Butchering Party

It's Monday, and I was home all day... almost alone. Every time I went down in the basement, I was greeted by Joe's deer, hung upside down.
Tonight we had Joe's dad over first for dinner (pot stickers and spicy pork curry), then to finish skinning and butchering the deer. It was actually Joe's first time ever to butcher a deer. Hey, it was my first time watching it, too! I stayed upstairs while they cut off his head. After Joe's dad sectioned the parts, Joe helped trim and take off any fat and connective tissues. Lots of work, bloody back-killing work (actually not so bloody as you might think). The pool table gave them a good surface to work on, but not quite high enough.

I kept my hands clean, only bagging and packaging the assorted venison meat (and taking these pictures). The next step is to grind the meat in plastic bags... some gets turned into burgers and meatballs, and the rest hopefully into sausages. We are all new to sausage making... so it'll be an adventure.

Joe's Buck Comes Home

Joe wanted to title this "Finnish Mafia!" Certainly that black garbage bagged object looks like nothing but a dead body. It is a dead body... just not the kind a real Mafia would be hauling in his car. Oh, and definitely not in a little Subaru. Here Joe's dragging the dead frozen deer down the basement stairs. Still, you might doubt your eyes.

Now, it is clear that Joe is skinning his buck in our basement. The deer had been hanging in Joe's dad's garage until this afternoon and is still mostly frozen. It will thaw overnight and be ready for more actions tomorrow evening: complete skinning and butchering.

Happy Heikki Lunta!

We've had enough snow to deal with, but this weekend we get to enjoy it. Our little town is celebrating its annual Heikki Lunta (Finnish winter festival). And the weather for a change turned out to be gorgeous. This is why we live up north. We briefly checked out our local trail this afternoon. We gotta go back to play in snow many times this winter....We invited Joe's cousin and his family over for what could be most non-Finnish dinner tonight. We had chicken fajita and margarita!! Joe once again did a fantastic job on the grill to compliment everything I made and prepped in the kitchen, from Spanish rice, black bean salsa, to guacamole. Not hardly any leftovers... the dinner must have been good!
The highlight of the evening was the firework display over the FROZEN Teal Lake. The best part was we could watch it from our front porch. Here's Patrick bundled up (and Olivia as our lively reporter in the following video). Note: please have a couple of margarita before watching the video to get a full effect!

Here's a picture of our kitchen counter after the party... after 2 batches of margarita and 2 batches of hurricane. A very good time. (Oh yeah, and the fireworks.)While I was doing the dishes, Joe picked up a small mess 2 small guests left. The kids loved Joe's prize stuffed animals, one of which now needed a "medic." First, Joe vacuumed scattered styrofoam beads.

Then he stitched Froggy together as a "medic." Every one is back in one piece. Now we say "good night."

RIBS for Dinner!

Since Joe shoveled his grill out yesterday, we decided to cook up some ribs today. We had to run to a store to get a few things and ran into a very very very good buy on ribs. We had more than enough ribs at home, but I, the rib monster, had to pick up another big package of ribs to save for near future. Then, we thought we should invite Joe's dad for dinner. Though at the last minute, Joe's dad did not hesitate a bit.
Here Joe's finishing up the ribs on the grill (and talking to his dad).On our dinner table: BBQ ribs, smashed potatoes, and grilled veggies. Everthing was excellent! Finger-licking good!! Oh, and we can't forget to mention the pumpkin pie Joe's dad brought. We got to keep the leftover. We're having pumpkin pie for breakfast tomorrow.

We ran out of time to go out and PLAY in the snow today... hopefully next weekend.

Where Have You Been, Sun?

We had almost forgotten what the sunshine feels like. Seriously!This afternoon, the sun finally came out. While I was at work missing the sunshine, Joe spent all his afternoon outside. He had hardly recovered from all the snowblowing he did this week, but he went out this time to rake snow off the roofs....... then on to snowblow the snow pile from the roofs. Really, the question becomes "where can you put all the snow?"

By the time Joe finished snowblowing around the house, it was starting to get dark. Good night to the sun. Hopefully we can play in the snow a little tomorrow, instead of removing it.

P.S. Joe says that I make it sound like too much fun... in his tired voice. I know I do!

Snow, Snow, Snow!!!

School and work went back to normal today. That means our street gets plowed early in the morning and that Joe has to get up earlier to snowblow our driveway before work. Well, guess what? Just as he was finishing up this morning, his snow thrower quit driving forward or backward. Great! Another trouble.
On my day off I tried to scoop and shovel some snow. At least to clear the path for our mail lady. But snow just kept coming down... all day and all evening. We've had snow everyday in this new year so far. Nice fluffy snow, though. After dinner Joe went right to work on his snow thrower. It still ran fine. It just didn't engage to drive itself forward or backward. He found a broken bolt that had fallen off.Now Joe needed a replacement. No luck finding one in his tool boxes. So we drove down to Joe's parents' house where he was sure to find one. He had taken apart one too many snow throwers, snow mobiles, and alike. Joe found a replacement, the right one. I can hear his snow thrower running up and down our driveway right now. Good job, Mr. He Can Fix (Almost) Anything.

While Joe was fixing the snow thrower, I went out again to scoop some more snow that had fallen since this morning. It didn't look like I had shoveled at all. And it's still snowing! Look how high the snow level is, well above my hip.

Oh, and did I mention that it's still snowing!!! (I still love snow, too.)

Godzilla Taking Down the Japan Room!

It was just past midnight on New Years Day that Joe walked into our Japan room and found its wall bleeding. BLEEDING! It turned out to be stale nicotine-colored water oozing through the wall. The good news was that our house wasn't haunted. Well, the bad news is that Joe has lots of work to do this summer. He cannot avoid going up on the roof.
On this third day of the new year, Joe (Godzilla) decided to take down the Japan room! No, that's how Joe felt like attacking the problem. Instead he patiently took out all the soft wet plaster to expose the mystery of the problem.

As far as we can see, it's caused by the lack of insulation and the ice build-up around the chimney. Unfortunately the fixing has to wait till summer... 6 months from now!

For those who wanted to see snow, here's a picture from our back door. We live for such pretty winter months up here, but winter can cause some grief for the house!

New Year's Day Dinner

Since I (Kayo) had to work today, we took it easy last night.... We played a couple rounds of pool (we still suck) and watched "Kill Bill vol. 1" on DVD, and then toasted with a shot of sake at midnight.
Tonight, we kept the Japanese theme for our New Year's Day dinner: buckwheat noodle (soba) in soup. Besides our new sake set, we also used our new bowls and fish-shaped chopstick rests that we got for Christmas. Our table looks very Japanese!!Warm sake and the big bowl of hot soup were perfect for the cold night. The outside temp was already down to single digit and continuing to drop.... Tomorrow's high is expected to be only 6. Brrrrrrr.

I almost forgot to mention that Joe spent good three hours outside today. A Menards gift card got us a roof rake, and Joe had to rake snow/ice off the roof to avoid any further damage from the ice building up and getting underneath the shingles and melting, and water running down the walls.... Not how he wanted to spend his New Year's Day... but he's getting down to the core of the whole problem: poor insulation. The insulation in the attic was essential to lower our heating bills. Now, we need to solve those reoccurring ice damages that our previous owners seem to have suffered but didn't fix effectively. A new year resolution for the house!