Blog Archives

December 25: Christmas Day

Posted on December 25, 2012
by

Time flew by extremely fast once again, and Christmas arrived way faster than we expected. I start to believe that time will actually speed up toward the holidays, especially when I’m planning to make handmade presents and cards.

Our Christmas was wonderful. While we both missed our families, we still had a great time together – and with the dog of course! We cooked traditional Scandinavian Christmas delicacies such as potato, carrot and pasta casseroles, Swedish Finnish meatballs, vegetable salad of onions, carrots, red beets and pickles… We also had pot roasted beef. And a variety of cookies as desserts.

Obviously we also made it to Santa’s Nice list also this year….. We got some lovely gift cards, Jason got me cadence/speed sensor that talks to my Garmin heart rate monitor, waterproof Pelican cases for CF memory cards, PhotoShop CS 6 book, tickets to a ballet. And my gifts to him included a Jambox Speaker that works over Bluetooth – now he can be jamming in his office, a new Leatherman multitool, and a Snowpeak lantern for our his backpacking adventures, in addition to some small stocking stuffers. Our trip to Boston, MA, later this week is our shared Christmas present.

christmas_presents2012 copy

 

Leave a Reply ?

December 1: Gingerbread House

Posted on December 1, 2012
by

It is time to open the first door in this virtual Christmas calendar…. and countdown to Christmas has started – 23 days and calendar doors to go.

One of my – and now ours – Christmas traditions is to make a gingerbread house. When I was a little girl, I built gingerbread houses with my Mom: every year we made one for us, and one for my Grandpa. There was, and is, certain kind of magic in making the gingerbread house. At least to me. It is one of those little things that create the real Christmas feeling, in addition to watching my favorite Christmas movies such as How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Jiminy Cricket’s Christmas,and Frosty the Snowman.

My gingerbread cookie recipe is old, from my Grandma’s collections. It has been a family thing for a very long time, even my Grandma’s Mom used it in late 1800′s, early 1900′s. So it really is not a surprise that tasting the dough always reminds me about my childhood Christmases. Those happy memories truly put a huge smile on my face although at the same time it is bittersweet: especially this time of the year makes me to miss my Grandma who passed away six years ago. She truly loved the Christmas most of all. She started Christmas preparations early – like September early, and every single detail was perfect when the Christmas finally came. But back to the gingerbread house, I will tell more about holidays with my Grandma later in our virtual Christmas calendar.

No matter how much I may be complaining about subzero temperatures here in Alaska, tonight the -5F weather was more than useful. The butter, syrup, sugar and seasonings of gingerbread dough need to be brought to boiling, and then cooled down before adding the flour. The boiling hot mixture cooled down real quick outside on our deck. And now the dough is cooling even more in the refrigerator, waiting for baking tomorrow. I have designed the gingerbread house already and drew & cut the stencils. However, I am gonna keep the secret for a while, and you will have to wait for a couple of days to see what the house will look like :-)

Getting started with seasonings

This will become gingerbread dough…

Done! More cooling before baking…

Meanwhile, here is a picture of one of the gingerbread houses from previous years…

 

Gingerbread House

Have you ever done a gingerbread house from the scratch? Do you have Christmas baking traditions?

[ 2 Replies ]

Gingerbread Village

Posted on December 18, 2011
by

Gingerbread village – how cool is that!? Here in Alaska, the local Captain Cook Hotel has opened their Gingerbread Village, made by the pastry chef Joe Hickel. These pictures do not make the justice for his creation but nevertheless give at least an overview what the village looks like.

Beautiful, isn’t it!? I can only be jealous of other people’s creativity, while I concentrate on our one bedroom gingerbread lodge house. Pictures to follow ……

Leave a Reply ?

Thanksgiving

Posted on November 24, 2011
by

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

As Thanksgiving Day is turning into night (and Black Friday) here in Alaska, I finally had time to sit down, and wish you, Dear Readers, Happy Thanksgiving. I hope your day has been full of happiness and wonderful moments – just like ours.

