Stuff

On the weekend there was a winter festival in our area. There were special events all weekend. We went to town for Bethany's concert, "Hot Cello With Whipped Cream", which was wonderful. Just before we went inside for the concert, we saw this ice carving, done by someone local, who does them all over the world. The dog sled races were held in the village this weekend, so this fit in with the theme. It was fun watching them work on it. I went back a couple of times over the weekend to get pictures.

Then Monday morning, a beautiful sunny morning I found this (you may have to enlarge the picture to see it). Where the heck do they come from. Look above Susan's eagle pictures going across the centre from upper right to lower left.
A cobweb sparkles in the sun. Not just any cobweb. This sucker goes from the lower part of the ceiling fan, which is about 20 feet from the floor to the top of the lamp, which is about four feet from the floor. Where do these things come from? How do they build them? I guess they're just one of life's little mysteries.

~ ~

The Good China is Put Away

The good china has been put away and the kitchen is all cleaned up. This was a really successful supper. The menu included a couple of things that I'd never done before. Turns out none of the six of us had done quail, never mind spatchcocked (remove the spine and flatten) any poultry and none had done gnocchi (pronounced NYOH-kee).

The quail are very little birds, not much bigger than our parrot! Here is the little guys before J & I started to do surgery on them.

This is what our supper looked like. Everything was a huge hit. I should add that the quail looks sort of messy, but we put it on a slice of grilled bread, and we put two on one slice. If we'd had two slices each it would have looked prettier.

This is everyone all ready to sample our efforts.

J and I did the quail and the green beans. C and the Mister did the gnocchi and the sweet potatoes. R and D did the eggplant bruschetta and the orange souffles.

Another Gourmet Supper

As I've blogged about other times, we have our gourmet supper friends coming tomorrow. This is the group where the six of us get together and prepare all the food after we're all here. Each of us pairs up with someone (other than our spouse - we can cook with them any time) and we divide up the individual recipes amongst the three groups.

We're hosting this month and I've been planning this one since December, I'm really excited about it. Here's the menu.

Appetizer

Bruschetta with Grilled Eggplant and Onion

~~
Entree

Grilled Spatchcocked Quail with Sage Butter

(oops the pic is upside down)

Spicy Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Orange & Honey

Browned Butter Green Beans with Pine Nuts

Pan Seared Gnocchi with Browned Butter and Sage

~~

Dessert

Individual Orange Souffles

~~

Doesn't it all sound great??

Busy Saturday

Yesterday was a really busy day. It started with my first ballet lesson. I was told to expect to have sore muscles today, but for some strange reason, I don't. I really did enjoy it. Someone "snuck" this picture of my feet.

~

The Mister waited for me to finish my lesson, then we headed out to CG and her Mister's cottage for lunch and snowshoeing. After a good feed of chili and corn bread, we strapped on the snowshoes and headed out for our adventure. It was about 4 minutes out when CG tripped on her knotted up feet and landed in the snow. It took about 5 minutes for her to sort herself out.

~

~

This is the misters, breaking the trail.

~

This is CG just looking good.

~

This is around the time that CG realized there was a wet layer of slush on the lake. She seemed bothered (wide eyes and higher pitch to her voice) when I commented on the fact that you could sort of feel a sinking feeling with each step.

~

We got home, and prepared a salad, and went to visit friends on the lake. As always, guitars came out and we sang old songs.

~

Just an altogether great day.

~