Christmas 2007

Merry Christmas to All! We had a great time at my Mom and Dad's house in Brainerd along with my sister Leigh, my Brother Erich and his family and Mom and Dad. The forecast was not in our favor, I left on Friday after work with the Murano because I thought the roads were going to be bad. They were forecasting snow for Saturday, but the storm rallied on Sunday, which left Nick stranded in Duluth (he had to work on Sat. and Sun.) So a rescue mission was launched, we couldn't leave poor Nick, all by himself in Duluth for Christmas!

Duluth = Blizzard central!

Dad and Erich took drove back to Duluth in the bad weather to pick him up - promising us that they would turn back if the roads got too bad. They made it! Nick was saved!!!! I'm pretty sure the roads were far from ideal, but once the zumBrunnen men decide to do something there is no turning back.


Copper always manages to find the most curious places to roll up and take a snooze! Unwrapping gifts is exhausting!
We had a lot of fun out in the backyard, chasing Copper, who was in Heaven with wide open space and fresh snow to run around in!



Then the idea - lets hook Copper up to the sled and see what happens.......

Look out John Beargrease - here we come!!!!

A Lefse Tradition!

This past weekend, my friend Erica Tangen and I met in Brainerd to learn how to make Lefse from the Lefse Queen (my mom). For those of you who don't know what lefse is, you are missing out! Lefse (pronounced Lef-suh) is a traditional Norwegian flat bread made from potatoes, flour, cream and butter (or Crisco shortening as in my moms recipe). Its like a tortilla but much thinner. It makes a nice side dish for lutefisk (yuck!) but we like to eat it as more of a desert, rolled up with butter and sugar (yum!)Here are the tools needed: A griddle, a Pastry board, a lefse stick a corrugated rolling pin with cloth sleeve and lots of flour.

Lucy (my niece) had a great time helping out, I think she made better lefse's than I did!

You have to roll the dough very thin, and it gets tricky if it sticks to the pastry board (which most of mine did) and you end up with holes in your lefse!

The dough is "rolled" onto the griddle from the pastry board using a lefse stick,

Here is Erica making her first lefse!

Later that day we decided to take on another Scandinavian treat called Rosettes. To make rosettes, you need a Rosette iron and deep fryer. When you make rosette batter you dip the iron into the batter and fry it. It makes a light crisp "cookie" and you dip it in sugar to cover the edges.

Towards the end we decided to try adding green food coloring for our Christmas tree shaped rosettes. The results were interesting.....

Steamy Sunrise

For the past 3 winters we have lived in Duluth, I have been meaning to get a picture of the sunrise over the lake. I am so lucky to be able to look at this every morning on my way to work and it is always beautiful. But, on especially frigid mornings, early in the winter before the lake has dropped in temperature, it is absolutely breath taking. The water steams when the temps drop (I believe this am it was about 10 degrees). It only happens a few times until the lake catches up with the colder temperatures. These pictures do not do it justice.

Sometimes the steam will produce its own clouds that hover just above the surface of the lake. Although this morning was a great opportunity to finally take my picture, it did not possess some of the strange steam formations I have seen before - called steam devils. So I looked online to find out more about them, and to find a picture.

Steam devils are produced by convective eddies of condensed water vapor that rise from a lake surface and swirl upward through the overlying cold air (having arisen from the warmer lake body). The wind will often initiate a rotation in the steam, giving it a finger like appearance, similar to a dust devil on land.

Did I mention that we had our first winter snow storm on Dec 2nd? We got about 14.5 inches of snow. Nick and I shoveled for about 2 1/2 hours. Then 3 days later, what was supposed to be only "a few" inches turned into another foot when the winds shifted and created a flash lake effect blizzard. So we shoveled again - I think we will be purchasing a snow blower if this trend continues all winter!