It's in the Bag

We hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season... no matter where you may be. My work schedule is finally back to normal. I am ready for celebration now!
This week when I didn't know what to cook for dinner, I was saved by the care package from Hawaii. We had spicy ramen noodle. I also found a bag of pot stickers that I had made and forgotten, so it was a complete meal of ramen noodle, pot stickers, and fried rice. (That's how you order at a ramen shop in Japan.) We enjoyed slurping away our noodles.

Last night we were invited to a Japanese hot pot dinner party. I didn't have much time, but really wanted to bring something. So I made a dish my mom usually cooks for New Year: spicy shrimp and cucumber stir fry. She had sent me her tiered lunch box set earlier this year, and I finally got to use it.

Lastly, Joe butchered portions of his deer today. The picture below was from this morning before I went to work. As you might have guessed, inside the mysterious black bag was the deer meat. Joe put some of the meat through his meat grinder, so we can cook venison chili, meatballs, and such. Still, lots of work to get a several pounds of good cuts of meat!

We are planning on leaving for Ironwood after work tomorrow to celebrate Christmas and New Year. Have a safe and wonderful New Year, everyone!

Merry Christmas!

We are now just chilling after our amazing Christmas Eve dinner: steak and shrimp on the grill with a simple salad. Maybe because of the good feeling about my surviving another Holiday shopping season at work. Everything tasted extra good. (The pictures do not justify!!)  

We are staying up late to go to the midnight mass at the cathedral. I think it's time to have a bit of pick-me-up fuel, coffee or something.
We wish you all a merry Christmas!

The Sunday Before Christmas

Last weekend Joe finally brought his frozen deer in the house from the garage, in order to skin and process the meat. It's a very good thing that it gets cold enough for our garage to become a giant refrigerator, or more like a freezer. So on Sunday morning Joe treated me to his breakfast special of fried venison tenderloin. We made blueberry pancakes to compliment the wild venison. Sorry you weren't there to taste....

Also, our local grocery store hosted a seafood sale over the weekend, we had to splurge on a piece of Ahi tuna. Feeling a bit guilty... it wasn't either Christmas or New Year, yet.

We figured we celebrated the winter! That night we got 10 inches of perfect fluffy snow.

Christmas Spirit

So, last Tuesday I finished printing our holiday greeting cards. It was actually fun, and I loved the smell of ink, which put me into the holiday spirit. Strangely enough.
All the cards are dry now. We need to start addressing them next.

Yesterday, Sunday, we had a day off together. We went out on our favorite annual Christmas shopping downtown. When we stopped at Donckers for lunch, we were unexpectedly greeted by Santa himself!

After lunch the blowing snow got worse. At times we had white-out conditions. I was just glad that Joe was driving in this weather. Although up this north it wouldn't be Christmas without the snow. Besides we were trying to get most of our Christmas shopping done in one day. Blizzard shopping! 

It was time for us to go home before dark in the snow. Our pizza dough was rising and waiting. We had a small pizza party ourselves for dinner. Later, to keep our holiday spirit going, we watched A Christmas Story on DVD. It certainly feels a lot more like Christmas now.

December Freeze

Some crazy whether events have been experienced all over. Up here, last week it started out as nice fluffy snow, changed into sleet and rain, then the temperature dipped down way below the freezing point. All within 24 hours. Since the thermometer needle has been hovering around zero. Pretty cold.
The photo above was from Sunday morning. Mostly we enjoyed a lazy day off indoors, except when we took a walk on the snow-covered bike trail in the afternoon.

What the photos didn't capture was the hollow crunchy sound that we were making with every step on the crusty frozen snow. You have no idea how loud it was.

At this point the temp must have been 10 degrees above with a bit of help from the trying sun.

We decorated our new Christmas tree, too. Joe made a bonfire that night to give our old tree a proper send-off. (Sadly the tree died this year.) 
Today I'm getting our Christmas/ New Year cards printed.

Mighty Hunter Experience

Deer season week 2: It got much colder, below the freezing point. The ground and trees were covered with snow. A lot more like normal deer hunting season.
Today, Sunday, Joe decided to sleep in and go out in the afternoon. He'd seen lots more deer signs later in a day. I also went along, as you might have guessed, to take my afternoon nap in the woods. In the daylight Joe could see quite a few deer tracks on the fresh snow. A very good sign.

The woods this afternoon looked very pretty. Magical and very, very quiet. There were hardly any birds. I soon laid on the ground and took a nap. Luckily I didn't miss anything. When I woke and sat up in my chair, nothing had changed, except it was getting close to dusk. Just past 5pm the sky started to turn pink from the sunset. We both were feeling pretty lucky about seeing the sunset, when I heard Joe whisper  "There he is."

The deer showed its antlers, so Joe decided to take a shot at him. I couldn't believe that I got to be there when the great mighty hunter was in action!! Well, this was only the beginning. At 5:15pm. Joe had to track him in the woods, and I got to witness and carry a flashlight in the dark. What I could see of the towering trees, lit by my flashlight, was amazingly beautiful. I admit it was a bit spooky to hear the trees cracking and... the total dark silence. Joe's buck took us through quite an adventure. He wasn't bleeding a lot externally, which made it hard to track him. I still have a clear mental picture of his final resting spot. A little open area in the woods, just at the foot of a large tree. Like a shrine in the woods.

