Meter Bratwurst Challenge!

For my birthday this year I thought German food was a good idea...

So we headed to North East Minneapolis and enjoy ourselves at Gasthof Zur Gemutlichkeit.

Brian and James ended trying out the meter bratwurst challenge. With no doubt in mind both of them finished and went on to sample the Bavarian platter Jeanne and I split.

At the beginning:

Within a few bites of the finish:

James tackling his bratwurst:

All finished:

Geek the Gecko

A lot and nothing at all has been going on the last few weeks.

To start, I'll mention Brian's new lizard, Geek the Gecko. For Brian's birthday this year we ended up getting him a gecko, so far so good with the little dude. He's already shed his skin a few times and has likely doubled in size. Here is one of the best pictures we've got of the Geek.

Coffee Cakes

It's that time of year again....you know, to make COFFEE CAKES!

To many this probably means nothing, to us it means a whole lot of baking for a whole lot of coffee cakes. We have this old family recipe which was my mom's mom's recipe (in other words my Grandma's recipe). Evidently she did everything by 'feel'. But as the story goes my mom was some how able to get the measurements for the recipe written down. Growing up we only did coffee cakes once in a great while and from what I can remember we typically only made around 40 at a time.

But for the last 6-7 years we've been getting together and making an annual go of it. I think we ended up this year with around 150 cakes! Not bad for one day...

...its been a while

I always hate the posts which say its been a while. But it has.

So here is the update.

Christmas happened.
- We did Christmas Eve with Brian's family and his mom's parents. We had a great day and even enjoyed a moon pie or two, courtesy of Jacques.


- Christmas day we woke up early - packed the car - stopped over at Grandma Ohs' house to wish her a very Merry Christmas and then we daringly made the trek up to Elwood's house. Only once did we almost crash - thankfully we arrived without a scratch. We then had a great Christmas meal with Elwood and Ben.

- Next day I spent some time convincing siblings the roads were not 'that bad'. So thankfully everyone decided to come and thankfully everyone made it without a scratch. We spent most of Friday going through ALL of mom's Christmas decorations - that woman really LOVED Christmas. We had the entire basement covered in Christmas. Everyone went home with many pieces of the decorations mom loved so much. After that we enjoyed presents, food and the joys that come with family.

Our we celebrated the coming of the new year quietly and restfully - followed by the harsh return to work. We're still adjusting to working full weeks again - we can't wait for a 4 day week!

Chislic

We did fondue the other day and when we were all done we fried up all the beef. Consequently I think beef fondue ends up looking like Chislic. I'm starting to think the South Dakota people had it figured out a long time ago...

For more on Chislic go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chislic

Cooking Making

Last weekend was fulll of cooking making. First we headed off to my cousins place to make around 8 different kinds of cookies. A few of the cookies we made Saturday were: Thumb Prints, Spritz, Peanut Butter Fingers, Mounds Malls, Sugar Cookies, Almond Bark, Christmas Wreaths, Pecan Tarts, Ginger Snaps, and Pixies.

Then on Sunday we got together with Brian's mom and made a few of her family recipes such as peanut butter kisses, mint surprise cookies, truffles, and mint cookies.

For the next 2 weeks our meals will consist of cookies, cookies and more cookies.

Ceiling

Our ceiling re-do was finished December 12. We really could not wait to get out of our basement. We took of the popcorn texture and replaced it with a knock-down and then had it painted. This is kind of what the final texture look likes, hard to show with a picture: