Happy New Year!

We awake on the first day of 2016 to a thermometer reading of -25 degrees F.  It has warmed up to -20 by 09:00.  Hard to believe, right?  Check out the weather station for South Park, a community just to the north of us at South Park 24hr Weather  How do the animals outside survive?  We tend our chickens carefully.  Lock them up in the coop, warmed by the red glow of a heat lamp, careful to remember to let them out the next morning (stuck in a small coop all day is exactly where the phrase "cooped up" came from!  Chickens don't like it either!).

What does -20 look like?   I keep looking around wondering how to give an image that shows the bitter cold.  Opening the quilted shades this morning gave me a clue.  This is a hint of how cold it is - this frost on a double pane window. 

Always looking for the good, I do have a wonderful and spacious deep freeze just outside the door!  Two of the turkey carcasses (one got thrown away on Christmas before I could shut the malicious offender down - can you believe people throw turkey carcasses away?  So un-Midwestern!) got simmered into a giant batch of turkey broth and turkey soup.  Contained and labeled, the quick meals now are frozen solid outside the front door.  I think I have some time before figuring out how to get them into the freezer.

Upcoming blog post for 2016.  Soon I will be posting 10 Of My Favorite Kitchen Things.  I am working on what number one should be right now.......I hope you readers will find this posts fun and maybe valuable as you consider kitchen ware that works.  Yesterday, the cold press juicer arrived and Mike and I made our first batch of carrot, apple, beet, ginger, spinach juice.  DELICIOUS!  Thank you Mom for that Christmas gift (which I would have never purchased without the gift - your gift was a great incentive).

Happy New Year!  May big buildings burning down teach us how important fire codes really are!  May we all feel safe and live without fear as we travel around our nation and the world.  May we appreciate how amazing it is to live in this USofA.  May we turn off the TV more often, put down the iPhone, and look each other in the face and hear and talk.  May we laugh and love, ride a good mule, and drink good wine.  What more could one want for?