Dragon Rolls & Placemats

This week I had a Tuesday off, and for no apparent reason, I made sushi rolls for dinner. As well as a couple of different tuna rolls, I made dragon rolls, shrimp tempura and eel sauce and all. I guess we were celebrating Spring. It really continued snowing since the first of April up until a couple of days ago. After a total accumulation of over 3 feet, the sun finally came out bright and warm. Now that's something to celebrate about.

I finished our new colorful placemats on my trusty knitting loom. I'd been looking for replacements for a while, but hadn't seen anything I really liked at stores. Perfect with our Fiesta dinnerware.

Snowy April

One of those things.... When March started out mild and melted most of the snow, I knew deep in my heart that Winter could return with April. It started snowing on Friday (April 1st) and, except on Monday, hasn't stopped. Over the weekend we probably got 15 inches of snow and are currently on the second round, at least 10 more inches so far. Did I mention it's still snowing as I type? It is hard to believe 3 weekends ago Joe was sitting in the green chair (below pic) outside to enjoy his cigar in his shorts.

Meantime, we think of cherry blossoms that we are missing in Japan. The snow covered tree branches ALMOST look like full of white blossoms. Happy Spring, everyone!

Joe's Birthday Dinner

Every year we celebrate Joe's birthday with a home-cooked Japanese meal. Since we had a couple more packages of sashimi-grade fish we ordered, I made sushi rolls with bigeye tuna last night.

Today we'll be having Joe's family over to celebrate Joe's and his brother Mark's birthday together-- Hawaiian style with Spam musubi and Kahlua pork. The house already smells like pork and Spam!

First Day of Spring

This picture was from St. Patrick's Day storm. We got close to 10 inches total of wet heavy snow. Pretty common for us to have a winter storm around this time. As a sign of spring (hopefully) around the corner, the sun was bright and warm next day, though the temperatures stayed around 30.
On Friday we feasted on some quality sashimi-grade kampachi (greater amberjack) that I ordered for Joe's birthday next week. I know it would be a sin if we keep eating like this during lent, but this made our fish Friday very tasty, even for Joe who rather catches fish than eats it.

And today the air was a bit chilly, but the sun was friendly. We took a walk on the nearby trails, breathing in the refreshing air and taking in Vitamin D. Trees were extra pretty, frosted with snow.

The branches were loaded with buds as well. A perfect walk on the first day of Spring.

Fishing & Corned Beef

This weekend the temps reached almost 60 in the sun. This morning was still a little chilly, about 35, but we went fishing on the break wall. The early melt supposed to have started the spring salmon/ steelhead run. Though we had no expectation of catching any, we put on our warm layers of clothes to make our first cast of the season. The lake was calm, but there was some skim ice closer to the shore. We lasted about an hour. No fish for us, no fish for other fishermen.

Then Joe treated us to warm cups of coffee and donuts afterwards. It was so worth being chilled.

For dinner tonight I cooked corned beef and cabbage, celebrating St. Patrick's Day a few days early. As always, this once a year feast was a welcome treat. We surely have plenty of leftovers to enjoy on the actual 17th, plus to make a couple of corned beef sandwiches for lunch this week. Happy St. Pat's Day!

Kayo's New Experiment

I've been baking my own bread for quite some time now. Just recently I tried the bread yeast starter. After some tweaking to suit my own bread making, my new experiment created a beautiful loaf of bread. Now I keep feeding my "Starter" and in theory it should keep living and help my bread rise every time.

Thinking of Spring

The last couple of weeks we anticipated for the exotic plumeria blossom to open, the first one since November. Days definitely have gotten longer, the sun noticeably stronger. Despite the snow covered garden outside our window, the blossom finally opened this weekend. It smells good, too.
And Sunday we had some friends over for a Spring party, Japanese style. Kayo played the koto very informally before we dug into the feast. The weather even cooperated for the occasion with sunshine and the temperatures close to 40. Happy Spring!