From Lutefisk to Pierogies!

Last weekend we had friends, J & H, visit us from Bloomington (MN).  We've know them for almost 20 years and now they enjoy coming up here--J likes to trim brush and apple trees up in the meadow (really!) and H likes to read, relax and be on vacation.  Both choices work for us!

But this time H brought along the ingredients to create and share some food specialities from her Polish background.  Pierogies!  Pierogies are little half-circle shaped dumplings stuffed with various fillings--hers were filled with a cheese mixture.

She began by making the cheese mixture and chilling that overnight.  Next came the mixture for the dough for the dumplings.  It took a few tries to get the optimal circle size to fit her crimper without having extra dough squeeze out the sides.

Next came deciding how much filling goes onto the dough circle.  She makes these about once a year but usually they do multiple batches and there is a whole assembly line of people for each step.  After that many, they all become experts at their step in the assembly line.  However, this time she was doing it all and every step started as an experiment.

Squeeze the crimper and then try to get it to release with the pierogi intact!

The first few are completed.

Then out to the rocker on the front porch to chill until dinner time.  Temps outside were perfect for chilling!

When it's time to prepare them for dinner, H & J (J came in from the woods!) began by boiling them for about 10 minutes until they floated in the pot.  Then they put them in the frying pan to give them a nice brown finish.  Add in some fried onions, sour cream and some Polish sausage from Kramarczuk's in Minneapolis and we had a great meal!  Thanks J & H!

I wanted to add a picture of The Lake today.  It was a deep, deep blue color with some pretty good wave action going on.  The wind was coming in strong from the north so I wasn't out taking pictures for long!

And back on the slough backwaters, a few guys braved the possibly-thin ice with their ATVs and set up an ice fishing site.  I'd be curious to know how thick the ice is there, but I guess they were pretty close to the edge of shore.  I don't think I've ever seen people ice fishing like that there.  The other river close by where people often fish, Flagg River, has open water now.  

Another weekend begins tomorrow and another month begins on Sunday.  Time to get going on more of my winter projects!

A foggy day in Bayfield County

After an errand-filled trip to Ashland today, we played tourist on our way home, driving through Washburn and on up to Bayfield on the peninsula.  Besides seeing what we could see, we had one intentional stop in Bayfield--going to the Apostle Island Booksellers book store.  They had a 20% off coupon in the summer issue of Grapevine, the newspaper for the Chequamegon Food Co-op in Ashland.  Leann bought the newest Nevada Barr mystery, Destroyer Angel.  Her books usually take place in a U.S. national park since Anna Pigeon, main character, is a U.S. Park ranger.  This time, though, she is on vacation in the Minnesota Iron Range!

We knew there would be a detour on the road back to Cornucopia going around some construction sites, so we went up the hill to all the apple orchards on our way to our favorite backroad tour back through the woods.

The warm front to the south of our area, which was causing some dangerous weather near the town of Siren, was meeting up with the still-chilly temps coming off Lake Superior, creating some really cool fog around the edges.  Lots of lupines everywhere!

The sign below is located at a key intersection up on the top of the hill.  We especially like the bottom sign, "Still lost? Consider letting someone else drive."  Imagine hundreds of cars of people in and around Apple Festival weekend in Bayfield (first weekend in October), all driving this maze of roads going to all the apple orchards.  I'm sure there are a LOT of lost people up on those roads!

Go left and you go back to Bayfield; go right and where you end up depends on how many turns you take.  And that was our problem the first time we chose the right turn.  Our blacktop road became gravel which became a dirt road, but about 20 miles later we found ourselves right outside of Cornucopia!  Since that first trip, it's become a favorite drive of ours - Star Route Drive.

 When we got back home, we realized this was the first delivery day for our Chequamegon CSA.  We drove to the pickup point and retrieved our box for this week which included: Swiss chard, rhubarb, Bibb lettuce, chives, and a jar of mixed berry jam.  They always include a newsletter with recipes so we already tried the recipe for chive vinaigrette.

Swiss chard and CSAs have become a joke for us.  Younger Daughter was just telling me that she belonged to a CSA when she lived in South Bend and got tired of all the Swiss chard every week.  We'll see if this becomes an every week thing!

By the way, lots of things around here have taken the Chequamegon name, probably because of the huge Chequamegon-Nicollet National Forest here in this area.  It's pronounced as "she-wa-me-gon."  Q is silent.  Took me YEARS to learn how to spell it!

Bread, bluebirds, and taking a break with friends

What with goldfinches, orioles, indigo buntings, and rose-breasted grosbeaks, you'd think we would be satisfied in the bird department.  But a couple kinds were still missing--bluebirds and wrens.  Today was the day for bluebirds though.  They were back today checking out our variety of possible bluebird houses to see if any would suit them this year, and chatting to each other up on the power lines.

And we got some more gardening done today.  The old silo pit from when this was a real farm is a great place for a variety of plants.  Since it already had some milkweeds growing in it, today we adding more of the milkweed seeds that we had "vernalized" back in April.  The seeds have been layered in wet paper towels and kept in the refrigerator until today when they all got planted.  We were pleased to see that none of them had rotted, so maybe it will work and they'll grow!  We also put in some tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and the rest of the Monarch Waystation seeds--zinnias, coneflowers, Indian blankets and a couple others. Still to be planted are the scarlet sage plants that we seeded back in April.  They are still so little and spindly that I question whether they have any future at all!

And just as we finished that project, our friends stopped by with some little flowering tree saplings that they received from an Arbor Day donation.  We sat out on our front porch and watched the bluebirds and the world go by for a little while.  It was a beautiful day!  And we shared some slices of our homemade white bread!?!

The subject of bread machines came up because it was their bread machine bread a couple weeks ago that caused us to think it would be fun to have one.  The bread machine arrived (Amazon.com) last Friday and I tried the first loaf on Saturday.  It was a recipe with rosemary, olive oil--nothing very complicated, but it was lumpy, tasteless and AWFUL!  But there was a lot going on and I couldn't troubleshoot the problem right then.  Yesterday I finally tried it again, but I made the basic, boring white bread.

The crust is a little "crusty" but I'm encouraged to try it again, maybe with a little more exciting list of ingredients!  

Mowing the lawn took up the rest of our day.  By Sunday night we realized that neither of our riding lawn mowers--new or old--were working right.  So our angel-mechanic fixed them both up again and delivered them today.  Leann used the "new-to-us" mower, but she may be the only one to use that.  I think she thinks it's too complicated for me to use.  So I used my tried and true and trusty old one and mowed again what had just been mowed last Saturday.

All those feet of snow this winter must have put lots of good stuff in the ground to grow some powerfully thick grass!

Tomorrow our truckload of composted dirt comes.  Finally!  More to plant!