Joe's Birthday

This Wednesday was Joe's birthday... but he was tied up with his work out of town till dark. He finally came home past nine, in time for a light meal instead of a full Japanese birthday dinner. I made spicy tuna rolls, sautéed dandelion greens, and tofu soup. After a quick bite, we took out Joe's youngest brother Mark for his first legal beer on his birthday. We toasted to the double birthdays.
The next day we had the rest of Joe's birthday dinner. The main dish was his favorite "tonkatsu" breaded pork cutlet. Cheers again.
Friday we woke up to 8 inches of wet snow. Joe had to blow snow, and I was glad that he was home.
More snow than I could handle with a shovel!!

Where's Spring?

Once again it got cold, sub-zero temperatures. Hard to believe it's almost the end of March. The Big Lake has a bit of open water to produce some snow for us. Since Joe's out of town for work, I had to shovel and clear our driveway yesterday. The bright side was that the snow that fell was weightless, though it's definitely NOT the typical spring snow. Our snow banks are the tallest yet this season. It feels like we've been stuck in January for three month!. 
Well past the first day of spring on the calendar, I had to put my cherry blossom décor on the wreath. It's my protest against Winter.
Today is Joe's birthday. Hopefully he and his crew can finish their big installation this afternoon (day 3), so he can come home for his birthday dinner. Last night I was by myself, so I just had fried rice... and probably shouldn't have a whole pot of green tea.
But then, it was long past due for me to paint. I was up till 3a.m. painting a canvas that I started a couple of years ago. The green tea was well worth it.

Corned Beef and Cabbage

We arestill deep in the cold. The weekend was quite wintery... another sub-zero temperature. To start out the cold day, we treated ourselves to Hawaiian pancakes.

On Sunday we celebrated St. Patrick's Day a day early. This year we remembered to pre-order our corned beef from our local meat shop (to avoid walking in to see off another customer with the last piece of corned beef like last year). "Green eggs and ham" sushi rolls for appetizer.

Corned beef and cabbage turned out very good. I was glad to have some leftovers, too!

Yes, It's Warmer, But...

It's March, and we've still had sub-zero temps. Today it's actually a lot warmer, above 20, and it started to snow. Very wet snow, changing into sleet at times. I just wanted to share some pictures of our snow banks as of today. Can you tell we haven't had much snow accumulation the last couple of weeks? Really!The Valentine's Day weekend, now a few weeks ago, we woke up to no running water. As you might have guessed, our water pipe froze, like many other people in this super cold winter. Luckily our city crew showed up the same day rescuing us from having to melt the snow. Our short indoor camping experience definitely made us feel thankful for the convenience of running water.We wonder how long we'll have to keep our water running....Meantime, the Fat Tuesday happened. As usual we treated ourselves to our favorite Lagniappe. Though we ate far too much on Tuesday, we were ready to eat some light sushi rolls for Ash Wednesday. The last of Joe's fall salmon in the freezer was turned into the enjoyable meatless dinner.