If you’re seeing this then, whew, your electricity is on!

Or perhaps not, and you’re using this as kindling for your fireplace while enduring a power failure.

Either way, you survived the projected Sleet-nami of 2013 (or whatever the wintry weather we’re dreading as I write this on Thursday actually materialized into).

Thanks, in large part, to bread and milk! Maybe in 2013 it’s lactose-free or organic soy milk, and maybe it’s gluten free bread. Still, it’s milk and bread - such are the staples we stockpile when snowstorms loom. (And batteries, toilet paper … and alcohol, chips, Pop Tarts and candy. You know, the real essentials.)

I soldiered out to a supermarket early in the morning before the pandemonium was predicted, as did all the soon-to-be ice-bound shut-ins. I would buy milk, which I don’t really drink, and bread, which I rarely eat. And I’d buy chili fixings. Because what’s better when it’s freezing outside, and frosty inside a home with no electricity than a big bowl of … raw chili? In the event of a power failure, I couldn’t exactly plug in the slow cooker. Never mind, I’d use the stove! The, uh, electric stove? I’d have to put Project Chili on ice.

Besides there were no onions - save for that one with more bruises than Dancing With the Stars Season 17. Farther back in the store, I would discover, after channeling my best Clara Peller (“Where’s the beef?!”), there was not one package of ground beef to be found. Though there was plenty of “healthy” lean ground turkey - nobody wanted that, even facing starvation and hypothermia.

Still my priorities were bread and - ooh, red peppers only 99 cents! Must get some! Bread and … what was that other thing? Oh, I’d remember when I’d see shoppers engaged in fisticuffs over it.

I figured the store would be virtually loaf-less. I’d have no choice but to grab a pack of - mmm! - buttery garlic breadsticks or - aah! - a stray sweet brioche or - a lively forgotten focaccia. But to my surprise, the store was rolling in the dough, with a bread supply that could sustain Gospel of Mark-size masses. That meant they even had my lousy, flat diet bread in stock. And not one person tried to steal it from me. Sigh. I was hoping to milk the short supply angle and splurge.

Milk! That’s the other thing I came for. Replete refrigerators looked like the land of milk minus the honey. I not only had my choice of varieties, but expiration dates. It was so easy it was almost disappointing.

I had my bread and milk. I was officially prepared for the storm. There was just one thing left do.

Figure out what the heck to do with bread and milk. And those red peppers.

Cream of red pepper soup with toast points? But I’d need functioning kitchen appliances.

French toast? Bread pudding? But to make those, I’d need eggs - the store was out of eggs!

OK, so admittedly the store was out of eggs after I snatched the very last box! Does it make it better that I’m stuck with a clunky 30-pack of mediums instead of the dozen large I desired?

Lest you think I’m a complete rotten egg, I’ve got plenty left and will share!

And that’s no snowjob!

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Style, Pages 29 on 12/10/2013