WHAT GLOBAL WARMING?

It looks like it is finally over and spring time is here. According to the local paper we had the coldest winter since 1932, 78 years ago. We had to handle over 60 straight days below 32 degree Fahrenheit and over 90 straight days below 55 degree Fahrenheit. So what happen to the dreadful global warming, the one lots of  people try to cash in at. You figure this out!

This was the main reason it took me so long to enter anything worthwhile in this blog. My main past time was watching the Olympics, play the Wii, cook some great food occasionally, spend hours on the Internet reading the Blick, e-mail, face book and stock market and spend some time with our grand children.

My Winter Olympic Team

Luke concentrating on his game

Great Shot

Try to come back

Windy is catching on quick

But spring time arrived about 3 weeks ago and on the first sunny day in 2010 Daniel, Eric, Mike and myself went for our first golf outing. It was great and the mood-swing started upward ever since!

Spring time arrived

Windy getting ready for a 80`s Party

 Even Teddy enjoys the sun

Of course we already had our first cook-out with some nice New York Steak and Salad.

To top off springtime, Brian, Eric, crew-chief Doug and myself traveled 700 miles to Bristol, Tennessee  to enjoy the Nascar sprint cup race weekend.

Just before leaving home

Traveling with nice weather

Arriving at the race track

Very impressive between the mountains

Our luxury Resort

We had some competitive corn-bag games

Brian whipped up some Talladega Steaks

and some delicious fresh biscuits with country gravy for breakfast

Sunday morning going to the Race

This picture shows on the upper left corner our camping place

about a mile from the race track

Waiting for the opening ceremony

The race starts with the pace car going off

Very exciting race for a change

Jimmy in the lead

Race ended with # 48 the winner, Yea!!

My Team!!

FLOWN BY

Yes, 31 days in January 2010 are gone. Flown by so quick, you think nothing really happened, but it is not so, as you will see in this short recollection of mine. As you know we've been moving up in this world and bought us a Wii for Christmas and since we had only 1 day with sunshine this month and every day freezing weather we have enjoyed  this game on a daily basis. We are officially experts on the carnival mini golf and some games in the Wii sport resort. We definitively need much more practice with the Tiger Wood PGA Tour 10 Golf game.

January 10th we woke up to 3 inches of snow and Brian was busy with plowing and salting his clients streets and parking lots and a couple days later he ask me to help him clean his heavy machinery including snowplows, salt trucks, small 4weehlers with snowplows, Bobcats and backhoe.

 

  

  

  

 

 
It took us a good 7 hours and it showed me some things,   #1: I am totally out of shape   #2: I am not used to working for 8 hour straight anymore.    I was tired and sore on my entire body when I got home, but I enjoyed myself and was very satisfied with my accomplishment.

Wednesday January 20, Donna's Birthday, I was planing a nice gourmet Dinner just for the two of us here at home. I went shopping the the day before for all the ingredients and got my mise en place together. On Wednesday Donna had to work and we decided on going out for lunch together to a restaurant of her choice during her lunch break.  We ended up in the Macaroni Grill and it was delicious. Of course, after this super Italian lunch we decided to reschedule her birthday dinner for the next day.

Thursday night I fixed sashimi appetizer, Alaskan king crab legs, fillet mignon, Pomme souffler,
fresh grilled asparagus with hollandaise sauce, and hot berry with vanilla ice cream. Also, for a cocktail we had a Bacardi and coke, consumed some Pinot Grigio with the appetizer, enjoyed a California Merlot with the main course, ending up with a couple of Grand Marniers for dessert.
Overall a very enjoyable and festive birthday dinner.

Saturday night Daniel and Gina took us out for some Sushi for Donna's birthday,  following  with a  show at the Funny Bone and drinking and dancing at a Jazzbar, where we were joined by Karla and Eric.

Another superior night, but we physically payed for it.  It took us all Sunday to recuperate. I am thankful Donna's Birthday Month is finally over.

 The only sad thing is that Gina and Daniel`s Dog Jack seems to be quite sick.  It is very mysterious and nobody seems to know what it is. I hope he recuperates very soon.

Last Friday was grandparents day at Luke`s school. Donna and I  surprised him and showed up. He was very happy and Grandma enjoyed herself too.

Also, for the last two weeks the Australian Open was on TV, and I had to spend a lot of hours in front of the television. Believe me, it was all worth it.  Mr Roger Federer was giving all the other boys some Tennis lessons!!!

As before stated, no wonder this month flew by that fast.

TEN DAYS OF FUN

Today is Saturday, January 2nd 2010, and we have consumed our last of  the New Years eve dinner left overs. It was delicious and now Donna and I are reminiscing about the happenings of the last 10 days. 

Ten days ago it was Christmas and we spent a wonderful day with all the family here.

We got together on Friday around 1 in the afternoon and enjoyed a pork roast, zucchini & yellow squash Provençal  and traditional mashed potatoes and gravy. For dessert I baked a cheese cake with sour cream topping, what was really delicious, but most everybody is so health conscious I ended up eating the whole cake myself. (I got to stop that). They really don't know what they missed!!

We all opened our Christmas gifts, had some good Wine, played the wii, watched the kids play with there new toys, overall an  enjoyable afternoon.

My Christmas cookies where a big hit. We ended up giving some  to all my neighbors, (maybe there will help me rake the leaves next Year). We even got surprised with a white Christmas and everybody was loving it except Brian, he had to go to work with his salt truck.

Monday I had to do some shopping for our new Years festivity. I prepped and cooked for next two days so everything would be perfect for New Years Eve. And it pretty much was.

We started with a dish called " Seafood  Campechano" .  It is served ice cold, a ceviche like
dish, you could only find in the Hazienda Restaurant at the Princess Hotel in Acapulco or of course
in the Euro Garden Restaurant on Mackinac Island.

More stew like, it is prepared with onion, tomatoes, chile cerano, hearts of palm, cucumbre, Tomatoe juice mixed  with diced flounder, cut shrimp and chunks of meat from king crab legs all marinated over night in fresh lemon jus.

Afterward we had  "Prime Rib of Beef au jus"  with "Orchard Lane Potatoes" and fresh "Asparagus Hollandaise".  Donna and I used to live on Orchard Lane in St Charles where we several times had poolside barbeques and that is where Donna use to wrap potatoes, onions and garlic in foil and baked them on the grill. I took this a step farther and added some sour cream, butter and chedder cheese and wraped the filling in puff pastry dough. That's how orchard lane potatoes where born.

For dessert I prepared a fresh   "Rasperry Roulade". The filling consisted of Mascarpone Cheese, Philadelphia cream cheese, vanilla pastry cream and fresh rasperries. It was delicious,light and moist and it seemed everyone enjoyed it.

But wait, this is not all, for midnight snack I fixed the traditinal canapees, a parmesan, spinach dip and some fresh gugamole dip.

After dinner we play darts and card games and had a champagne toast at midnight.
I do not  know about everybody else, but I had a wonderfull time this holidays. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR  2010