Canada - almost

We  left the house about 6 am to drive to International Falls.  Jay had an errand across the border.  If I had brought my passport we could have all gone into Canada.  Instead we went to breakfast.

a medium pancake

International Falls is listed as one of the coldest areas in the nation.

We did some wandering around and poked into a few shops until Jay was done with his errands.  We drove home and relaxed.  Finished a puzzle. 

Then I took Jeanne to Fortune Bay for her birthday dinner.  

I had a salad with cranberries, bacon, blue cheese.  Way too big but delicious.  It will make a nice lunch tomorrow.

Jeanne had the Chicken Oscar.  I had the Chicken Marsala.

ended with a yummy cheesecake. 

It is snowing!!!

Today was a very relaxing day.  It is Jeanne's actual birthday.  We did coffee in the morning with the church group, then lunch.  We are working on a puzzle now.  Laura, Jeanne's daughter, had giving Jeanne a gift card for the Pebble Bay Spa.  It was enough for both of us to go for the Double Treatment. Massage, foot soak, tea and truffles.  Wow!  what a nice time.  We may make this an annual event.  

With the massage they did a body brush that was really fabulous. On our way home it started snowing.  Argh!!  It is tiny flakes that probably will not stick. 

Then Jay had cooked a delicious meal of steak, potatoes, corn and a dessert of apple tarts and ice cream. yummy.  

Jay had a meeting to go to but when he got home we are going to watch Gravity.  I have not seen it.  It was a gift from Jay to Jeanne.  We will relax by working on the puzzle some more.  

What a perfectly relaxing day.  I am so lucky to reap the benefits of Jeanne's birthday.   

  

things I forgot to mention

This church has been making pasties since the 1920s as a fund raiser.  This is actually the thing that keeps the church afloat.  They make them once a month October through April (not December).  This is a small church so having 30-40 people involved is 1/3 to 1/2 their church membership.  They have a team of people who call people who have ordered before and ask them how many they want.  The April order is always the largest because it is the last one until October.  People want to stock up.  They always make a few extra.. They are usually doing 700-800 but this time was 961.  Jeanne and Jay have been involved for years but have recently become the organizers.  There are always people who order and then forget to come pick them up and people who want more than what they ordered and then people like me who just spontaneously bought some.  They have been using the same recipe since the beginning with very little change.  It is a Cornish recipe which is odd because this has such a huge Scandinavian population.

The week before I came, the temperature was in the 50s and I thought I checked to see that the pattern was continuing but either I did not check well enough or my weather predictor was wrong, because it has been cold.  It got up to 29 yesterday and 23 the day before.  I did not bring my winter coat.  So no walking for me.  

Pasty making - Part 2

Jay feeding the deer

We started at 6 am.  Mixing up the meats.

dicing potatoes and mixing the ingredients

rolling the dough for the pasties

measuring out the filling

1 pound of filling per pasty

closing the dough around the filling

crimping

done ones ready to bake

me and Bonnie

my first attempt

taking a break after each batch of 200.  We have to clean, sanitize and prepare to start again.  It took about 1/2 hour for each batch.

After baking.  All the pasties were made by 2:30 pm and finished baking by 4:30 pm.

ready to sell

selling station.  Selling was completed by 5:30 pm.  We sold 961 pasties.!!!

Pasties Stage 1

This pasty making is quite a process.  On Sunday they filled several large containers with water so that they would be ready for Monday morning.  

Monday at 7 am we started the prep work.  Some people had gotten their earlier to get things set up.  

The groceries were dropped off.  110 pounds of onion, 559 pounds of potatoes, 100 pounds of  lard, 250 pounds of  flour, 350 pounds of  meat  (pork and beef), 200 pounds of  rutabaga . Salt and pepper  Everyone seemed to have "their" job.  Jay and 1 other were running the big potato pealer,  2 people pealing and cutting onions in half, 3 people were opening all the boxes of lard, 4 people were pealing rutabaga and the rest of us (8 or so) were doing the final pealing of the potatoes and cutting out the bad spots.  That is the job I was doing.  We filled 5 big containers with potatoes.  

rutabaga pealing

boxes of lard

Jay with the potato pealer

onion pealing and cutting in half

Jeanne and me at the final potato pealing.  This was the most time consuming job.  When people finished other jobs they came to help us.

The rutabaga were cut up and then shredded.  3 big buckets.

lard

done potatos

onion

shredded rutabaga.  There was one more bucket.  We were done all of that by 9 am. Most everyone left before the onion dicing.  Jeanne and Jay did that.  One big bucket of diced onion.

This recipe makes about 11 pasties - each pasty is 1 1/2 pounds!!!!  Then the room was set up for tomorrow.  We were out of there by 10 am.  Tomorrow is the assembling, baking and selling day.  It is the long day.  

This was all quite the process.  

Sunday, April 13

The deer have discovered that Jeanne and Jay put out food through the winter for them.  They come pretty close.

As you can see they still have snow around here.

Children's time at church.

Coffee hour.  Birthday cake for Jeanne and Pat.

After church we went to the Steakhouse.  I had a delicious cheeseburger.  

On the way home we stopped at the square that had all the snow sculptures.  They have not all melted yet. 

The lake is not melted either.  We had a nice relaxing afternoon and a light dinner.  

a

April 12, Ely or bust

My flight out of Portland was on time at 6:50 am. I had a small snafu with my netbook but we managed to figure out a solution.  I have my new netbook with me instead of my old smaller one.  I arrived in Minneapolis Jay met my flight.  We ran a few errands and then went to the Mall of America to have lunch and then to scope out the movies.  

Then we drove to where Jeanne's conference was.  She sure was surprised to see me.  Jay and I had cooked up this plan.  The purpose of my visit is to be here for Jeanne's 65th birthday on Wednesday.  That was fun. 

We then went back to the Mall of America to see Divergent.  Interesting movie.  Olive Garden for dinner and then the long 4 hour drive to Ely. We got in at 1am.  So I am tired and am off to bed.