Another find: Lemon & Pepper Chocolate

A confession: today, for the first time since we came back, I visited the new Safeway store that sprouted up here in Fairbanks in place of the old one in the year that we were gone. Somehow, visiting a new store seemed daunting. With kids in tow, it was simply easier to go to Fred's, where we know where everything is. And even without kids, it was easier for the same reason. So today I decided to check out the new Safeway. Browsed the isles, checking what they have here... and there - and that's how I discovered that there is this intriguing chocolate sold there....

Could it be our favorite Lemon and Pepper from the swiss grocery store Migros, that Hilary and Ryan introduced us to? It says Product of Switzerland. It does not have the Frey (manufacturer for Migros) name. But the shape of the squares of chocolate within the bar is the same (thanks again to Hil and Ryan, we have one sample here to compare it to, down from numerous bars they sent us). And lastly, there is the taste. Martin confirms: it sure tastes like it is the Lemon & Pepper that we consumed in large quantities last year. We will definitely be visiting the Safeway store more often from now on :)

Our house

Our house, yesterday. The birch trees look magical in the fresh snow.

46F

46F above, not below.

Alaska range

View on New years eve of Alaska Range. Moffet is the roundish mountain just on the left edge of the picture ("muffin" in my mind), then towards the right are Hayes (the nice triangle sticking up), and Hess and Deborah side by side.

It was the fourth day or so of -40 temperatures, and ice fog was everywhere in inhabited regions. Beneath the ice fog in this picture lies the city of North Pole.

Sunrise that day was at 10:55am, about 3/4 hour after I took the picture.

Bedtime

The little one is just fearless.

The sixteen days of Christmas

are at last over. From what I heard on NPR, the twelve days of christmas are actually the days after christmas. This year, after christmas, the cold came, and stayed, and stayed, and stayed, until today. So this year, it has been sixteen days. Dec 27 to Jan 11th. (Yes, mom, we were all wearing gloves, but now that we have a heat wave of 0F, I don't think we will bother.) Glad the sixteen days of Christmas are over. Time to do some skiing and playing in snow. Both the kids and the dogs (as well as the adults in this house) could use a bit more outdoor time.

A cool graph of the weather can be found at a local very talented person's (Chris Swingley's) webpage on weather.

A find

I was surprised yesterday to come across this at our local Fred Meyer's:


I still remember the story I heard almost eight years ago on NPR about how the company was planning to rename the pudding to Spotted Richard instead of Spotted Dick. So I got one. I don't know when we'll actually taste it, something about british puddings.