Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

It's snowing heavy here today - the above picture is taken out my patio door. Senior Citizen Simon stuck his nose out the door when I was taking the picture and quickly changed his mind about going out. He opted for a nap in my still unmade bed instead. Smart cat, considering it's only 7 degrees above zero here right now.

Plan of the day is more cookies!! Lars said he wanted to learn how to make cut out sugar cookies, so I dug out my cookie cutters and purchased a good supply of sprinkles and canned squirt frosting for decorating. I haven't made cut out cookies for years simply because they're so much work. But if Ole and Lars want to do it - more power to them.

So I better make this short and sweet and go get my kitchen geared up for "Man Cooking." Unfortunately, Man Cooking doesn't include the clean up afterwards :-( Oh well, at least I'll be able to reap the benefits.

Read this over at Paula's Place, so I thought I'd do it just for fun, too

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Wrapping paper but I'm leaning more and more to gift bags to simply my life.

2. Real tree or artificial? Definitely artificial as I don't like all the needles in the carpet afterwards.

3. When do you put up the tree? About two weeks before Christmas

4. When do you take the tree down? January 2nd.

5. Do you like eggnog? Yes, but it likes my waistline too much.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? A Cinderella doll that my brother gave me the first year he had a "real job."

7. Do you have a nativity scene? YES

8. Hardest person to buy for? Definitely Ole because if he sees something he wants he just goes out and buys it.

9. Easiest person to buy for? Lovely Daughter

10. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? It came from Big Brother's ex-girlfriend a number of years ago. It was a man's white t-shirt with a big - I don't even know how to describe it - a triangular piece of watermelon fabric sewed on the the top around the neckline and over the shoulders to look like a big collar. It was SO ugly I gave it to Ole to take to the shop for a grease rag. That year she gave Lovely Daughter the same type of t-shirt only instead of fabric with watermelons on it, hers had pink pigs. OMG - where was her mind.

11. Mail or email Christmas cards? I've really been debating. I've always mailed cards but last year I mailed out over 70 and really don't want to cut my list as that's the only time you correspond with some folks. Seventy cards counts up to a lot of postage so I may do a combination this year. I'm still considering.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? A Christmas Story - you know the one - "You'll shoot your eye out!"

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? All year long when I happen to come across something that I think would be appropriate.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? No - but I certainly thought about recycling the Watermelon t-shirt!!

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Lefse with butter and sugar - also lingonberries. They're SO good.

16. Clear lights or colored on the tree? Colored lights - no flashing. They remind me of neon advertising signs.

17. Favorite Christmas song? O Holy Night - it gives me goose bumps.

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Stay home at this point because Lovely Daughter lives right next door. If she ever moves away we'll definitely be traveling.

19. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer’s? Dasher, Dancer, Donner, Cupid, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Blitzen. And of course, let's not forget Rudolph.

20. Angel on the tree top or a star? At this point a lighted star that I really don't like. I'm always in search of the perfect tree topper. When Lovely Daughter was little Ole used to lift her up so she could place the star on the tree. He doesn't need to do that anymore.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Christmas Eve, but there's always presents from Santa under the tree on Christmas morning after breakfast.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of year? We have a radio station that started playing Christmas carols continuously, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, BEFORE Halloween!! Isn't that a bit on the early side?

23. What I love most about Christmas? The feeling of closeness among friends and family.

Now - to the kitchen!!

Aluminum Christmas Trees & Such

Art's entry today about Christmas trees brought back lots of memories. But first I have to tell you about the cookie baking marathon that took place at our house last night.

Ole loves to mess around in the kitchen (I'm so lucky), so he decided he was going to help me out by doing a bunch of cookie baking. Lars, (Lovely Daughter's fiance) had told me previously that he wanted to be in on this event because he had never baked cookies before, let alone Christmas cookies. I think he must have led a sheltered life where he grew up (a suburb of Los Angeles) because there's lots of these kinds of things he hasn't done before. So I called Lars and he trotted on over, washed his hands and dug in.

I set the guys up to bake Swedish spritz. I have my Grandmother's old recipe and they melt in your mouth. Plus I had purchased a new cookie gun last year, which is much easier to use that the old screw tube kind that I used to used.

