One of the advantages of self-employment is that I can steal a few extra minutes before I get up in the morning, without adding a ton of stress to my life. So it was this morning, as I listened to Greg, already up, grinding his coffee. I recalled early mornings as a child, smelling the coffee my parents were preparing, and hearing the radio they had playing. A guy named Hunter Como would sing, "It's wake up time", and then do a little trill on his guitar. It's wonderful that memories from so long ago can stay with a person. The second thing I did is something that I always do in this season: check out the window to see if it is snowing. Indeed, we are receiving some wayward flakes, softly floating their way down. When this is the case, at this time of the year, I feel a sense of relief.
The Thanksgiving weekend was a bustling and enjoyable time. We had several folks in who either cooked up their own feast, or went down to the wonderful bounty that was being offered at our neighboring lodge. We ourselves relished in one of the very best dinners I think that I have ever had. Greg's sister Geri and her friend Donn had raised the turkey that we ate, and had butchered it just a couple days prior. Addie took one bite, turned to Greg, and said, "Oh, Papa! We should raise turkeys!" I don't know that we're ready to take that on, but the difference in flavor does make it tempting. We all did our best to bring an item that was, at least in part, "locally produced". My contribution was an ice cream lemon meringue pie, in which I made my own ice cream from milk obtained at the local dairy. It is raw milk, which we have been drinking for about a year now. We had homegrown vegetables, herbs, and even a chicken from Geri, too, in case the twelve-pound turkey wasn't quite large enough. It truly was a feast for royalty. I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day, too.
The wax disapppeared from the pots on Friday faster than I could melt more for refills. We made several pairs of beautiful beeswax candles, and the kids had a ball making the colored paraffin candles. Somehow, there was room in the kitchen for everyone. This year, we melted the bulk of the wax outside, and that really helped with the moisture management. Wax needs to be melted in a water bath, and in the past, it has almost felt like a sauna in the kitchen at the end of the day. Now everyone has new candles, in all shapes and sizes to burn at home, and think about the day they made them on the Gunflint.
Saturday was baking day, and I fired up the bread oven early. I had noticed last month when firing the oven that there was a lot of steam coming out of the firebricks. It seems that with all the rain of September and October, some of it had gotten under the hearth. I could even hear it sizzling. In that previous baking session, the pizza crusts had steamed rather than baked. Oh dear! During this session of firing, I saw lots more steam coming out of the chimney, and I could see where it was evaporating off of the outer walls. Maybe we've finally baked it out of there? I hope so. I baked four loaves of ciabatta, and some guests baked two loaves of rosemary ciabatta. I tell you, after several weeks of not baking, the taste of that familiar bread is so good. It reminds me of how much I love it. Then again, I know that I can't bake like that year-round, or I would weigh about three-hundred pounds! Once the bread was done, we baked off pizza for a busy group of pizza-makers in Tamarack, who came up with a colorful batch. The scent of those was enough to drive me back into my own kitchen to whip out a few crusts, then enlist Paul and Addie to put on some toppings and help bake them. Even though I can bake the same recipes in my kitchen oven all winter, we are in agreement that they just don't taste the same as those that come from the wood-fired oven.
The lake is still open, but many of the smaller lakes have frozen over. We saw steam rising off of Gunflint one day, a good sign that things are cooling off. The moon was full and bright throughout the nights, so it was easy to be out and about for walks. Once again we have moonshadows. The path that the moon follows in the cold months is similar to the one that the sun follows in summer--higher in the sky, sometimes directly overhead. It's a great time of the year to take walks at night, as you can see so well. Just be sure to bundle up.
We are closed again for a few weeks, with plans to re-open about the 20th of December. Greg is working hard on the bathroom at Spruce cabin, so that it is done by then. The rest of us will be busy with more seasonal cleaning, and of course, the other kind of seasonal preparations: those for the big holidays yet to come. The days will fly by, as they always do.
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