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.