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'Code yellow' is beginning with a bunch of dry leaves blowing across the bike path and rolling over the glistening sidewalk. The scratching sound they leave behind is the only chord the first badass storm of the season is offering right now. It's 4.30 am. At 4 am, midst my half-burnt toast and coffee for breakfast, I got a warning on my phone of the imminent severe wind – and that users of 'fragile' means of transportation such as bicycles, scooters and caravans may be at risk.

Another duo of leaves perform a circus stunt. A synchronized, uninterrupted somersault from one side of the bike path to the other. At 4.45 am I'm their sole spectator, albeit in a rush to get to work on time. I feel annoyed with my bike – it's stuck on the lowest gear. I take it out on the pedals, push harder on them. A block further it's starting to drizzle, a soft infrequent drizzle for now, and even quite pleasant on the skin.

I take a turn, and suddenly – a loud, low bang of thunder, the next chord in line. I'm about fifteen minutes away from work and the risen loaves of bread (plump and soft, and not unlike a young woman's breast), and the warmth of the bread oven. I push the pedals harder, I can make it, past the light installation that says in tall red electric letters MEMORIES ARE SOUVENIRS, just go go, fast fast.

4 pm. 'Code yellow' ends with a phone call from my parents.

– Are you safe? We read on the internet about the storm, worried now, my mother says.

– Yes, we are fine. I just got back home from work. It's calming down now. I'm making cookies.

– What cookies? Tell more.

Nutbutter Cookies

Adapted from Sourdough, by Sarah Owens

Makes about 60-65 cookies

You know Lebkuchen, that old-fashioned German gingerbread? I bet these nutbutter cookies will remind you of it. And possibly of oatmeal cookies. And most certainly of spice cookies. And if that's not enough, here is more: they are sourdough cookies. Sourdough nutbutter cookies!

I understand that to make and keep alive your own sourdough starter for cookies alone, however delicious, is a big ask. But if you already have one, wouldn't you then want a great breakfast cookie – because it's great for breakfast, crumbled over a bowl of thick yogurt, or along with coffee and a cold tangerine on the side – for winter months at least?

What nut butter to use is the subject of taste. I myself gravitate towards milder nut butters – such as almond or cashew – for these cookies. This way all elements at play are more noticeable in the outcome: earthy rye flour; nutty, nearly milky oats; deep, smoky maple syrup; soothing cinnamon and exotic nutmeg.

By the way, if the presence of sourdough in the cookie evokes the notions of acidity, I'll hasten to say this is really not the case here. The sourdough starter is first mixed with water and rye flour to form such a pre-ferment that leaves no traces of acidity in the cookie dough.

For the leaven (pre-ferment)

20 g sourdough starter

50 g very warm water (40 C)

70 g rye flour

For the cookie dough

140 g leaven (pre-ferment)

2 large eggs

60 g maple syrup

½ teaspoon baking soda

1/8 teaspoon table salt

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

480 g good-quality nut butter of choice (almond, cashew, hazelnut, etc)

120 g unrefined cane sugar

1 vanilla bean, seeds only

30 g rolled oats

To make the leaven (pre-ferment):

Eight hours before making the cookies, mix together the starter and water in a medium non-reactive bowl (wooden, plastic or stainless steel). Add the rye flour, mix with your hand until hydrated and stiff then cover with plastic. Leave to ferment at room temperature. Once it's puffy and smelling of honeyed fruit, you can mix it into the dough or keep refrigerated up to several days before using.

To make the cookie dough:

Preheat the oven to 175 C (350 F). Add the eggs and maple syrup to the leaven and mix well with your hand. The mixture will look split, but it will come together once the remaining ingredients have been added. Sprinkle the baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg over the top, stir to incorporate. Mash in the nut butter, sugar and vanilla seeds, and then fold in the oats. If the dough feels a little runny, refrigerate it for about an hour.

Form the dough, about a teaspoon's worth, into small balls, and place onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Don't overcrowd it, bake about 12-15 cookies at a time. (At this point you can also refrigerate the dough, covered with plastic, for up to two days.) Using a fork, press the balls gently to flatten into 4-cm disks. Dip your fork in (rye) flour before each cookie to prevent it from sticking to the dough.

