Oh The Weather Outsides Delightful.......

This Christmas was interesting for us in Minnesota. It started on December 20th with all the local weather broadcasters forecasting the next "Storm of the Century" starting on Wednesday night through Saturday. Two low pressure systems were set up to meet, dumping up to 24 inches of snow by the time it's done, or so they say. All this brew-ha-ha forced mom to cancel our traditional Christmas Eve in Eleva, moving it to Sunday. Well, the snow turned to rain and although the storm lasted almost 4 days, the totals were somewhat less than predicted. About12 inches here in Dayton, it only accumulated back home to the tune of around 4 inches. Either way my snow blower and ATV got a pretty good workout, as well the weather forecasters lived their fantasies. Traveling to Galesville on Saturday, it was Christmas Day with my sister-in-law. My present to Sue was to fix her gas fireplace that would not stay lit, then loading Microsoft Office 2007 on the computer. Christmas on Sunday turned out to be pretty good as everyone was not stressed to get everything accomplished in a short time. As a bonus I did get to visit my classmate and good friend Rick Semingson and his parents, Dunk and Mary. Rick is retiring this year, boy how time flies. We also visited my friend Kevin and Janet Aiona. Come to think of it Kevin is a year younger than I and is also retired! He had a nice bucket of sunfish caught in Alma a few hours earlier. The above picture is looking east from my driveway. We have a good 14 inches on the ground and it's time to get the snowmobile out and put a few miles on.

One of the things I like to bring my folks for Christmas is my now famous apple wood smoked turkey. Having a variety of smokers over the years I finally have a professional style smoke oven made by Cookshack. After trying a number of methods have settled into brining the turkey with Maple Cure from PS Seasoning, a Wisconsin meat supply company. Making a brine using 1 pound of cure to 2 gallons of water, I reserve about a pint of cure and inject it into the turkey before soaking for 24 hours. One of the best turkeys for smoking are Archer Farms Brand, butter injected frozen turkey's from Target. They produce the most moist finished product of any brand I've tried, butter just flows out as you make that first slice into the breast meat. Taking up to 1 hour a pound, apple wood smoke at 250 degrees, the picture is the finished product. I guarantee it tastes as good as it looks. The brine has cure in it and gives the turkey a ham like flavor that is second to none.

With the snow messing up my weekend schedule, my neighbor Lory and I got out on Saturday afternoon to see if those big crappies would show up west of town. Although we did not get the big snows as predicted, what did snow was heavy, wet, mixed with rain. These conditions make ice fishing interesting. The snow on the ice causes 2 major issues, first being that it insulates the ice slowing the freezing process. Without this latest storm, we would be driving on the lakes by now. The other issue is the weight of the snow will cause water to be forced up on the ice flooding the surface under the snow. Forming a layer of slush, it makes travel and setting up on the ice very sloppy. Any ice houses that were on the lakes prior to the storm need to be jacked up higher than this slush layer or they will freeze in solid. Driving to the lake we found the conditions as described. Pulling our gear, it seemed like we walked a mile up hill! 6 inches of snow, 2 of it was slush, 150 yards later we set up. Immediately the sunfish appeared and they were hungry. With about an 90 minutes before the sun went down the action was steady catching about 30 fish. Most were small but I managed to keep 4 nice ones while waiting for the crappies to show. As the sun set those 12 inch crappies where non-existent in my holes. Lory had slightly better luck catching one. Another mile back to the truck, we called it a day. Mille Lacs is in my sight this weekend and maybe another trip to to check out the crappies. This cold weather predicted for the rest of the week will certainly help the situation.