Return of the--gasp!--Polar Vortex!

We are midweek into the longest school closings in recent memory (four days, counting tomorrow, which has already been announced), and now the US Postal Service is breaking its own motto and refusing to deliver mail. Even some stores and restaurants are closed.

No wonder as the wind chill last night was 52 below zero. While you absorb that outrageous figure, consider what I heard on the radio this morning: The temperature on Mars is only 80 below, a mere 28 degrees colder. (Hey, NASA, if you're prepping for humans on Mars, you can start training them here.)

Now we're used to cold up here. Subzero temperatures are the norm in January. Five years ago, in the first appearance of the Polar Vortex the first week of January, we had 30 below temps and a long stretch with no daytime temps above zero. But that was without the dangerous wind chills present this time around. The weather experts are saying we won't break daytime cold temp records--those were set back in the '90s--but we're breaking recorded wind chills.

My coping strategy? Stay inside. Bake something. And make soup.

This is what happens…

Don’t adjust your color; these cookies are indeed blue.

This is what happens in mid-January when the temperatures are below frigid, a lunar eclipse of a super moon is about to occur, I need to bake cookies, and I’m looking at a Blue Velvet cake mix.

I’m calling them Blue Moon Cookies.

They’re healthy (oatmeal, dried cranberries, chocolate chips) and simple to make (cake mix and margarine, plus the aforementioned 3 items) and surprisingly tasty.

This is what happens when my creativity needs someplace to go.