Did I Say It's Cold??

It's freezing cold!! This morning when I was leaving for work, the temp was still below zero. (I took the picture through our frosted back door.) Though the sun was out, deceivingly cold, the temperature stayed single digit. Now, that's cold. Real cold. Tonight we are expecting it to be 13 below or something. It's actually too cold to even snow.
The photo below was from a couple of days ago. We had nice, fluffy snow the way we supposed to get.
Yesterday, on my day off, I wanted to have fish. I picked up fresh trout fillet from our fishery by the lake to make "chirashi" sushi. We don't need a reason to have sushi, right?
We invited Joe's extended family again for our winter festival this Saturday. I decided to serve Asian/ Chinese dishes to sort of celebrate Chinese New Year. On our menu is Spam musubi. Joe will be busy again making all those Spam musubi on Saturday!

New Year Celebration

Happy New Year!
We had nice and relaxing Christmas and New Year's Day. We had a couple of friends over for BBQ ribs and Cajun beans & rice on New Year's Eve. We stayed up past midnight finishing up the dishes to welcome the year 2012.
Since we had not so typical dishes for Japanese New Year celebration standards the night before, I made a simple "udon" dish for the New Year's Day.
Then, next day, Joe had a snow day due to the blowing snow, while I went to work as normal. Yesterday was my day off for the week, so I enjoyed cooking. I roasted a whole chicken Thai style, served with spring rolls. I hardly roast whole birds, but the book I'm reading made me want to.... I'm that simple, I guess.
The next thing I want to try making is homemade kimchi. The new year, some new recipes to try.

Christmas Almost Here

Today was my last day of work before Christmas, too. Joe and I have three days off!! A miracle. Christmas is almost here, and we are almost ready.
We are going to see "Sherlock Holmes" the new movie tomorrow, so Joe is making me watch the first one on DVD tonight. So he doesn't have to explain to me as much in the theater. Gotta start the movie now.
Merry Christmas to all!!
P.S. Yes, it is lightly snowing outside.

Leg Lamp Cookies, Yet Again

Finally we took time to make leg lamp cookies on Wednesday evening. And finally I got to use my new RED hand mixer from my birthday. It was doubly entertaining because Joe's cousin and his wife sat and watched Joe make his cookies. No explanation. Just funny.
Then, last night was our frosting party. Joe was better with covering more cookies, and I made them neater. Joe was in charge of his leg lamp cookies, of course.
Lots of snowflakes.
Joe's masterpieces.

Happy Printing!

Finally, I printed our holiday season greeting cards today... all 115 of them. Once again I was quite happy smelling the fresh inks, though I felt a little like a printing machine with a stack of paper too slow to disappear.
I must say it was quite an efficient operation. The hardest part really was to come up with the design idea. I'm not used to the full-time job taking up lots of my time and mind.
Little by little, we are getting ready for the Holidays....

Cold Day... and Sukiyaki

Friday, my day off, was a cold day. At 11 the temperature was barely 10 degrees F. You know it's cold when the sun is out and the temps stay below the freezing point all day. Brrrrr.
Upon Joe's request, I made sukiyaki for dinner. A perfect meal for a cold night.
I'm actually impressed that Joe can do raw eggs. I think he's qualified to have REAL sukiyaki next time we visit Japan. We just can't get the marbled and real thin cuts of beef around here.

Our Christmas Tree

Our usual potted pine tree has been decorated for the holiday season... for a couple of weeks now. This year I only put up the antique glass bulbs to stay simple and classic.
We have lots to do before Christmas. I'm just getting started on our greeting card design. I'll help Joe make his leg lamp cookies, too. All the holiday shopping left to do... all the fun.