land of bread and honey

Christmas Eve we did a grab bag gift exchange (with a fun little game that involved stealing gifts etc). Mark's dad, Everett, and Marlene brought jars of honey made in Rochester, Minnesota, as their grab bag gifts. Mark ended up with one (yay! way to go, Mark!!). This honey is sooooo good - and as a bonus, it qualifies as locally grown food. Later Marlene told me to check out their website, Johnston Honey, because they have their beautiful gardens featured on the site. I've been checking them out, and they are indeed beautiful. So I thought I should share them with my blogger friends - especially because so many of you, like me, are looking at snow and/or cold instead of lovely flowers right now. I couldn't see that they have a slideshow feature, so the site is kind of cumbersome to use, but well worth the time. Let me know what you think.

Today (and for the next few days) we are hovering right around zero for highs, so I made homemade vegetable soup and crusty rolls for tonight's dinner. The rolls look really good, and I may have to sneak one before dinner time! But I wanted to show you the breadboard Mark made me. I read (was it in Artisan Bread??) that the best way to store cut crusty bread was with the cut side down on a breadboard. One night last week we had to go out for awhile, and I couldn't leave the bread on the pullout breadboard because Mr Kobie would have helped himself to it while we were gone. So I told Mark I needed a small breadboard that I could set back on the counter. Two days later I had this lovely board. He used maple and walnut to make it, and it is beautiful. He's taking over the garage with his woodshop, but I'm thinking it might not be a bad thing! :)

Hope you all are surviving this cold weather (or enjoying the warm temps if that's your reality!!). I'm hoping to get back into the blogging stuff soon.