Chocolate Monster

I love chocolate, and in Switzerland, did eat quite a bit of it. On average during some weeks may be a bar of chocolate a day, on some other weeks somewhat less. Not the two bars of chocolate that Martin claims.

I guess some of that chocolate taste went through the breast milk to Emilie. Emilie loves chocolate too. She knows in which drawer it is here in our house. If she sees me open that drawer, or hears it getting open, she goes to me and makes sure that I know she wants some too. (Unlike Sonja, who says she does not like chocolate.) She even stopped crying today (after I forget what happened) when I told her to come and get some chocolate.

After coming back from Switzerland, I decided to do a taste test of some of the darker chocolates. I tried the Hersheys Cacao Reserve, Ghirardelli Intense Dark, and several Lindt Excellence chocolates. I learned that I am dark-chocolate, but not intense-dark-chocolate type person. So I liked generally the 60-something percent chocolates. The higher percentages were just too dark for my taste buds right now. The Hersheys bar was too sweet. By far, my all time favorite of the ones I tried was the Lindt Madagascar. The Lindt Madagascar was mmmm mmmm gooood. Too bad that Fred Meyer's ran out of it when I checked last time. I may also have to try the Lindt Peru, which I noticed on their web site. The Lindt Ecuador was too dark for me.

Overall, the chocolate situation is definitely not as good as in Switzerland, but it is not bad.




Ouch! I just saw on the Lindt website that the Lindt Madagascar is $3.99/bar. I will have to wait for another 2/$5 sale at Fred's!

Playing in first snow (movie)

Yesterday morning Martin, Sonja and Saphira went to play in the snow that had fallen overnight (and stuck around, unlike Martin's predictions). The movie is about a minute long. Good thing the last Farmer's Market of the season was the day before, at least it still felt like fall and not winter.


At lunchtime, Martin picked up Tolly from the airport. And in the evening we had a gathering, for Tolly. A lot of people managed to get here despite the slick conditions. Dorte was laughing that the parking pullouts further up the road (for those that did not dare to go down the steep part of our road followed by the steep uphill of our driveway) were chock full of subarus. It is a favorite car around here. The food was excellent, even if some of it disappeared off the grill before it made it indoors (Martin and Chris, those shrimp were good, weren't they?? :) Just kidding, by that time, most people were already stuffed.). The company was excellent too, and we got to see several more people that we didn't meet yet in the month we've been back. And, as far as I know, no car in the ditch? Or at least if there were any cars, they managed to get out by themselves without coming back to the house for help.

Hot women and hot chocolate

From the collection of hot chocolates in our house (some form us, some from our housesitters), look at these cuties:

I will try to pay attention in the grocery stores in the future, if I see a box of hot chocolate that depicts a man somewhere, be it grandpa, or a hot dude...

Snow

This morning we saw a few flakes on the ground here and there, nothing much. I did some final raking of leaves to throw over bulbs I planted (hoping that they will flower in the spring, we have to see about that) in order to insulate them better. Just in time. Somewhere between 9:30pm and 11pm tonight, the ground went from being mainly dark to being mainly white:


Who knows whether the snow will stick, but today might have been the last day to do fall type things around the house. Time to do winter type things...?

Raspberry monster

We had still gone on Sunday to get some raspberries at the Pearl Creek Farm off Ballaine Road. Martin made a dessert for us that evening of raspberries with sugar and ice cream, really excellent. But since then, the leftovers have sat in the fridge, since I never remembered them when we wanted fruit (plenty of fruits on our counters), or even after the kids had gone to bed. Until today. I thought I would take some for me, and the rest make into a small batch of raspberry-cranberry jam, as we also had some cranberries sitting on the counter. No sooner is the small portion of raspberries for eating in the bowl than I hear over the baby phone "wahh wahhh waaaaahhhh". The little one woke up. Just in time for raspberries. I had to share that small bowl of raspberries with her. There was no way around it. Raspberry monster. I am just glad Sonja did not wake up too :)

After five minutes of boiling, I turned the rasp-cran jam off. We will finish the jam tomorrow. Preliminary taste test shows it is a good choice, as people said it is.

And may be tomorrow we might still find a couple raspberries that did not get knocked down by the several freezing nights we've had. To satisfy all the raspberry monsters around.

Equinox

Equinox is here - equal day and night. Now it's just downhill from here on. I hope that we will get enough snow to enjoy the winter. It sounds like the last winter (and summer) were both pretty bad.

Happy Equinox, everyone, owls and woodpeckers and dogs in the neighborhood too!

Fridays

Our time back in Fairbanks is delineated by Fridays.

Three weeks ago Friday we arrived, one day later than scheduled.

Two weeks ago Friday, Sonja was crying in daycare during naptime, and I went to pick her up after the teacher said she just couldn't comfort her. (Sonja was actually asleep by the time I arrived.)

One week ago I got a phone call again from the daycare, saying that Sonja was crying that her mouth was hurting, and that they discovered a new tooth was making its way out. I went to get some pain medicine and stopped by the daycare and gave some to Sonja, and she was fine for the rest of the day.

And this past Friday, I got a phone call again. This time it was that she was scratching her head, and they discovered she has some nits. As in, head lice / nits. So Home she came with me, after the teacher showed me how they looked. I did have lice in first grade, but obviously didn't get to see them on my own head back then. We will see how long it takes us to get rid of this problem. We did the shampoo thing, followed by careful combing with the lice (very fine toothed) brush, and changed all the sheets and bedding... now are in the process of washing everything.

I wonder what next Friday will bring. Actually, I know - it will bring Martin, who's heading out towards the mid-country early Monday Morning.

In the meanwhile, hope that everyone has a happy Sunday! We will head to Lulu's again, for our weekly weekend breakfast there.

As a PS, we did watch some of the finishers of the Equinox Marathon today, congratulations to all participants. Sonja did her own version of the marathon today, when she walked with Martin and Saphira from our house to the finish line all by herself except for perhaps two minutes when Martin apparently carried her. It took them two hours to do. Way to go, Sonja! That was the longest you have walked! Yay! About 3 miles / 5 km. Cool!