New Grill and Earth Day

Joe recently upgraded his gas grill, with a newer generation of his 10 plus-year-old one. He was having a challenging time grilling in the cold... more so than usual. He found his tired and old but trusty grill had a hole in it. It was time to replace. Notice in the picture the garage door is shut because it wasn't warm enough outside. Cold weather doesn't stop us from grilling though. Especially with the new grill, we had to try cooking BBQ ribs. Joe loves his new grill!

Last Saturday, Earth Day, we started off to the beach with our coffee to be outdoors before the dry weather was changing to rain and snow as forecasted. The morning sun was nice and warm, and we got to enjoy a pleasant couple of hours walking and picking rocks. 

And now we have two more days till trout season. We're more than likely to be sleeping in on the opening day, since it's supposed to rain, snow, and who knows what else. The weather guys were right about the snow we got last night. Needless to say, we are planning to check out the streams tonight. Just to see.

Spring!? and Fishing Fever

April came with another snow storm... but 10 days later we are pleasantly surprised how much snow has melted, with the temperatures reaching 70 degrees. 

Joe had his full beard since deer season in November and just went back to his normal look. Only appropriate to bring in Spring. "Before" and...

"After."

On Easter Sunday we went to check out the beach and were delighted to see the sandy lakeshore instead of ice. The first rock picking and rock skipping of the season!

Officially two and a half weeks till the opening day of trout season. There's plenty of snow in wooded areas. We shall see if we can walk into Apple Creek to fish AND how high the river water levels will be....

Our March Madness

Not exactly sure where our March has gone.... Vaguely remember we tried our best thinking of spring on March 3rd, Girls' Day in Japan. Except it seemed that we received 1-2 feet of snow every week since mid-February... and continued. 

Though the days were getting longer, and the sunshine warmer, we fully expected our March to be far from spring-like. Still, we enjoyed soaking in as much sun as we could out on the trails.

We also shared a cold and lost a small part of the month, I suppose, after resisting against all those bugs all season. Last weekend's winter storm was perfect for us to stay home and recover. When the sun finally came out on Sunday, we celebrated belated St. Patrick's Day with venison stew.

The below picture shows our snow bank exactly a week ago. Snow is melting, but has long ways to go.

And it had been a long while since we made gyoza dumplings. Joe's birthday was coming up, so I made them on my day off. I prefer our homemade dumpling skins (I need Joe's help with them) better than store-bought ones, but they were still very tasty and made me wonder why I waited so long.

Unfortunately I had to work all this Joe's birthday weekend, but we'll make up for it next week. Happy Birthday, Joe!

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. 

"Corona" Party

Exactly a year ago we both came down with Covid. To remind ourselves to stay healthy, I wanted to have a "Corona" themed dinner today. Naturally the menu was Mexican. I cooked Birria tacos with Joe's venison roast, which turned out fantastic. Sorry we didn't share it with friends.

Like last January we had to get snow off the roofs, especially when the weather was switching to rain. This was Joe's second time to shovel our roofs this season. 

The manual labor of moving snow in the cold does make our beer taste better. We hope everyone is staying healthy in this new year!

The New Year

We received another fresh batch of snow this week, which gave us this picture perfect winter wonderland outside. Today we went out for a walk in the magical woods. 

Fresh air made us hungry... so we had our favorite combo snacks. Getting back to our normal weekend routine felt right.

For dinner we had sukiyaki, to mark the beginning of new year. Happy New Year!