All day - just going from one thing to the next

Today is Saturday, so it's Dump Day, of course.  A quick trip to the marina and we found that the circle drive was so full of people and cars with boats, that it was almost too crowded to get through.  So the holiday weekend has begun and the fishermen are out on the lake!  It's one of those days when it's 70˚ up at our house and 46˚ down at The Lake, 2 miles away.  You can just feel the cold air from the lake colliding with the warm air coming up from the south.

We put in a few more hours this morning painting the Town Hall pavilion, adding more Town Hall Green to the posts and trim.  We left about noon, but we hear that the painting continued until about 6pm tonight.  That old wood just sucks up the paint, and they had to go buy two more gallons of white paint.  It should be done soon!

Then home to wait for our guests - Leann's Mom, two sisters and nephew.  But first I made a new batch of our granola, seen below.  Oatmeal, slivered almonds, coconut, dried cherries, cranberries, apricots, and honey to bring it all together.  Tastes great with yogurt and all ready for summer guests!

Homemade granola out of the oven and cooling

Leann's family came in her sister's pickup pulling a trailer loaded with a new (to us) riding mower and a new (for real) snowblower for next winter.  No more little city-sized snowblower! Next year we'll be able to make paths all over the farm!  But let's not think about snow anymore for a while.

Then, to our surprise, while using the new mower in our orchard, Leann's sister came back carrying something in her hand.  Morel mushrooms! (we think...)  We have NEVER seen morels ANYWHERE here in Port Wing.  Then they went back to look for more, and found another one.  They weren't very fresh, so we're going to dry them a little and crumble them under the tree where they were found.  Maybe the spores will make more for next year...now that we know they can be found here!

We finished off the night with a campfire and s'mores out in our newly-mown back yard, a gathering that lasted until long after dark.  While we watched the fire, we heard all kinds of "night sounds" - cows bellering on the neighbor's farm, frogs "peeping" in the woods, some kind of wild animal with a high, shrill distressed bark, and even some sirens - kind of a rare sound up here, but maybe not so rare on a big holiday weekend like this.

It was a full day.  We'll see what we can find for fun tomorrow!

Mardi Gras Northern Wisconsin-Style

Fair warning - this maybe won't resemble Mardi Gras celebrations as they happen in other parts of the country or world, but this is how we celebrated here in town.

First, it just so happened that we served our breakfast guests oatmeal pecan pancakes on a day that is observed by some as Shrove Tuesday.  As I just learned, Shrove comes from the word "shrive" which means to confess.  I also just learned that pancakes are a traditional food for Shrove Tuesday because they use up rich foods such as eggs, milk and sugar. So we were right with the season this morning.

And then this evening we attended a Mardi Gras Wisconsin-Style event at our First Lutheran Church.  The meal served was pretty typical Wisconsin - brats & hot dogs, potato salad, pickles & condiments, bars and cookies. And it was all very tasty.

The room was all decorated with bows and beads and lots of color, but the main reason for the gathering happened after the meal.  It was time for the "Pampered Chef" party and here's the reason why.  Last summer our church took on the challenge of re-shingling the roof.  It's a big roof so it was a big project.  I thought I had a picture from when the guys were working on it last August in all the 95˚ heat and humidity, but I don't so here's how it looked before the project started.

So someone had the idea to have a winter gathering to bring us all together for Mardi Gras, to make us all feel warm and...to have a fundraiser to clear off the books on the roof project.  If you don't know, Pampered Chef parties are kind of like Tupperware parties but for cookware and all kinds of related things.  I had only ever been to one PC party before but I really liked what I bought back then, so with credit cards in hand, we went down and checked it out.   LOTS of cars in the parking lot, LOTS of people buying things, so hopefully it was successful.  

And...I won a prize...something I was going to buy anyway!  Let's flip more pancakes!

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More Swedish - I forgot to mention learning thank you and excuse me yesterday.  And today we added some adverbs - rather, very, quite, a couple important conjunctions - and, but, and a couple good verbs - I think and I speak.

And, even more fun, it was warm enough to take my lessons out on my walk today!  Older Daughter says I'm lucky I have country roads to walk and talk (to myself) on, something not as easily done on busy city streets where she lives!  And all was going good today until my iPod battery died.  Try again tomorrow!