After all the dragging, what I thought was endless dragging for Joe, we finally reached our truck at 8pm. Phew. I now have a lot more respect for a mighty hunter. All the work and effort that go into it. Yes, you can say he is CRAZY. A lot more crazier than I thought! Needless to say, we both had a good day hunting. Joe got a 6-pointer; and I had my afternoon nap and a great hunting experience. 

Holly Rutabaga!!

Usually I ponder what I want to cook or eat, something we haven't had recently. Whatever I feel like cooking. But when an uncle gives you two huge rutabagas from his garden, you really have to try to find as many ways to serve it as possible. I've mashed it Japanese style, threw in my bean soup, then mashed again. This Tuesday I cooked Hungarian pork and homemade dumplings with mashed rutabaga. We are eating the leftover tomorrow night. It's time to take a little break from rutabaga.

I've never seen a rutabaga this big. And this one is our rutabaga #2, still untouched, waiting for some cooking inspiration.



Deer Season Opening

Yesterday was the opening day of deer season. Joe, as expected, got up before dawn and spent all day out in the woods. Not so good sign was a big pile of bear poop, full of berries, at his deer blind. The temperature had gone back up again. But Joe did see a deer at the end of the day, though only its white tail and the moving mass of its body between trees in some distance.
For dinner I made chicken-katsu to celebrate my brother's birthday.

I didn't have time to make any dessert to put a b-day candle on, so Joe gave us part of his deer season treat, Zebra Cake. Happy Birthday to Yoshi!

Almost Deer Season

Since October Joe began to get ready for deer season as every year. The last couple of weeks before the opening day in November gets busy. To a non-hunter it definitely looks like work, though it's clear that the whole process gives you chance to be close to nature. I've been off on Sundays and gotten to enjoy the autumn woods, just going along.

While Joe's deer feasted on enough fall crops of sugar beets, squash, apples in the woods, we had a nice batch of home grown tomatoes from Phil and Judy. Last Sunday I made meatballs in tomato sauce and first-time homemade pasta (sort of).

It was very tasty. My noodles needed some improvement... I'd make it again. It gave us a good excuse to open a bottle of wine!

This Friday is the first day of deer season. I'll probably accompany Joe on Sunday... to take naps as I've done every time.  

Halloween Traditions?

Last Friday we went to see our local Vista Theatre production of The Rocky Horror Show... mainly because one of Kayo's coworkers was in it. It's such a different sub-culture genre that we tried to fit in by dressing up a bit and also previewing the movie version. It was definitely an interesting experience. But we had fun. The theatre puts out The Rocky every Halloween season, so it could be our strange but fun tradition....  

Another, more normal, tradition for Halloween is pumpkin carving. Last night we each carved a pumpkin. Tomorrow evening Joe will be home and light our pumpkins for trick-or-treaters.

Happy Halloween to everyone!  

Color Tour... In the Fog!?

On Sunday we took Joe's mom out for her belated birthday. We decided to drive up to the Copper Country, hoping to catch some fall colors, though it was a cool wet drizzly day. We got to see some colors through car windows on our way. Then we observed that we were driving into the fog. When we finally drove up to Brockway Mountain Drive, we found ourselves in the total white.
Here Joe and I stand in front of the valley, which is completely invisible!

Our final destination on this trip was Harbor Haus. As expected, we had a wonderful meal there, though our view out the window was a bit limited.

Our color tour was mostly in the fog... in that very mystifying way. But we were glad we went for the ride. It was fun. Though as you might have guessed, Monday was a beautiful sunny fall day, perfect for a color tour! Oh well.

Grapes, Grapes, Grapes!

Since our spring came so late, we were worried that our grapes didn't have a long enough growing season. In contrast, however, Joe picked the most grapes yet ever. Roughly 60 pounds of grapes! And they all turned color at the same time. So Joe picked the grapes, got rid of stems patiently, then boiled and made juice.... While Joe went out to pick some more grapes, I made grape jelly and canned, just to make more room for more juice. Dealing with all the grapes was our night job for the whole week.

All the grapes had been picked, either turned into jelly or juice. Joe ended up using 25 pounds of grapes to make wine. Eventually he filled that huge crock in the below photo most of the way with wine-to-be. After a several days now it's starting to ferment. It smells wonderful!

Taste of Autumn

It's October, and trout season is officially over. The fall color is also all around us. Since we weren't home to go out fishing on Apple Creek one last time this weekend, Joe hit the stream a couple of afternoons last week. He might have missed other much bigger (smarter) fish, but he managed to come home with a very nice salmon or two both days. Tonight we had fresh salmon roe and avocado over rice for dinner. A decadent treat.

Finally a female packed with salmon roe (below). That night we patiently cleaned the roe (lots of work!) and marinated in the sweet soy sauce mixture. Kayo was happy!

Now we get to deal with our grapes. Joe finished stemming all 15 pounds of grapes last night. Tonight he is squeezing the grape juice to be turned into jelly later. It's work, but rather gratifying. That's what you call "priceless," truly the Nature's gift.