First they made a batch of the regular almond flavored cookies in all different shapes. Then they decided they wanted to make the next batch colorful. I checked my food coloring and only had red, yellow and blue - no green. So they stirred up another batch of dough and started experimenting with color. First they put in red and decided to push it a bit farther and put in blue. Well, of course they ended up with a beautiful, rich purple. I told them if they were making Easter eggs it would have been perfect, but purple wasn't exactly a good Christmas color.

Lars was having a good time shooting cookies out of the gun. When all was said and done I packed all the cookies into containers and sent him out the door with one to bring to work this morning. Lovely Daughter called a bit ago and said that Lars had been passing cookies around his office and the ladies were RAVING about them - how wonderful they tasted and how perfectly shaped they were. "How do you get them to look so nice? My cookies are never shaped this nice." Lars' response, "Oh, I just have a knack for it!" Of course he didn't tell them he'd never baked cookies before in his life!! Way to go Lars.

I'm going to the store today to lay in supplies for more spritz, various other kinds of cookies and fudge. This time I'll make sure I have green food coloring and some of those sprinkles and some red hots. Lars says he wants to make cut out cookies and decorate them. We're supposed to have bad weather this weekend, so it will be a good weekend to be doing those kinds of things.

Art wrote about aluminum Christmas trees in his post today. They're worth a ton of money these days if you have an original one from back in the 50s and 60s. I often wonder what happened to the one we had when I was a kid. I remember you couldn't string lights on it because of possible electrical hazards, so we just decorated ours with blue balls and ribbons and then of course had to turn the rotating color wheel on it so it would look all different colors.

Don't I look cool with that space-age Christmas tree?

Then there was the year when Lovely Daughter was about 4 or 5 and we were going to have a BIG REAL tree. We have a cathedral ceiling in our living room - the high side is about 12 feet high. So we decided we'd go out to the farm where Ole spent his summers with Aunt Mary and Uncle Henry and cut a tree down from the woods.

Let me tell you, they look a LOT smaller when they're out in the woods than they do when you get them in the living room. We walked and walked through the snow and the woods to find THE perfect tree, all fat and found and bushy. Loaded it into the pickup and it stuck out of the back of the box by several feet. That should have been the clue right there, Folks, that this tree was going to be too frickin' big to put in our living room. Somehow we managed to get that fat tree into the living room but couldn't get it set up because it was way too tall for the 12 foot side of the room. I think Ole cut about 4 feet off the bottom just in order to get it upright. THEN we had to cut branches off two of the sides to get it to fit in the corner because it was so fat. Without trimming the branches off two sides to fit into the corner, it stuck out so far into the room there was no room for any furniture!! When we finally got it situated we didn't have a tree stand that was big enough to hold the tree trunk. I don't remember what we did to overcome that, but I remember we finally got the tree upright and decorated and decided that the next year we'd go buy a 5 footer!! You can't imagine how many needles a tree that size can shed!!

There have been many other stories about Christmas trees over the years. There's the year we lived in Iceland and had to order our tree in June to be shipped in onto the NATO base because Iceland has no trees of any kind. The tree was so dry by the time we got it in December that it was amazing it had any needles on it at all. Christmas Eve morning I was vacuuming and bumped the tree and ALL of the needles fell off. All I had was a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. So I raced down to the local hardware store and bought the only green plastic tree they had. There were others - one white, one aluminum and one pink, but this was the only green tree. I paid $40 for it - $40 that we just didn't have to spend, and Ole blew his stocking cap off when he found that out. But we had that tree for almost 20 years before we got rid of it.

We've used artificial trees for the most part over the years, although once in a while interspersed were real trees. Ole's always been a believer in REAL trees, but he's given up fussing about the fake ones because he doesn't like cleaning up all the needles any more than I do.

Now we've graduated to one of those trees that has fiber optics woven in with the needles, and has a color wheel in the base that turns and the fiber optics change color.

Do you see history repeating itself here? I do.

