what to do in a snowpocalypse

so the world is going to end, but in dc only. why, you may ask? the weatherpeople have predicted anywhere from 1 to 3 feet of snow for this weekend. i think we're currently at 2 feet, although i can't be sure since it is so windy out. julia and i were planning to go to philly to celebrate our friend martha's bday before she returns to snowy nh, but unfortunately we're stuck. so, we decided to spoil ourselves with lavish meals. to see the general mood around town, visit http://snowpocalypsedc.com/. hehe

to start off the potentially snowed-in weekend, i baked a quiche thursday night. 2 weekends ago, marcus, julia's bf, baked a quiche for us but he used a pre-made crust. tsk tsk. since he swore that a quiche was easy to make, i figured i couldn't mess it up. however, i wasn't in the mood to roll dough, so the crust looks like poo, and i missed the part in joy of cooking where it says to sautee the vegetables beforehand. oops. so after quiche came out, it was a little soggy. i poked several holes in the quiche and used paper towel to wick out a lot of the moisture. phew. "spinach, yellow pepper, and enoki mushroom" quiche, saved! last night, julia and i cleverly avoided the massive lines at the grocery store by going at 9 pm when everyone else would be snowed away! (we can access our grocery store by walking underground, hehe!) people bought out the weirdest things: lemons (???), biscuit dough, bagged salad (but not heads of lettuce! lucky for bunkins!), chocolate chips... anyway we got our ingredients and julia made pasta with peas, cheese and crab meat. it was tasty! i made angel food cake. lan's hand mixer saved my life! the recipe called for 11 egg whites and i was supposed to beat until the mixture was 5 times its original volume. FIVE! here it is midway through the baking process, nice and fluffy and beginning to brown: and here it is unmolded with sliced strawberries all ready to go. i had 11 egg yolks left over and didn't want to waste them, so we googled "what to do with leftover egg yolks" and found a recipe for zabaglione on chowhound.chow.com. so ridiculously appropriate! zabaglione is an italian custardy mousse dessert made from wine, confectioner's sugar, and egg yolks. it's very rich, but goes really well with the lightness of angel food cake. here's how we served up the cake: happy birthday martha! we celebrated you in spirit! one week till chinese new year. must get busy!