Andy and Darcy’s Blog

Tonight we had book club. We are still having book club as I am writing this blog, but we have long since ceased to talk about the book. We started to talk about Shroud of the Thwacker, but most of us hated it in varying degrees. Our discussion of Shroud of the Thwacker lasted longer than expected, but we soon moved to discussing other things. We’ve watched classic American Gladiator clips, read magazine articles, and then proceeded to have programming discussions. And we’ve discussed and implemented new book club policies including having book club dates set twice a month with shorter readings. So come to book club. It rocks.

The next book is Lake Wobegon 1956 by Garrison Keillor. And to the right is an actual book club member trying to finish the book at book club!!!

Yesterday, on Saturday, we got up early and took some winter pictures. We started at 50th Avenue, where there is this very cool red barn surrounded by corn fields.

We made our way to Essex Park and got some pictures of the creek.

Then we went to Silver Lake Park, and it is not pretty there. The massive anti-geese project must be going on right now. I know they are trying to grow long grass around the lake so that the geese won’t want to spend any time there. And there are lines of twine with shiny reflecting strips strung up about 3 feet above the ground around the lake shore to scare the geese away. Guess what? The lake is still warm from the warm waste water from RPU, and there are still lots of geese on the lake. And it is really ugly now so we didn’t take any pictures.

And then we made our way to the Mayowood trail and bridge. Some of the lake is frozen, but I don’t think you want to ice fish there.

Andy’s pictures are here.

The recipe we tried was from the Weight Watchers New Complete cookbook. They are filled with ground chicken, cilantro, and a mixture of Indian spices. They are heavenly.

Emily pointed us to a recipe that she really enjoys, and we agree!! That recipe is for Keema Samosas. We’ve had these before at one of the Indian restaurants, but I had never gone home and thought to myself “I want to make these.” In fact, I have trouble even remembering that I have eaten them there (and I know I’ve tried pretty much everything)…Andy says that the ones we’ve tried are filled with potatoes and deep fried. But that is not what is in the Keema Samosas that we made. Ours were made using wonton wrappers and they were filled with a mixture of ground chicken, cilantro, and Indian spices. And they were sprayed with a light dusting of oil and then baked. They were wonderful!!

Emily warned us they were a lot of work, but it was not so bad with two people doing wonton wrapper assembly. And we ended up freezing two-thirds of the recipe, so I’m really looking forward to those!!

We really like Indian food, and this is one of the few recipes that we’ve made at home that I really like. If you want to try it out, let me know. It is definitely worth your time.

We were back from our trip to Michigan, we had been to work for a day, and then we were ready for New Year’s Eve! Those few people left in Rochester joined us at Casa de Andar to watch the ball drop at 11 pm, play games, and eat snacks.

And here are just a few shots of the food, and maybe I’m putting these here just because I take too many pictures. There were crab cheese meltaways as well, but I guess those went too fast. On the right is the new tasty treat we tried, Banana Pudding Bites, that we saw on Sandra Lee’s show.

We spent this Christmas in Michigan with Andy’s family. When we got there, everything was covered in snow, but the next day we got some rain that made all the snow disappear. We spent Christmas Eve at Grandma and Grandpa Carter’s house. Below is a picture I took of everyone as they were about to sit down for Christmas Eve dinner. There is also a picture of the popup book-cards that were gifts from Andy’s grandparents.

We spent Christmas Day with Andy’s parents. We gave Andy’s parents a set of Revereware, and you can see them opening that gift in this picture.

It finally snowed again (a more serious snow) on the day we left.

We found Carr Valley cheese at our local Hyvee, but no curds! Maybe someday…

I’ve been thinking about the best cheese curds I’ve ever had for some time now. The problem is that those cheese curds are pretty far away from where I live. However, they are (luckily) on the way to Michigan, our Christmas destination. That destination is in Mauston, Wisconsin, at the Carr Valley Cheese shop on the side of Highway 94.

We’ve driven through Wisconsin many times, and I can tell you that highways in Wisconsin are highly populated with signs that encourage you to stop and buy cheese. But I had never actually stopped at one until Pam suggested we stop in Mauston after our trip to the Dells last summer. And they were fantastic. It was then that I finally found out what makes cheese curds squeaky, and besides that, those cheese curds were made out of really good cheddar. So I’ve been thinking about them ever since, and its like 6 months later!

On our way to Michigan this year, we stopped and bought some and they were fantastic again, just like I remembered. And Andy bought some cheddar that was aged 8 years, which was potent stuff and would make an blue cheese lover ecstatic. So I’ve satisfied my craving for a while now and I just wanted to let you know that if you’re driving through Wisconsin, you should definitely stop here.

We didn’t spend Christmas in Rochester, but we did have our own little Christmas celebration before we left for Michigan. We gave each other stockings, and we took this time to open up a few gifts that were sent home with us by my family at Thanksgiving.

We had an awesome dinner of pizza at our Christmas celebration.

Here is Andy’s stocking. As you can see Santa couldn’t fit everything into Andy’s stocking, but who knew a palm size helicopter would be so big??

Here are a few gifts from my relatives. Our thanks to my parents and grandparents.

And then Andy proceeded to learn how to fly the palm size helicopter. Let me begin by saying that now, as of January 6, the palm size helicopter is broken. But I think Andy had fun. I didn’t actually try and fly the helicopter, but it looked difficult. It was fun to see when it got going, but the landings were usually a little rough.