Bake for 7 to 8 minutes, rotating the sheet halfway through, until the edges just begin to appear firm. Do not overbake. Let cool on a wire rack. These will keep well in an airtight container at room temperature for 4 to 5 days.

October 28th

October 28th: the scene on my balcony begs a description. Two wooden chairs and a table lie overturned, a plate with a bottle oil lamp on it are smashed into smithereens, an unused metal ashtray with LAS VEGAS and the four kings molded around the rim is thrown on the floor, face down among the glass shards. It's easy to think it's been a scene of a seething brawl, this. Perhaps, even, a fight of a kind where deadly threats eschew, and veins in the throat get swollen with anguish and anger and look like electric cords.

A single pigeon is trying its hardest to cross the gusts of wind, his wings flapping faster than a heart on speed. A determined bird, gone now. One minute tree leaves, frail dots of rust and amber, are kicked skywards, the other they are slapped against the rattling windows, a sudden place of rest. The trees below, many are still fully clad in leaf, shake and kneel in trance, an act of exorcism. The bathroom door, left ajar, sways back and forth; the window curtains are apprehensive of the draft. A storm has come, its force is non-negotiable. The wind regurgitates and an occasional wall of rain suddenly looks like a screen of smoke.

Coffee has grown cold in my mug, a thin layer of silt formed on the bottom. A few hours before, rather naively I got on my bike to get groceries, but I could't keep the wheel. Dislodged branches crackled under my feet like aging vertebra and knuckles as I walked to the store. Ambulance screamed past, and after it a police car.

The sun comes out on and off, but amidst the roars of the wind there is no comfort in its glow. In fact, it looks rather menacing, like that waiter whose white-teethed smile makes one of his eyebrows arch and his washed-blue eyes harden somehow.

Dusk. Lights come on. Trapped in the sky for hours, one plane after another bores its way forth out of the heavy clouds and down for landing. The smell of heated metal fills up the kitchen -- the oven is ready. I'm roasting chicken with two lemons for dinner.

Roast Chicken with Two Lemons
Adapted from The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, by Marcella Hazan, via The New York Times
Yield: 4 servings

Storm or no storm, this one is the easiest and certainly one of the tastiest ways to roasted chicken.There is nothing more to it than a chicken that gets seasoned with salt and pepper inside and out, fortified with two lemons, and then sent into the oven for an hour and a half. The way different cooking times for dark and white meat are reconciled here is so simple it's genius: lemons. It's all good that they subtly perfume the chicken breast, but the best is their moisture that wafts from them and into the meat keeping the breast from drying out while the legs are roasted through and through. And then there is the skin; at the end it browns and crisps up like a layer of goldel, lacquered filo pastry. A genius recipe.

1 * 1.2 to 1.5 kg (3 to 4 pounds) free-range chicken
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 small lemons

Warm the oven to 180 C (350 F).

Rinse the chicken well inside and out. Remove any bits of fat hanging loose. Pat the bird thoroughly dry all over with paper towels.

Rub a generous amount of salt and black pepper over the chicken's body and into its cavity.
Wash the lemons and pat them dry. Puncture the lemons in at least twenty places each, using a toothpick, a trussing needle, a sharp-pointed fork, or similar tool.

Put both lemons into the bird's cavity and close up the opening loosely with a few toothpicks or a trussing needle and string. Don't make it airtight, otherwise the chicken may burst.

Place the chicken into a roasting pan, breast side down. Do not add fat of any kind. This is a self-basting bird, it won't stick to the pan. Put it on the upper third of the prepared oven. After the first 30 minutes, turn the chicken breast side up. Doing so, try not to puncture the skin. Cook for another 30 minutes. Then scale the heat up to 200 C (400 F) and cook for 20 minutes more. Allow for 20-25 minutes of cooking time for each 500 g (1 pound). There is no need to turn the chicken again. 

Bring the chicken to the table whole -- if desired, garnish it with a few sprigs of flat-leaf parsley -- and leave the lemons inside until it's carved and opened. Don't tiptoe around the juices that run out; they are delicious and ought to be spooned over the chicken slices or mopped with a chunk of good bread. The lemons may have shrunk, but they still contain juices. Don't squeeze them; they may squirt.