Snow Day

I was going back and forth on doing something with our left over turkey and finally decided for it on saturday. Once the flurries started on saturday afternoon the only thing that would make this winter day complete was to have a soup simmering on the stove.

We took a walk over to the Gunk Haus around 4 and it was a complete winter wonderland by then. This is the view from the bottom of our property. The turkey soup was simmering on the stove and the coze factor was pretty high.

This is the view walking south on Maple Ave.

I had the turkey and I have this amazing blue cast  iron pot from Martha Stewart, a gift from Rosemary. The rest was up in the air. I've never done anything like this and I totally winged it. I drowned the carcass in the pot and poured a good amount of water in there. I had some celery left in the fridge and thought that would be a good idea. And hey - an onion. And since no one really knew how to carve a turkey at Thanksgiving, there was a lot of meat left on it. And with the meat, a lot of rub-leavings, so I didn't even have to put herbs in the soup. I went to Robins Market on Rt 32 and picked up some cabbage and carrots, mostly cause they look pretty in there for the photographs. See:

It simmered for a few hours and then I fished the carcass out and picked off the good meat. I left enough stock and veggies to make a soup and strained the rest to have stock for later. Wow! I made that?

Then I put some cabbage in the pot and 3 cubed potatoes. Delish.

For dessert we had Swedish pancakes, although we just call them pancakes back home, and in Clintondale we like to be a fancy so we call them crepes. After the frying pan I put vanilla ice cream and hjortron sylt (cloudberry jam) on them and roll em up. This batter recipe proved unbeatable, even the number one pancake which is often pesky came out great. By the 5th one I was flipping them with the pan.

3/4 cup sifted flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

3 eggs

1 1/2 cups milk

2 tablespoons of melted butter.

I let the batter sit in the fridge for a few hours to thicken and I put the butter in right before I started frying.

Here are the new windows in the bay window and our first exposed Tyvek. Tyvek is what you put on your house to seal it while you are working on it. It's a little joke I guess cause it's an eyesore to the neighbors but over here at 19 Maple Ave it means things are getting done. Anyway, we are very happy with how they look!

All the windows are in and these were the last ones. The big daddys in the pastry shop, hard to see from this angle, but they look great!

We had ourselves another knotweed bonanza last weekend and we got the area pretty much cleared. We have no idea how to tackle this stuff in the spring but this is a giant improvement.

 Our little random fires made me think of Iceland.

Well, it's back to the city for us but the countdown is getting closer. T minus 2 weeks until we get to spend 2 1/2 weeks in lovely Clintondale!

Also, welcome to Chris and Jack the puggle who just moved in to our cottage today! Yea!