Art also was wondering what the screwiest Christmas gift was that you received. I don't know if it's the screwiest or the worst but it definitely falls into that category, and not so much the gift itself, but because of who I got it from. When we lived in Iceland we hadn't been married very long. The first Christmas we were there my mother-in-law sent me a pair of leopard-skin pajamas with FEET in them!! I've always wondered what kind of a point she was trying to make (snicker).

Okay now - let's continue this. What's the screwiest, dumbest or worst Christmas present you've ever received?

If I do it this way you'll be more inclined to answer than just pass it off (so there!). So I nominate the following to spill their guts in their blog - tell all!!

Lovely Daughter (there's method to my madness here)

Kitchen Logic

Art

Moody Gemini

Poolie (this ought to be good)

Miss Hiss

Have at it, Bloggers - I have to go to the store now and lay in supplies for the Cookie Bakers!!

Everything you Ever Wanted to Know About Lutefisk but Never Dared Ask

Well, Folks, you know it's THAT time of year again. The time when you have to resurrect your World War I gas mask when you go by the fish counter in the grocery store, or hold your breath as you drive very swiftly by the local churches that are holding their annual lutefisk suppers. All the GOOD ScandihOOvians are rubbing their tummies and salivating to the point of needing bibs in anticipation of this wonderful delicacy being served during the coming holidays. Me? I'm definitely NOT a good Scandihoovian. I can't stand the stuff. And Ole, being a Finn, doesn't hold with that kind of nonsense either.

Lutefisk starts out by hanging on racks in the dry, cool air of the ScandihOOvian countries. We lived in Iceland for several years, and fishing being the mainstay of their economy, we saw lots of the beginning stages of lutefisk.

After the fish have hung on the racks for about a year - I'm NOT Kidding - a full year, it's so dry that it tinkles in the wind and sounds like wind chimes. That's about the ONLY nice thing about lutefisk. Then it's shipped off to other countries where the good ole' Swedes and Norwegians have emigrated to, snapped up by these folks and brought home with great anticipation.

In order to reconstitute the fish it has to be soaked in lye water for an extended period of time, then it's rinsed and rinsed and rinsed. How many times have you ever been eating fish and you say, "You know what this fish needs? Lye!" Me neither.

Do you remember the green slime that used to come in an egg-shaped container? Crack open that container and let the slime run and that gives you a pretty good sense of the overall feel of lutefisk. It's one of the few COOKED fish dishes that could be described as slippery.

Every Christmas my Mother dutifully shopped and shopped for the best lutefisk she could find, and on Christmas Eve would boil it, which would spread the "aroma" throughout the house. My brother and I would run to the farthest point away from the kitchen and cover our heads with layers of blankets trying to avoid the "scent." My sister, on the other hand, along with my parents practically inhaled the stuff.

Swedish food generally isn't known for being real edible, and lutefisk is awful even by those low standards. The pickled herring isn't bad, in fact I kind of like that on occasion. But among other things there's Glog, which is a purple that doesn't occur in nature, requires an open flame and tastes suspiciously like Nyquil. I truly suspect that lutefisk is what drove the Vikings to look for Canada.

Take a look at the video below entitled What is Lutefisk, and you'll see some really silly Swedes and Norwegians that need to have their heads examined!!

Rock on, you non-ScandihOOvians. See what you're missing?

You can stop the music if you want when you play the video. There is sound on the video so it might get a wee bit confusing otherwise.

Smokin' Ole Goes to a Fire

We now have snow on the ground – several inches. And when I woke up this morning it was 5 below zero. I knew it was inevitable because we’ve had such nice, warm weather this fall, but I still wasn’t ready for it. Oh, well, I’m just very fortunate that I don’t HAVE to go out in the weather every day anymore. When it’s ugly out I can just stay home and snuggle down in front of the fireplace with a good book or a movie.

Yes, we have snow on the ground, and I haven’t seen it come that fast for many years. About 5 o’clock the weatherman started issuing warnings that there would be blizzard conditions by 7 o’clock. Normally he’ll start talking about storm conditions hours or even days ahead of time, and most times they don’t materialize. But last night he was right on the money. Lovely Daughter was on her way home from work at 7 o’clock and she said it hit like someone opened a feather pillow and started dumping in front of a very large fan. The visibility was almost zero.

