Winter is HERE......For real this time.

Winter is officially here.

I know this because I woke up extra early this morning, the cold was seeping into my blanket and making me shiver like some sort of storybook creature.  All hunched over and whisper quiet.  Tickling my exposed feet.  It was unusually cold.  And the wrong type of cold.  Even in my sleep I could tell something was wrong.  So I got up and wrapped the blanket tight around myself and shuffled into the living room.

My husband was long gone as he has to be at work ridiculously early.  The house was cold.  I made my way to the Toyo diesel stove and squinted at the control panel.  It blinked an error code in lime green light, and I blinked back at it waiting for my brain to catch up.

Every year this marks the beginning of our winter.  It gets so cold so fast that the stove simply shuts off and waits for us to notice.  I'm sure that there is some technical mumbo jumbo stuff involved but to me it is just a regular announcement from our heating system, Winter is HERE, says the stove.

It will happen a couple of times during the winter.  And so far it hasn't led to anything major.  No busted pipes, no coatings of ice or frost where it's not supposed to be.  We have a separate built in heater for the bathroom to make sure those pipes stay fluid, so it never really bothered us.   But I totally forgot how to fix it so I ended up opening the oven and turning it on and sitting in a pile of warm blankets on the couch till my husband got home to show me again what to do if I get the error.  He always smiles his little smile and reassures me that the thing won't blow up if I start pressing buttons.  But that is the type of person I am, I imagine pressing buttons and starting a major internal meltdown like in the movies.  Complete with flashing red lights and an orchestra playing music in the background.

I also know it's winter when I get the itch to write.  I get poetic Tourettes syndrome.  I find pleasure in combining words and twisting phrases.  All of that energy that I usually put into living off the land gets concentrated and reemerges as a jumble of wanna -be prose.  Nothing great mind you.  I tend to write things down on brightly colored post it's and leave them around the house like Easter eggs.  Next to the tv is a note that says 'watercolor antlers', on the desk it says 'wake up God'.  I usually end up forgetting what the intention was but I love the weird winter ambiance it creates.  And I use words like 'Ambiance.'

I plan to at least share a little of my writing this winter with you guys.  Just for fun.

And here are some wintery wintery photos to help set the stage.  I just checked our outside thermometer and it read '-20 degrees.'

It's almost continually dark now.  The moon and sun glide across the horizon, peeking between mountains, doing their best to avoid making eye contact.

My husband said these are moose tracks.  But I thought it might be something else.  winter is the season of tracks.

I was standing here when a song bird flew by, it's panicky little voice fluttering around us.  Poor thing was not where it was supposed to be.  It didn't sit still long enough for a photo. 

New neighbor....

For the first time ever ...we have a mouse problem.  Well, since we live arctic technically they are not mice.   They are called lemmings.  Or in our language we call them 'avingaaq.'

I have found that they are incredibly, incredibly annoying.  Some how they have discovered how to chew through the TWO thick tough bags that we use to store our dog food.  We have resorted to storing them high up on something that is impossible for them to climb.  But the fact that they are in our covered porch searching for food utterly terrorfies the OCD part of me.  I want to bleach the whole room after seeing their tiny, tiny footprints in the snow at the outside door.

My husband and I have had many conversations on how to deal with this problem.  So far I have tried natural repellents...which worked for a few weeks. And live traps, which to my horror caught one and then it starved to death.  Poison is absolutely out of the question, since we live in a huge ecosystem I am worried that something might decide to eat the poisoned mouse.  And then this last week I ordered plastic kills traps, becuase anything metal will freeze in the -45 degree weather.  Even then we are not sure if it will shatter or not.  But I am hesitant to use them. 

Sounds weird I know coming from a person that regular makes meals of animals and has very little qualms about killing wild animals.  But it seems like such a waste to me.  A huge part of the ecosystem depends on these tiny walking sacks of proteins and vitamins.  But to me they are just little programmed machines just doing what they should be doing, and I guess I hope they would give up and move on. 

But they haven't.

Yesterday we sat at the table examining the new mouse traps, trying to figure out of they would hold up to the job, when we heard a very terrified bark coming from one of our dogs.  It was an unusual high pitch panic yip.  Anyone who knows our home knows that our dogs pretty much bark at anything wih vigor and enthusiasm, so we know their barks well.  Dog code if you will.  We can even tell when certain individuals are walking past our house.  It's that particular.  This was a new bark...

We ran out and my husband heard a tiny squeak.  He called out that he thinks he heard a mouse and I rush in help him corner the bugger.   To our surprise we saw this little face darting about....

 I must admit that I squealed in a very un-adult manner at the tiny ears and bouncing face of a winter white coated ermine.  He darted about our belongings examining us.  He even came close and gave us a good sniff.  They are incredibly brave little buggers. 

In the winter time we often store some of the dog meat in the covered porch, a bone or whatnot ready to be distributed to the dogs that evening, and we figured that this guy sniffed our occasional stash out and was regularly visiting the porch to chew on them. 

These tiny predators are fast and sneaky, and are able to take down an arctic rabbit ten times their size.  They approach their prey with a sensuous dazzling wiggling dance to transfix them and then pounce on their backs and deliver a killing bite to the back of the neck. 

Legends tells us that if we keep our mouths open...or scream...they will jump in our mouths and choke us.   Don't you love the graphic nature of Inupiaq myth?

They also eat lemmings. 

Which is why we have decided that this new nighbor can stay for the time being....though we have taken to making sure that the meat is properly stored.

Pumpkin and Captain Kirk.

