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!

After the clean-up comes the burn

One of the satisfactions that comes with cleaning out junk is actually disposing of it--removing it from your life.  Today the conditions were right for a good burn--no wind, snow on the ground--so we took all of the papers we cleaned out yesterday and hauled them out to our on-going burn pile.

 It was all pretty uneventful until an small airplane flew over our house REAL LOW and, of course, my first thought was that it was because of our--very little--fire.  And besides, I had just this week signed up online with DNR for our yearly burning permit, and as I said, conditions were safe for burning.  But we watched the plane flying north then right away it veered to the right and flew over the lakeshore towards the location of the ice caves. We decided it might have been people from a news agency checking out the ice situation.  And just now on the 10pm news, they reported on the LACK of any good ice yet this year.  Oh, well...

This photo below, posted on Facebook just now, was taken by my neighbor, David McRoberts, showing the area by the ice caves but taken from a spot up above and looking down to the water from up high.  He must have hiked over there from Meyers Beach or some other good access point.  Lots of ice hanging down but no ice to walk on!

And just a few more pictures from today...  This is one of the oldest trees in the orchard by our house and it's still loaded with apples!  Hmmm...what can you do with frozen apples?

After the burning was over we drove over to Herbster for lunch.  There we saw this pretty impressive piece of equipment used to groom the snowmobile trails.  I just checked the Bayfield County snowmobile trail report, and the description there for trail conditions was only "fair."  Can't believe I'd say this, but we really need snow!

Herbster has a beautiful beach and campground right next to the water, but the wave action is coming a little too close to the shore and trying to wash away the road.  Everything is still drivable but it could be an interesting spring for this location and others.

This is the same Herbster beach looking east.  Imagine yourself on a warm July evening sitting by your tent and campfire, and listening to the waves washing up to the sand.  Yes, there's snow and ice piled up there now...that's why I said "imagine!"

And finally, on our trip home we looked up and saw this eagle in the tree looking out over the lake.  It looks like a lump, but, really, it's an eagle.

That's all for today!

Bleak, but even bleak is okay.

Today could only be described as "bleak."  Dark and cloudy, and not even any big weather conditions leading to any big excitement--no snow to speak of and even the temperature at right around 32˚ was kind of boring.  The only conversation it inspired was comparisons with the FREEZING cold from last year.

Bleak, right?  And that's open water out there.

In fact, even the ice in the channel has broken up.  It's the kind of day when the ice s-l-o-w-l-y moves back and forth, kind of undulates underneath, it could make you a little queasy! 

So we checked the Flagg River (or Flag River--you can see it spelled both ways) and it also had open water.  This is just up our road but the river flows down to The Lake.

 More bleakness...

So, to add to the bleakness, I was organizing papers in preparation for doing income taxes, both for our business and my own.  That process always leads me to going through stored boxes of old "important" papers and documents, and attempting to get rid of old paperwork!  It's getting easier now that so many things are online, but I still have that "keep for 7 years" rule in my head.  So still too much stuff!

But then there are the boxes of sentimental things--cards, letters, old job-related document, fun stuff.  And there I found this little newspaper article that had been in my mother's "sentimental" things from years ago.  In her handwriting on the top, it says it's "taken from the Hayward paper written by the Postmaster's daughter."  There is no date referenced on it--all I know is that it was printed around Valentine's Day, I think from back in the early 1980's.  I don't know who the postmaster would have been back then, but I'm sure some people reading this might know.

But it sums up life in Port Wing pretty well, so I wanted to pass it along to Port Wing Passages readers.

Yes, Port Wing hasn't died yet for sure and those of us who stay here all winter share a special connection with each other as we keep the home fires burning for those who escape to the south until spring!

Christmas - All that's left is the memories!

Today was a picture-perfect winter day--blue sky, warm(ish) sun, temps up into the 30s.  It was a winter day like we never had last year until April!  I hear we need some snow though.  People are having trouble with their septic lines freezing up because the ground is so frozen so deep.  Always something!

 Here is the lake as it looks today.  On Sunday as we drove to Duluth, the lake was frozen solid out as far as we could see.  The windy conditions today have caused wave action that has broken up the ice out just beyond the pier.  Warm(er) temps, but cold winds.  It was a cold walk out on the pier!

And this is the channel looking to the southwest.  The angle of the sun on the refrozen ice made it sparkle like diamonds.

And here's a close-up of the ice.  And, no, people aren't allowed to try to get to the ice caves yet.  The camera shows ice in some of the protected bays near the caves, but warm days like this will slow down the big freeze needed to access them safely.

So, back to Christmas.  We undecorated the tree on Monday--always a bittersweet deal for me.  I'm sorry to put everything away but also kind of like the uncluttered, clean look that is left behind.  Besides, we need room for the jigsaw puzzle table!  Rather than try to move the very dry tree out the door to the deck, we used our giant Fiskars to cut off the branches while the tree was still in the house and in the stand.  Much neater!

But, as promised :-) here are some more of our decorations and their stories.

This manger scene has been in my family since way before I was born.  Little has changed with it as long as I can remember except for the ears, legs and tails of the animals have had to have repairs through the years, especially my younger years.

I always like to arrange the pieces of the fence around the whole scene.

The animals are so cute.  Can't blame a little kid for touching them, can you?

See the camel?  He's had the most repairs through the years, but he's still standing!

The peppermint candy in the middle came from a smocking class I took about 30 years ago in Redwood Falls with Jeanne K. back when I lived in the little parsonage on the prairie.   I think I branched out from little ornaments to smocking dresses for my little girls.  Fun!

 This little angel was given to me, and made, by my Sunday School teacher, Hazel Peterson, before I had was even started school.  

 This was a  Mom and Dad Christmas gift made back when I was in first grade.  It's a scene cut out from a Christmas card and glued onto a canning lid.  (My mother kept everything!)

This is a Leann creation of a piece of driftwood carved into a Santa Claus!

This was from my crocheting year, about 1982, I think.  It's crocheted, then I blew up a balloon inside of the crocheting, and then dipped it in a heavy solution of sugar water to make it stiff.   And it's still here all these years later.

And then there was my tatting year.  The hardest part of tatting is learning to "flip it" to get the tatting knot on the right thread.  I think I may have used starch to stiffen this one.  Not as sticky as sugar!

And, finally, my quilling year, actually I was quilling for a few years back then.  Quilling, if you're not familiar, is done by twirling thin strips of paper using a "quilling tool" to make designs large and small.  I couldn't create anything of my own but give me a pattern to follow, and I'm your girl!

So, here's to Christmas, 2014!  We were happy to share it with both daughters and their SOs for a few days.  We ventured into the making of lutefisk again with relative success, but how can one really measure lutefisk success.  I liked it and it brought back all the good memories, so I say it was good!  Thanks for sharing our Christmas with us!