You see, here it very rarely snows straight down. When it does, we certainly don’t call that a storm by any means. When it snows here it snows sideways because of the strong winds that we have in the wide-open spaces. The storm was called an Alberta Clipper and swooped down out of Canada to do its damage. Fortunately it didn’t last long and was all over with by midnight. But if you’re caught out in the open in one of these things, especially when the temperature drops like a rock to below zero with the strong winds, you can certainly lose your life and very quickly.

Every other Monday night Ole has a training session down at the fire department. (He’s a volunteer fireman, you know.) And last night was that Monday night. So all the guys had been sitting in the training room for about fifteen minutes listening to the training officer when Bleep, Bleep, all the pagers started going off. Right at the height of the storm some poor soul called in a fire. His barn was on fire and there were two fairly new tractors and a new pickup stored inside. He was just about four miles south of our little town, but the guys got all their turnout gear on, trucks started, down the road in almost zero visibility and arrived at the fire in just a few seconds over four minutes. Unfortunately there wasn’t much they could do because the wind was so strong. They pumped water on the fire to try to contain it and to keep it from spreading to the other buildings, but the barn was so far gone by the time they got there they had to let it go. Ole said it must have had a good start before the owner even saw that it was burning.

We drove by there this afternoon and it was still smoking. It was so sad to see those two great big John Deere tractors and a newer pickup just turned into charcoal hulks.

So now Ole’s got one fire under his belt.

All About JANE!!

First of all let’s take care of some business:
Yankee Chick has awarded me with the Blogger Badge. She tells me, “The blogging badge was made by Mark at Me and My Drum to be given to bloggers who make their blog their own, stay with it, interact with their readers and have fun. Mark also said that these bloggers are showing time and time again that they are true to themselves and that they ARE their blog.”

Well, Folks, I am really honored. I’ve mentioned previously that I never thought of myself as a writer in any way, shape or form, and I just started this blogging thing to see if I could do it and to entertain myself. All I can say is What you see/read is what you get. There just aren’t any facades here. Anyway, manga tusen taka (many thousand thanks), and now it’s my turn to pass it on to some other true blue bloggers. I hereby nominate: Art, MNLady, Miss Hiss, KitchenLogic and Shearmadnez. Blog on, People. If you have been nominated before, then consider yourself twice as good, okay? (Just don’t let it go to your head.)

The Big Bonfire and Barbecue went quite well on Saturday night. Ole did burgers and brats on the grille and everyone brought a dish (or two or three). Anyway, there was far more food than we could eat, so we had to all go and let it digest by the fire.

Here’s a shot of the bonfire – now keep in mind those are railroad ties stacked eight high, formed into a square that was filled with brush and tree branches. Ole said it didn’t even take any Boy Scout water to get it going, and to begin with the flames reached about 30 feet high!! Needless to say it warmed the air for quite a space around the fire so nobody got cold even though the temps were down in the 20s. You did have to pretend you were on a rotisserie though and occasionally turn your body so you weren’t done more on one side than the other!!


Now, are you Folks all ready for more of Lena’s Gossip? I just HAVE to tell you about Jane!!! I’ve been kind of saving things up for the last couple of weeks (snicker).

I’ve mentioned The Circle a number of times previously, but just to refresh your memories, there’s Dick & Jane, Bob & Carol, and Ted & Alice. You ALL know who Jane (No. 1 Bitch) is, married to the sweetest man, Dick. Then there’s Bob & Carol who have been friends with Dick & Jane for years and happen to live across the alley from them. Bob & Carol don’t have much time for Jane either, but tolerate her because Dick is such a nice guy. Then there’s Ted & Alice. Ted is another sweetheart, and Alice has always been kind of a whiner. She considers Jane her BEST friend; unfortunately Jane doesn’t feel that way about Alice. I’ve seen Jane put Alice in tears down at the Watering Hole because of the things she says to Alice. Mean things, but for some reason Alice just takes it. Something has come over Alice over the last couple of months, and she’s starting to emulate Jane. I’m not the only one who’s noticed it – Bob & Carol have both commented on it. She’s become No. 2 Bitch.

