Bourbon & Snow

Okay, this is my last Christmas traveling post, I promise. The thing is, our life isn't that exciting regularly so I can get a lot of interesting blog blurbs out of our recent travels.

There was tons of snow when we went home, which was pretty exciting for both me and Troy. We really miss it. It's somewhat of a novelty when you only see it for a few days a year, if that.

Though we were really busy with wonderful Christmas celebrations with my family, we managed to get out to the woods to go snowshoeing one day with Troy's brothers and our dear friends Sarah and Brad.

It was really wonderful to spend time with all of them and to be out in the snow. I really love how the snow looks with the birch trees.

At the top of Lookout "Mountain" - The Laurentian Divide

As he's prone to do, Troy tried to get us to take a trail that would have kept us trudging through the snow until well after dark. While most people try to AVOID getting lost, Troy actively tries to GET lost sometimes. Luckily, Sarah knows him well enough to have had the foresight to pick up a map herself. At one point, he got it away from her and she and Casey had to wrestle it back from him.


Troy brought a flask of bourbon, which always helps to make people feel warm and fuzzy. We all enjoyed a snack of MN beer, bourbon and Wisconsin smoked string cheese after this little fiasco.

Bourbon became the theme for our ride home. We didn't take as time much time to drive on the way back but we treated ourselves to a night at the historic Seelbach Hotel in Louisville. It was a 13-hr day of driving to get there but we were able to relax and enjoy a nice meal at the bar and Troy was able to get a flight (4 little tasters) of relatively rare bourbons. He was in heaven.

The next day we made a brief detour to visit the Buffalo Trace distillery. We got to sample bourbon and also Rain vodka which is made there. A pretty cool way to break up the drive!

Home for Christmas

I'll be making a series of posts about our trip home as there is much to tell. Sorry for the delay but I've been busy trying to recuperate from all the excitement.

When we got to Wisconsin and Minnesota we were assaulted by extremely low temperatures (-25 degrees and colder with the wind) and lots of snow which didn't make driving that fun. But in Duluth when we arrived we had a warm welcome. My sister and Ethan are both wonderful cooks and they prepared a huge, delicious spread for us, most notably including some amazing appetizers--a choice cut of venison (backstrap--which is compared to filet mignon) wrapped in bacon. Yum!

They also made delicious hot wings. Ethan and Troy grilled the wings outside. It was so cold that the last of the marinade in the bowl and Troy's beer froze before they finished!


The next day when we got to Virginia (our hometown) my mom had prepared a wonderful meal of stuffed shells. We also got to visit with my step-sister Shelly and her 9-month old daughter, Amelia.

Amelia is just beginning to walk and she enthralled all of us (especially Troy) with lots of enthusiastic and creative sounds. She kind of sounded like a little engine revving up, lots of adorable gurgling and tongue rolling noises.

Here are my mom and stepdad with Shelly and Amelia.

The next day my mom and I attempted to make "hot air" candy a wonderful, sweet treat that we sold at Canelake's, the homemade candy store where I got my first job at age 16. Our first attempt was disastrous, resulting in the candy burning and puffing up and seeping over the pan like hot, molten lava. The second attempt, which Troy got some pics of, went much better.

After the candy is cooked you crack it up and dip it in chocolate. Mmmmm.... Not quite as good as Canelake's but people seemed to really enjoy it.

We had a wonderful time visiting with the Rogers family and with my mom's family and the Maki's too. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of Christmas itself. I think I felt like I was on vacation so taking pictures seemed a bit like a chore. It's too bad because a lot of other fun was had, but it's so much more fun to talk about it when there are pictures to illustrate it too.

A big thanks to our families for making our time home extra special!

Road Trip

This year we drove home to MN for Christmas. It's a 21 hour drive so we broke it up with some fun adventures along the way. The first day we drove about 10 hours to Lafayette, Indiana to stay with our friends Saralyn and Jason. We haven't seen them since they got married in Tahoe 2 years ago. Saralyn is now at Purdue getting her doctorate and Jason is working for an environmental law firm based in California. It was really fun to catch up with them.

We woke early the next morning and left for Wisconsin. We had a 6 hour or so hour drive. We stopped for breakfast at a lovely bakery/diner in a cute town called Mt. Horeb where Norwegians and their troll folklore dominate. Troy enjoyed a lefse omelette and I picked up some rosettes.

It was a snowy drive but thankfully we ended our travel early in the day when we stopped and met friends Matt and Eryn at the House on the Rock, a crazy tourist attraction that is hard to describe. Essentially, an eccentric, rich man built a humongous house and filled it with many collections of assorted things--among them guns, santas, chandeliers, and the largest indoor carousel in the world. Troy wanted to visit for his dissertation research because of the enormous collection of mechanical instruments.

It was overwhelming, strange and pretty amazing. It was very dark, so hard to do the place justice but here are a few pictures that give you an idea.

The "Infinity Room"

One of the many santa collections

The world's largest indoor Carousel (but it doesn't have a single horse)

Troy was a happy boy. The instruments and orchestras were playing songs like Bolero, Blue Danube, and the theme from the Godfather.