Sometimes when I am thinking about what to write in this blog the voice saying it sounds exactly like Captain Kirk from Star Trek.  In my head these post always start with..'Stardate.....2012....'

Just goes to show how much of an ultra-geek I truly am. 

I am mortified by the gigantic gap in my posts for this blog.   It is like admitting to people that sometimes you don't brush your teeth for a few days at a time.  But I think that my problem was that there was literally too much things going on.  Too much to properly sort and fold and place where they belong.  It was nothing really bad mind you, though some if it is tragic and some of it is incredibly mundane and dry. 

So I thought I would at least break this weird spell with a short cathartic post.  One with some photos and some updates and interesting things. 

Part of the problem is that I have started devouring books again.  I usually try and pace myself so that I do not go broke and so that I am actually part of the 'real' world' for most of the hours of the day.  But unfortunately I have found a few authors that totally and utterly engrossed me, in a genre that I usually never visit: Mystery and Thrillers.  So for the past few weeks or so I have been wondering around the house with a book hangover, rushing through tasks so I could return back to those other worlds.  You would think at some point I would have learned to control my literary addiction....

I also turned 35 this month.  I have officially joined the next age bracket.  I am suspicious about aging, though I am really curious to see what my mid life crisis will look like.  I'm thinking it would be fun to fly to North Carolina and stalk Orson Scott Card. Or maybe I will take up fencing.

We also adopted another fuzzy puppy.  Her name is Pumpkin.  She is monstrous dog with a heart just as big.  I giggle at her when she snorts and gallops all over the place, which makes her snort and gallop even more.  She has become my 'go for a walk' dog as she never strays far and she is as slow as I am with my bad knee.  The other dogs are still wary of her, but that is something time can easily fix. 

I also wanted everyone to also know that 10% of my sales from all three of my Etsy stores will be donated for this month directly to the Red Cross to be used in relief efforts because of Super Storm Sandy.  You can click on the stores on the right of my blog page.  There was a few days when both I and my husband were waiting to hear from family and friends in the affected areas.  All of them are fine to our relief!

I promise to post more in the near future.  And thank you all for being so patient with me!

Here the snow grows from the top down. 

Napping ducks on their way down south for the winter.

Pumpkin. She is a bit of everything large: St. Bernard, rotty, teddy bear.

The the transition from fall to winter is all edges and hesitant touch.

Princess and Kimbo, brother and sister.  It is hilarious that I have so much photos of them running around haphazardly. 

Frost is my new obsession.

Lingonberry Mustard....

A quick post!  One of the things I thought would be neat is to do a few recipes posts.  I dabble in cooking stuff, I find it a very relaxing and soothing and challenging!  As my husband calls it...it's one of my 'happy's'.  Thank goodness he has a hollow leg.  I think the only thing he refused to eat was my crab cake experiment, which was a complete disaster....but he swallowed one bite because he loves me so much! 

Today is my lingonberry mustard recipe.  I am a mustard fan.   I adore mustard.  I have three types of mustard in my fridge.  I add mustard to every recipe I can, so it was only a matter of time till I decided to make my own.  After much thought and experimentation I arrived here....in lingonberry heaven.  We actually call these berries 'cranberries' as they are similar in looks and taste.  They are my favorite berry.  They have twice the amount of vitamin C as oranges, and have anti-inflammatory properties...and they taste like heaven.  Dr. Oz. calls then the new 'superfruit', which I agree with! They are usually very tart and tangy, and they bloom in flavor when you add sugars.  I have tons of recipes for these pretty little berries but I thought I would start with this one cause it's so different than what people expect you should do with berries.

The result is a tart, tangy berry filled mustard with tons of texture and a little bit of a spicy kick.  It works great in marinades, and goes well with pork and fish.  It also happens to be so very VERY pretty and make great holiday gifts.

 

 

Lingonberry Mustard Recipe

1 cup red wine vinegar (or apple cider vinegar)

2/3 cup whole mustard seed (brown or yellow or both)

1 cup filtered or bottled water

2 cups lingonberries washed and sorted

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup yellow mustard powder

2 teaspoons all spice

1 teaspoon ground orange peel

Boil vinegar pour in a jar, add whole mustard seeds and let sit over night till vinegar is absorbed.

Pour seed mixture into a grinder or chopper and chop.  Pour this into a sauce pan.  Place lingonberries into grinder and chop. Add water, chop some more.  Add this to seed mixture in pan.

Boil over high heat, reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.

Add the rest of the ingredients.  Then simmer till it is your desired thickness.  For me it's usually about 15 minutes. It will thicken a bit as it cools.  Makes about 3 cups or 24 oz.

Pour in jars!  And that is it!  The mustard gains flavor and complexity as it sits.  I like to put into small sterilized 4 oz jars and use hot bath canning to seal them up good for selling and gift giving but that is an extra step you don't need to take.  A note, brown mustard seed makes the mustard spicier. 

I found some cute jars to put the mustard in.

My cute potato yield I got this year and a couple of garlic.  They tasted AMAZING

We purchased a Biolite stove and will be testing it this fall and winter.  I will eventually do a review of this and some other products and gadgets we use here.

The boys searching for arrowheads and artifacts as I pick berries.  This is what they call 'watching for bears'.  lol

Picture time...

Just thought I would post some photos!  Happy Friday everyone! 

Aunty....I wonder what I look like in her photo?

Tourist planes almost constantly fly over all day long, from 8 am till 11pm. 

Fall time colors are my favorite but it never lasts long enough.

Been painting caribou antlers, which is so much fun for me it should be illegal!

Found this guy sunbathing in my garden. 

Fireweed in fall colors at dusk.  They glow with color.