Appetites: A New Cookbook

Making a batch of kimchi was on my list of things to do for a while... on my day off I found a nice head of napa and a daikon radish, so I set to work. It's going to get better as it ages.

For Christmas Joe got me a new cookbook by Anthony Bourdain. Not a typical cookbook, and the writing and photography in it quite humorous. We've been actually trying a few recipes from the book (to our surprise)... well, as closely as we can manage. In one recipe we used venison instead of wild boar. Below was his Vietnamese style salad, which I followed his recipe almost completely, like I never do. Today I'm making his Portuguese bean and sausage soup. It's been fun trying new recipes, some of which I wouldn't normally cook otherwise.

Winter Fun: Part 2

Joe thought we had enough walks the day before.... Sunday was another beautiful sunny day, and I (Kayo) woke up wondering what our trout stream looked like in winter. Partly Joe was curious about the washouts on the way to our fishing spot, so we took off on our adventure, like a 5-mile walk total. Right away we saw the beaver pond's snow-covered water level was very low, but we just didn't know how bad the washout was.
Below you can see I'm standing where the bank/road used to be (pond on the left and missing road on the right). This road got progressively worse last year with lots of rain.

It was just the beginning of our walk....

Once we got to our wooded trail out to the stream, we had to use our snowshoes to break the trail, which was not easy to find at first, covered with snow. It looked so different from summer time.

Finally we reached our destination: Apple Creek. The water was all covered under snow here, but I recognized some trees.

Then we had to walk all the way back to the end of this road as we came in. It was a successful adventure!

Winter Fun

Yesterday we saw plentiful sunshine all day. We felt the need for a walk. The woods were beautiful with some snow on branches. The Lake Superior was calm and blue.

 Some ice discs floating along the shore.

The other side of the point was in the shade, but I was warm enough with my new trapper's hat (sent all the way from Hawaii).

It was just so good to have a natural source of vitamin D from all that sun. Our little town was also celebrating Heikki Lunta (a Finnish winter festival) and ended the day with fireworks.

Happy New Year

Happy (belated) New Year! After a relaxing New Year break, we've been back to mostly normal. The picture above is our living room after the lights came down from our pine tree. Joe's leg lamp stays all year around as well as shot gun shell lights. More importantly it was taken by Kayo's new toy for this year. She fell in love with this cute little orange camera at first sight. We are going to have many wonderful adventures together!

Only last night we had our New Year sukiyaki dinner. Now it feels right with the new year (at least for Kayo).

We got over a foot of snow this week. Plenty of snow to play in. Though it has gotten cold (like zero degree) after it stopped snowing, we are hoping to enjoy some outdoors this weekend.