Our favorite, "The Mikado"

We stayed at a hotel with our friends and ventured out in Dodgeville, WI for dinner at a funny sports bar despite -25 degree temperatures and lots of snow. Troy ordered the soup of the day, "the kneebuckler"--a soup made with beer, Wisconsin cheese and brats--but it turned out to be "burnt" according to the waitress. He was placated by getting them to put deep-fried cheese curds on his baked potato though.

Later we swam at the hotel's indoor/outdoor pool. It was pretty funny to be able to swim outside in subzero temps. Not exactly the most pleasant experience, but still kind of a rush.

Joulutortu!

Well we've been scrambling to get ready for our drive to MN for Christmas. We will be leaving this morning and I'm still up packing. It's been a crazy week tying up loose ends at work, trying to visit with friends and baking x-mas treats.

I tried another ethnic treat this year--Finnish Christmas tarts. They were lots of work but very tasty. Thankfully Troy likes to roll out dough because I found that part very annoying.



We brought some of the treats over to Peter and Jaimee's last night. I wanted to get a chance to see them and Ian before we left. Ian is hilarious. You can tell he has foodie parents because he already enjoys eating (and talking about) pistachios and pomegranates. He also showed us his new play sushi set. It has little wooden pieces of sushi, roe and ginger and a play knife. He handed me a piece and when I asked what it was he said "tuna roll." I love that a nearly 2 year old knows more about sushi than I do!

What a smart little boy, he loves being read to and reading to others (including their cat Sally).


Well, back to packing. Nothing like waiting til the last minute! Luckily there will be plenty of time to nap on the 21-hour drive. :(

We'll be back on the 29th so probably no blog posts until after that. Hope you and yours have a wonderful holiday season!

Yoga Baby

This is pretty special and cute--I just had to share it. How many 15-month olds do you know that do downward-facing dog?

Potica!

One of the wonderful sweets that I grew up with was a Slovenian walnut bread called potica (puh-teet-sah). My grandmother (former president of the National Slovenian Women's Union) makes the most delicious potica you could ever imagine. For Christmas and Easter, grandma's potica is a treat that we all look forward to. And for my sister's recent wedding reception, each person was served a piece of grandma Jean's potica along with their slice of wedding cake.

Potica is prized not only because it is so delicious, but because it is so labor intensive. Despite being interested in carrying on ethnic traditions and enjoying cooking as much as I do, I have never attempted to make it myself--until this weekend.

My friend (and fellow potica-lover) Courtney and I planned a day of baking on Saturday. We were thinking we'd make a number of different kinds of Christmas cookies. Then Courtney came across a copy of a Slovenian magazine--the Zarja--that my mom had sent me. It had a recipe for "short-cut" potica that used Pillsbury crescent roll dough (rather than homemade). We decided that we were up for the challenge. Here we are, hard at work.

Here's me rolling out the dough--this step is really tough because you are supposed to get it very, very thin but of course not break it.

Courtney, preparing the walnut filling.

Spreading on the walnut filling. The next step is to roll it all up like a jellyroll.

The final product. Not nearly as good as grandma Jean's but still pretty damn yummy if I do say so myself!

I had been thinking I'd give my potica away as a holiday treat but I'm starting to have second thoughts....

Hope your holiday season is full of much joy and wonderful treats!

'Tis the Season

Sorry for the lapse in posts but I've been terribly sick with a stomach flu of some kind. I'm finally feeling pretty normal this evening and was able to eat almost a full meal. It always amazes me when I'm taken out by a brief illness like that just how much I take my health for granted.

I got sick just in time for our downstairs neighbor and friend Liz's holiday party. While all our friends were downstairs drinking homemade eggnog, eating yummy food and listening to Christmas records on Saturday, I was barfing my guts out. Rotten luck. Let's just hope that's it for sickness for the season. I'll knock on wood.

Troy and our friend Ted have been busy this week making light and noise emitting tops for Let There Be Light--an event coming up on Friday at the local community college. Ted and his wife Rebekah had a piece their last year. It's all about artists gathering to create projects that somehow deal with light--based around the winter solstice. It takes place outside. You walk around with a flashlight, it's a really cool event.

Anyway, they've been up until all hours for the past several nights, soldering at the dining room table and cutting and sanding things in the shed. I was going to take a picture of the mess on the table when I got home today to post but Troy surprised the hell out of me and had the house really cleaned up when I got home. No picture for you to see but a very happy girl!

My friend Courtney has moved to Virginia now. I visited her last Friday before I got sick at her lovely log home in rural Virginia. She's coming this weekend to stay with us and we're going to make Christmas cookies so maybe I'll have some interesting food pictures to post.

I feel like I'm very behind this year. Not hardly any shopping done and no Christmas cards written. This class has sapped a bunch of my free time. And it's been very busy for me at work. We have a big event at the Art Museum tomorrow night that I'm helping to organize. After that, I hope to have some more time and less anxiety. But crazy enough, after that it's only a week before we start heading home to Minnesota for Christmas!