Several weeks ago a large group of us were invited over to Dick & Jane’s for a potluck and bonfire. Everyone got there at the appointed time and Dick was outside to greet everyone and get the grille going. Jane was nowhere to be seen. Someone asked about her and Dick said she was still in the house. Well, okay – maybe she’s still making preparations or something, so Carol went in to see if she could help. Carol came right back out and told me there was no way she was staying in the house with THAT wild cat. I guess she did nothing but bitch and be sarcastic to Carol. The rest of us women got things ready and THEN Jane made her entrance. She dished up her plate, sat down to eat and promptly left and went back inside the house. Carol was outside helping Dick clean up the grille and he confided in her that he and Jane had had a knock-down-drag-out fight prior to everyone’s arrival. He didn’t say what it was about, which was none of our business, but can you imagine? Maybe Jane had decided at the last minute that she didn’t want to have everyone over and this was her way of punishing all of us. Guess what – it didn’t work. We all had a great time despite her, and so did Dick with a little help from Captain Morgan!! And I certainly don’t blame him.

Then a couple of weeks ago Ole and I decided we’d have our annual Big Bonfire the Saturday after Thanksgiving and I sent out email invitations. We also announced it when we were all down at the Watering Hole having burgers one night. Dick made the statement that he hadn’t gotten all of his brush and branches burned at his bonfire so could he bring them out to ours. They live in town so have to keep their fires on a rather modest level. Of course Ole said that would be fine. That’s when Jane, who was sitting at the end of the table that night, stated in a very loud voice, “WE - - WILL - - NOT - - BE - - THERE!!” looking directly at Dick. It was quite apparent that this subject had been discussed previously as she was quite animated about it. And the look that Dick returned to her could have killed. So as far as I was concerned, they weren’t coming. I saw her a couple of times during the week and she was very cold and distant. I sure don’t know what I did to offend her, but then, like Ole said, she’s just angry at the whole world and you happened to be in her line of sight.

So Saturday afternoon came and Ole and I were outside getting things ready, and setting up tables, chairs and the grille out at his shop. I happened to come in the house about 5:15 when the phone rang. Caller ID said it was Jane and I debated picking it up, but thought better of it and decided to see what she had to say. After all, I could always just hang up on her. I answered and she was as nice as pie – was it too late to RSVP (I had invited everyone for 6 p.m.)? Was it okay if they came? Could Dick bring his brush to burn? Was there anything I needed help with? I’m looking over both my shoulders during this conversation to see if there’s someone else she’s talking to, because it surely couldn’t be ME, could it? I told her it of course it was fine – just bring themselves and an appetite and Dick’s brush. They showed up about 15 minutes later – a half hour before anyone else did. I just kept myself busy and told her to fix herself a drink and go sit by the fire. At least this time Jane didn’t take it upon herself to invite her groupies like she usually does. Maybe she didn’t have time. Ted and Alice didn’t show at all, but then Alice told me when the initial invitation went out 10 days prior to the bonfire that she wouldn’t be there because she had a cold (think about that for a minute, okay?) Of course Alice can’t go anywhere that Jane doesn’t go, and I suppose Jane didn’t have time to let Alice know that she’d changed her mind and was actually going to come out. Ted and Alice were in church on Sunday morning and neither Ole nor I noticed Alice coughing or blowing her nose!!

We really need some new friends. Bob & Carol are stable and rock solid – great people and fun to be with. There are also several other couples that join The Circle on occasion, but I think keep their distance because of Jane and now Alice.

Oh, well, we shall see what happens. One of these days both Jane and Alice are going to lip off to the wrong person – and it just MIGHT be ME!!

ADDENDUM BELOW:

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I totally completely forgot about this when I was writing this morning. I HAVE to clue you in on this too - I truly think Jane is a sicko individual - here's another of her latest antics:

I clicked the receive button on my email a couple of mornings ago and there was a very large email file that came in from Jane. I opened it - and it was a power point show of 23 pictures of HARD PORN!! All the bits and pieces and tools were taken in closeup mode in action. She sent it to Ole too. The next time I saw Bob I asked him if he and Carol had been blessed with being on her mailing list. Bob told me that she goes through this every few years and the last time she got on this kick he asked her to take his name off her mailing list. Wonder of Dick knows she does this kind of thing?