Winter Comfort Food

I can't get excited about winter comfort food when there is no snow on the ground. It's not cold enough to warrant braising and roasting and comfort foods of fat and cream and unctuousness. I will eat them but I'm not excited and craving them. I need real cold. Snow, winds that howl into you and creep through your layers and nibble at your bones. I haven't felt properly properly cold since last year in Alberta. I guess I shouldn't complain but I am. I am a Prairie girl at heart and even though I don't want to go back there there are certain things that are ingrained in my heart: cold drifts of dry snow dancing across the roads, ice blue skies that go on forever, chinooks and crazy temperature shifts. Icicles. Icicles are wonderful. Amazing. I need icicles!

I want to roast pears with sugar and cream in the oven. I want to crave stews with big chunkcs of meat and dumplings. But I really need to be chilled to the bone in order to want those things. Oh winter where are you?