Winter's Officially Here

I think I'll have to admit winter is officially here. After a cooler week and lots of rain, the rain finally turned to snow overnight Saturday. It was just flurrying when we went to bed. By morning when we got up, we saw about 3-4 inches of fresh wet snow on the ground. It looked beautify as it covered all the trees. It continued misting/drizzling/snowing for the rest of the day, but we only got maybe another inch or two. Hayde got super excited when she went out in the morning and did circles in her crazy-hyper mode. This week will be our first week of sub-zero temperatures (that's Celsius), so I'm guessing this snow is here to stay - at least for a bit. Maybe it'll warm up a little one more time?

Jeremy's been wanting to start making his own sausage and stopped on his way home Monday at a butcher's in Chalk River. He got some pork and fat and some casings. He's never tried stuffing sausage before, but has been talking about it for a while. He decided to make two batches. One with the pork and the other with two of the pheasants from the other weekend. We had gotten all the spices at the Bulk Store last weekend so he was finally ready to make this. He left the pheasant sausage as is - like hamburger patties - and we spent Wed night (after he played hockey) stuffing the pork sausage into the pre-soaked casing. This was quite the process and we'll have to learn by trial and error what the best process is. He loaded the stuffing equipment onto the mixer and I stuffed it with meat while he watched and threaded the casing. It was slow going as the meat would clog the opening and the meat kept warming up and wouldn't go thru the stuffer easily. This reminded me of my old job at Kraft (we had just finished putting in a completely new hot dog line from start (grinding and mixing the meat) to finish (boxing for shipment), but in a much simpler process. He also made soup or broth from the left over pheasant carcass too.

I should mention, we've managed to get to the gym a few times over the week too and have been paying for it with sore muscles. We both can't believe how weak we've become, but we'll have to work on that. Yesterday, we went back to the free open skate and met Lee there too. I can now say I can stop (mostly) and they taught me how to skate backwards. I'd have to say, I probably look pretty funny doing this, but I have the basic idea how to at least.

My other task for the day is to finally start our strawberry wine. The berries have been sitting in the freezer for a week and we haven't gotten to it yet. The other two continuing to clear. The grape wine looks great and the top 1/2 is really clear. The raspberry still has a ways to go.

One more thing to mention. Jeremy talked to someone on his Friday night hockey league and they said it took his wife 2 years to get a job at AECL! I can't believe how tough this is going to be!