you that is even more helpful than the CHN advice. It is Easy Fixes for 8 Common Kitchen Mishaps from Real Simple. You may already be familiar with my advice for kitchen mishaps: Give it a new name. They go beyond this and tell you how to make a disaster look and taste like delicious food. Some of it sounds so good that I want to deliberately make the mistakes they address. Example:

Oven-Dry Tasteless Tomatoes for More Flavor
Problem: Those out-of-season but enticingly red tomatoes that you couldn’t resist buying taste insipid.
Solution: Intensify the flavor by removing moisture, food scientist Shirley O. Corriher says. Place the tomatoes on a foil-lined baking sheet and sprinkle with salt and, if desired, fresh herbs. Roast in a 200° F oven for about 2 hours. (Large tomatoes should be cut into several thick slices, Romas should be halved lengthwise or thickly sliced crosswise, and cherry or grape tomatoes should be left whole.) Before serving, drizzle with olive oil.

[p.s. Ninja text shoutout to Kaye.]