Valentine's Day to Winter Storm Olive

Just before Valentine's Day we finally got to try one restaurant in town we had wanted to. They offer a four-course menu that changes weekly. And it's part of a wine bar. We even had to dress up to meet the "casual elegant" dress code. Well, it's the UP. Thank goodness, plaid shirts are allowed. To say the least, the whole experience was amazing. Not often can a meal blow your mind. Even better we were able to share the evening with P & J from Ironwood.

For our actual Valentine's Day, we ended up cooking a gourmet meal at home. We tried a new venison recipe: Grilled Venison Backstrap, served with Cauliflower Puree and Balsamic Reduction. Joe had never cooked his venison like this before and was blown away. 

Overall, this February has been milder than usual. In fact a sled dog race event was canceled due to the lack of snow and the icy conditions after some rain. Even so, we still had plenty of snow to snowshoe in the woods this past weekend. It was so nice to play in the sun!! And now we are getting 20 inches of fresh snow from the Winter Storm Olive. We are very fortunate just to deal with lots of fluffy snow, the element that we know well. Our garden gnome is deep under the snow... and it's not quite done snowing yet. 

Frozen!!

It's been cold for a week or so... not much snow, but subzero temperatures. We have probably seen more sunshine this week than all of January leading up to this super cold weather. The trees in the pastel morning light from our kitchen window sure looked inviting and warm... but it was only -9 °F.

Naturally our potted basil plants on the window sill is not too happy about winter, either. And even more traumatized every time I snip off some leaves for cooking. Today we had a pizza night to eat up leftovers, which turned out to be quite a nice spread.