March-ing on in Swedish!

In the interest of full B&B food disclosure, we had an epic fail at breakfast this morning.  The pecan caramel rolls, which we have made DOZENS of times, were so bad we don't know if even the crows will eat them...and they eat everything!  But, we had enough other items for our guests to eat, and they were very understanding.  We did a little troubleshooting and maybe have figured out where it all went bad.  Now we just need to get back up on the horse, or bicycle, choose your challenge, and try it again sometime.

And there are NO pictures to remind us!

So instead of focusing on the bad, here is my new winter challenge fun that came in the mailbox yesterday - Pimsleur Swedish!

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Doing all of this genealogy and translation work has definitely inspired me.  And now I am connected again to my cousin, originally from Sweden, so there is more inspiration.  I learned about the "Pimsleur Approach" to learning languages from Older Daughter who is currently learning Spanish.  She was impressed with how they teach it and so I thought I would try it.  I was a German teacher for a few years before I became a school media specialist, and it is definitely a different way to teach languages.  But at the end of 30 minutes, the little conversation that was unintelligible at the beginning of the lesson, sounds like old hat at the end!

I was a little apprehensive because with this method you only hear the words spoken on the DVDs without seeing them until well beyond the first 10 lessons that I'm starting with.  I'm very much a visual learner, and I remember back in 5th grade in Bannockburn School when Madame Ivy was trying to teach French to our class.  It wasn't until I could see the words that it all started to make sense to me.  But now along with learning some phrases in the 30 minute session every day, I also have Ingabritt's blog postings to learn how all the words go together and how people talk in everyday situations.

And pretty soon, when/if the weather gets warm, I can connect up my iPod and practice my Swedish out on my walks!

Too fun!

The B in B&B that is Breakfast

Our B&B - Larson Creek Farm Bed & Breakfast - has been open for almost a year now.  We had our first official guests in April last year.  For about the last 8-10 years we thought we might want to open a B&B when we moved here after retirement from teaching in the Minneapolis area.  We stayed in a few B&Bs to see how we liked them, we attended a weekend workshop sponsored by the Wisconsin Bed & Breakfast Association, we read lots of books and websites on the topic, and we built a house with room arrangements that could serve as comfortable rooms with the amenities guests would like.

But then there was the other B - Breakfast!

Neither one of us is a natural in the kitchen.  And we knew from the beginning that no one was ever going to attach the word "gourmet" to our meals, so on our website we refer to our meals as "hearty Northwoods!"  Not many people have left our breakfast table hungry, but it's just-plain-food that they had eaten - variations on pancakes, waffles, eggs in combinations with other foods, fresh fruits when possible, whole grain breads, and, of course, bacon from Jim's Meats in Iron River.

But first we had to try out our recipes to see if they are workable for morning preparation and tasty enough to serve guests.  And that's where our friends entered the picture.  We prepared two or three dishes and then invited them to try them out and give us a thumbs up or thumbs down.  We had some guests who stayed for multiple days and then we needed several menu possibilities so we didn't repeat anything.  And now were are starting to have repeat business from last year.  All summer last year I was going to start a spreadsheet so we could record what we served to which guests on which days.  Did I ever do that?  No, but it's started now so from here on out we're set!

And now when it's snowy and cold outside,  it's a good time of year to try new recipes again.  I think we're going to try a new one this weekend and I'm not sure if we'll have time to test it out first.  We'll see if they are ready for an adventure!

Today I just wanted to make something with unfed sourdough starter, not necessarily for a B&B menu.  Maintaining a healthy sourdough starter is kind of like having another child to care for.  The intricacies of that could be a blog post unto itself.  Anyway, the latest King Arthur flour catalog had a recipe for sourdough pretzels, so I tried it.  I remembered something about pretzels and Lent, with the shape of the pretzel resembling the crossed arms of a monk in prayer.  I had some trouble getting those pretzels curled into the right shape, but I'll try it again sometime soon, now that I sort of have the knack.  (There are YouTube videos of it!)

So here they are.  Not so pretty to look at but tasty coming out of the oven.   But then again, what bread isn't?