Salsa Verde

Did you know that green salsa (Salsa Verde) is not made from green tomatoes? If you haven't had it - you should try it - it's the "medium" salsa if you've been to Qdoba and it's "Delish". Since Bill was off on his Bear hunting extravaganza I decided to play suzie home-maker and jar some salsa. Here's how it went...

First I needed some tomatillos - ours in the garden are not ready. Tomatillo's are these litle green tomatoes with husks on them (seen below)... you know they are ready when the husk part on the bottom splits open. You can get them at any grocery store or farmer's market.

To clean them you remove the husks and the core's (the little stem part) and soak them in water - they have some kind of oily film on them from the husks so make sure you soak them well. Salsa verde is pretty easy to make just put all the ingredients in the pan and cook - then run it all through your blender or food processor... you will get something that looks like this....
Process the jars in boiling water for 15 - 20 minutes and voila - salsa verde!

Ingredients: (there are many recipe's cook to taste)

51/2 cups husked, washed, cored tomotillos
1 cup onion
1 cup green chillies
1/2 cup white vinegar
4 T lime juice
4 cloves garlic
2 T cilantro (best fresh)
2 t. ground cmin
1/2 t salt
1/2 t. hot pepper flakes
(of course I added Jalapeno's to my batch)

Summer 2011

Wow - summer has flown by and no pictures on the blog to prove it. Here's a few highlights although there were many more fun times not pictured here:

Lots of party's on the peck patio, the kids decided that catching toads was a fun sport - then they let them go in the pond..... wonderful Nancy and I went to Traverse City to hang on the beach for the weekend - these are some baloons that were at one of the weekend festivals....
Can't have summer without a 4th of July Party at Trevor's house... complete with food, kids and fireworks It was a good summer for the flowers - we love hanging out on the patio all summer
Lilly turned 4 and Rilley turned 5 and neither of them hold still long enough for me to get a good photo...

We hope you had a great summer too!

~Bill & Traci

Hey Bill, "We are Sinking"

Grand Marais tag line is "Nature in Abundance" - so on the way here I was mentioning to Bill that I wanted to see 2 things... a porcupine and a bear. Strangely I've never seen either of these creatures up close (dead on the side of the road doesn't count). So yesterday on the way to the lake there was a porcupine in the road. They don't move too fast so Bill chased him into the woods to get pictures for me.. and I have to admit they are cool critters.
I was sure that seeing the porcupine on the way to fishing was good luck. So off we go to our hot spot withBill telling me he was going to catch a bigger bass than I had yesterday... as we get to our hot spot and Bill catches the first fish, I'm thinking huh I wonder why the boat seems so much closer to the water, it must be the waves are higher today than any other day this week... I didn't think much of it as I was busy trying to find the fish and next thing I know I look down to see water at my feet. So I calmly say Hey Bill.... I think we are sinking... maybe the plug is not in the boat.... (for those non boaters out there - there is this little plug that goes in the back of the boat - it's purpose is to have a way to let any water out of the boat when you are on dry land, however it needs to be in the boat when you are in the water)... anyway needless to say we made it out of the water and it was quite an adventure... not sure the porcupine was lucky after all. Here's a few pics of some other friends we met along the way...

Fishing in the Rain

Yes blog readers, since we are in GM to fish, Bill really doesn't care if it happens to be windy, cold, raining, or any other variety of horrible weather. I might have preferred to stay at the cabin with a book, however that was NOT an option... Don't worry, I made the best of it (what rain?)

Grand Marais v2011

Hey blog readers, it's the end of May - which for many mean's time to plant your garden, time for Cole's birthday, time to plant corn, and for Bill & I... time to go to Grand Marais and catch FISH... on this trip we decided to take the long way and visit Escanaba (because Bill loves the movie) but now we are here, catching our favorite fish... today after a particularly good day of fishing, it started to thunder storm while we are on this huge lake, just about as far from the launch as you can be... we are catching fish left and right and the thunder starts to roll.... after a few last catches and a few last fish (just one more cast Bill) we drove as fast as the boat could take us off the lake just in time to miss getting soaked..

But, here I am, sitting at the cabin writing this blog, and I see the sun is coming back out now and the storm is over... so I think we will go see if the fishies are still in their same spot waiting for us... more fish stories coming soon... Here's to hoping you are having as much fun as we are!

Hell's Kitchen Tryouts

For quite some time now after watching Hell's Kitchen, I've been wanting to make Beef Wellington. Since cooking alone is not half as much fun as cooking with friends (and wine) I called Amy and Christine and convinced them this was a good plan. Mike and Bill were fishing and Jackie was farming so it was a good time to make some Wellington.

Armed with wine, our Chef Ramsey video (which we only watched ab out 6 times) and our Pampered Chef tools, we managed to pull it off... delicious wellington perfectly cooked by the 3 amigo's ... I think we could be on Hell's Kitchen, but only if we were a team.

Finally... A Turkey

As my buddy Paul Harvey would say, and now for the rest of the story... you might remember the story about my "first turkey" in 2009 - well, welcome to 2011 when I FINALLY got my first turkey... if you missed it, here is the beginning of the story.

Earlier in the week during our Turkey season this May, Bill somehow managed to shoot 2 turkeys with one bullet - in all of 30 minutes.... So I decided to give turkey hunting another go.. it had been some time since our first experience and I managed to get out of work early on a sunny Friday afternoon. Out to Badiner's we went and on the way we revisited the rules....

The rules of turkey hunting are simple. Turkey with Red Head... Shoot! Turkey with Blue Head, Shoot! Turkey with a gray head, DON'T SHOOT (those are girl turkey's).

So after some cat scratch sounds by Bill, and seenig some turkey's way too far away to shoot... I was starting to wonder why I even bother with this turkey stuff... so I told Bill, lets go home... to which he said, OK but lets try one more spot... we trek over to the field like Mr. & Mrs. Fudd and ohmygosh I see A RED HEAD... I pull up my gun and say.... Shoot? Shoot? to which Bill says YES, YES shoot already (did you forget the rules already)... so I shoot... who knows why the turkey stuck around for this conferece but he did... after I shot I said - again, again??? Bill says nope we're done. And here he is.. my first turkey (and yes Bill did have his gun)