Our Thanksgiving Day was spent by hanging out together and cooking. Nice and relaxing. Great times. Even though I didn’t have time to finish, or even start, a new table runner and placemats. I so wanted to be crafty and creative for this weekend but once again the school and work got the best out of me. There are days when I wish I had more hours in my day, and that I could be a creative, wonderful miniature-Martha-Stewart who always decorates home for the season, cooks and bakes the delicious creations in the kitchen. But no, I can’t do that. Not until I find out a way to stretch 24 hours at least to 36…

However, our Thanksgiving was perfect despite not having the new tablecloths. The menu included roasted turkey with homemade stuffing from the scratch, carrot casserole, green beans, corn, homemade dinner rolls, cranberry chutney, mashed potatoes, turkey gravy, salad (for me), and pumpkin pie with homemade crust. It was plenty of delicious food. Actually we didn’t even make it to the pumpkin pie yet but it has to wait till tomorrow. Our dog, Tassu, got his share of delicacies too, and apparently it is good to sleep with a full belly. After dinner he parked himself on the couch, closed his eyes and hasn’t moved a whole lot. Gotta love the dog life!

That being said, this Thanksgiving I am terribly thankful for having the best husband in the world – he is my best friend, and perfect partner in crime. My better half. He makes me who I am. I am forever thankful for his endless support and encouragement. Furthermore, I am thankful for living this wonderful life of mine, and ours. Even though there are days when I am tired or frustrated, I wouldn’t change a single day. We truly are lucky and blessed. I am thankful for lovely, supportive people around us – friends and families, near and far. If we only could see them more often…

A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all the other virtues.
~Cicero

 

Pumpkin Pie

 

Roasted Turkey

 

 

Overeating

 

Leave a Reply ?

Quite A Catch!

Posted on August 21, 2011
by

This Friday we headed down to Soldotna in Kenai Peninsula and stayed there over night at a motel, on our way to a tiny town of Ninilchik.

Jason and I had been talking about halibut fishing for quite some time, and finally booked our fishing trip with Ninilchik Charters. Friday had been a stormy day on the sea — charters couldn’t even go out, and the weekend started by rain. If I had only known how the sea can be in the aftermath of a storm…

Anyways, we left the motel bright and early, well before 0500. And grabbed some breakfast items at McDonald’s to go. My first (yeah, I don’t care about fast food places) McDonald’s breakfast experience ever was not so great. Coffee tasted simply bad horrible, oatmeal & fruits were tasteless like paper, and a plain biscuit was edible but too greasy. So it was my first and last fast-food breakfast. Luckily we had our own snacks for the boat trip. We made it on time to the fishing charter office, met our captain and headed to the boat launch site. There were four guests on the boat in addition to us.

Boat ride to the fishing spot was bumpy. Seriously bumpy. Jason nor I have never gotten motion sickness anywhere so wasn’t too worried about that even though one of the guys started to look rather pale as soon as we left the boat launching site. The first fishing spot had giant waves — no chances to stay there, and captain decided to follow his Plan B. Ocean wasn’t very calm but it was tolerable. For half of the fishers. All three guys on board got seasick, and one of the girls looked rather pale. I felt so bad for Jason, especially when there was nothing I could have done. I didn’t even have any kind of seasickness medicines on me since didn’t expect him or myself getting sick on the boat. What a horrible wife, right?! Well, next time I will add the motion sickness drugs onto my packing list. Just in case.

However, since he is such a trooper, he kept his chin up, and we had a good time while fishing. The halibut spot was great, everyone on the boat got the limit, and rather quickly. So by noon we were already back on the dry land with the catch. The daily limit for halibut is two per fisher in Alaska. It was definitely an eventful day, and at the end we were heading back home with over 20 lbs of halibut fillets in the cooler.

In addition to great fishing, we also saw a few puffins. Of course when I didn’t have my professional photo gear with me! And one of the girls caught a little shark. The shark was pretty cool, I didn’t even know that there were sharks in Alaskan waters. So despite some rough seas it was a great trip, and we happy to have some tasty fish for the winter.

Leave a Reply ?