Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!!

I hope you all had a great New Year's Eve and woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on this New Year's Day!

Gramma has been here for a visit and yesterday we made a German delicacy called Rouladen (mmmmm). Cause Someone had a bearthday... (not Gramma).

So... rouladen are notoriously difficult to make but... in August we tried them for Grampa's bearthday and used the slow-cooker... so we are doing that again.

First you need rouladen... the meat... mmmm....

Then some finely sliced onions (we used the mandolin thingie).

Then you unroll the rouladen and give them a gentle beating... We don't have a meat hammer so we just used the flat end of our big carving fork.

There... a nice pile of beat-up rouladen slabs.

Gramma is dicing some bacon - usually she just puts the slices in the rouladen as is but Someone doesn't like that...

So dicing it is! Gramma looks beary intent...

There we go... now we are ready to make them.

Smear them with mustard.

Add the diced bacon and the sliced onions...

Then you start rolling them up...

Like this. Some people wrap them with string, but we just used toothpicks.

Then you dust them lightly with flour....

Now the worst part... the browning!

 This is a beary messy job.... so I will stand back.

And we're off!! We had so many we had to do it in two batches and it goes quickly and is stressful sooo...

Voila... browned rouladen in the slow cooker on a bed of carrots and celery, with 4 cups of water sluiced through the frying pan and added to the slow cooker. Now that cooks on low for 5-6 hours.

Leaving a beary messy pan to clean up.

OK... now we are going to have the rouladen with Knoedel... potato dumplings. These are super easy to make cause they come in little mesh cooking baggies...

And we're having red cabbage from our garden. Yummm!!!

Gramma and Grampa!! They look hungry!

Alrightee... so we fished out the rouladen, sieved the broth and made gravy which we put back in the slow cooker with the rouladen to keep everything warm.

 Voila... soooo good!!

In Winter's Icy Grip

Hullo! It's been snowing tonnes up here... by our standards.

And it got pretty cold too... below 0C and a few days it was down near -10C!

We had put our squash out in a tub on the deck cause... well... cause it never gets that cold out there! But it did get cold... and we needed to do something with the squash before it all thawed and turned to mush...

Any ideas??? Well... we decided to do squash soup!

These are a few of our pink squash...

You need to peel them, cut out the core and then cut them into cubes. We have here a guest chef's assistant... can you guess who it is?

It's Gramma!!!! She was here over Christmas!!

Let me do an inspection... hmmm... pretty good Gramma!

Jerry and Ben want to know if Gramma will be baking any cookies... she says maybe a German nut cake... mmmm....

Alright... first we melt a bit of butter in a big pot...

Then we add one of each - diced onion, diced carrot, diced celery stalk and diced potato...

Get them browning....

Then add the squash.

 Mmmm... looks good!

Then you add some broth - we used chicken broth - enough to cover all the veggies...

Like that... bring it to a burble, turn down to a simmer for 40 minutes.

Hmmm... ran out of photos!! Then you run it through the blender in small batches (careful cause it's hot), put it back in pot and add spices as you like. We added a bit of curry powder and some Montreal Chicken spice - cause we like it a bit edgy. YUM!!

Christmas Morning...

Christmas Morning!!! Do you know that I met Santa Claws just a few hours ago? And no... it wasn't a dream cause, look, there's his hat on the floor behind me!!! Santa Claws is REAL!

What do you mean that is your decorative Santa hat, Mama? No... Santa Claws is REAL! I met him!! We had biscotti and milk together!

See... look, all the biscotti is gone and the milk too!

And I can prove it too... cause I asked Santa for a beary special gift... and I know he got it for me!

Whoa... that is quite a beautiful tree... and look at all those presents for me!

First... we'll open the mail...

 I got a card from Little Fox - I hear he is getting almost as much snow as we are!

 And then a card from Beanie Mouse and Jelly Beanie...

 Finally, there was a package from Horst the Unicorn in Germany! I won a contest on Horst's Instagram page...

There's some Unicorn shower gel... I'll give that to Mama.

 And some Unicorn Ritter Sport!! I'll keep that for me!

 And then there's this package... it has a picture of Santa Claus on the front... so I know it's from Santa...

And... oooohh...

It's EXACTLY what I asked for!! Exactly!!! Seeeee... Santa Claws is real!

I'll just... umph... grunt... show... oof... you!

Ta-dah!!!! It's the latest Winter Gear outfit... I have been oggling this in the Little Bear Catalogue for weeks...

Isn't it fetching???

I LOVE it!!! (And Santa is REAL!)

Merry Christmas everyone!!