there are so many things to be thankful for this Christmas season!

check out this gorgeous sunset -

no staying snow yet tho. it has been absolutely gorgeous this past few days.

here's a yummy salad - tangerines, pomegranate seeds, kiwi and defrosted blueberries that jambaloney picked in august - can you say anti-oxidants? with a very light dressing of oil, apple cider vinegar (with the mother), unpasteurized honey, fresh ginger and tons of fresh garlic...lots of good stuff to keep you healthy!

and of course - our weekly bulgogi. the side dishes change with each bulgogi meal...but we have it once a week. letting the meat sit in it's marinade for 3 days is actually a method of fermentation. and we all know how good fermentation is for us, right?

two kinds of kimchi, bulgogi, rice, turmeric fried cabbage, roasted carrots, fermented beets and daikon radish and fresh apple slices....yum!

check out these skies. yes - this is what we look at instead of tv. crazy huh? ya, but we're crazy kind of people.

wow eh? even when it's overcast and grey here...it's still amazingly beautiful. we take time each day to thank our Creator for this beauty.

yum. pasta with olive oil, butter, parsley, a ton of garlic - like a ton - and parmesan. and that's our last tomatoe of the season. thank you little tomatoes for lasting this long. we enjoyed growing, harvesting and eating every one of you. we should have tomatoes again in june. fingers crossed.

poor Helga hasn't had a trip to the river in weeks - she's getting stir crazy. so we took her down. how beautiful eh? it's hard to not feel thankful all of the time.

here's the little engine that brought Helga to the river. she rode on the back and held on to jambaloney. me? i had to walk down. jeesh! oh and walk back up. double jeesh!

Helga was climbing trees, i was enjoying the sky, and jambaloney was getting our boats all set for winter.

oh my gawd! is there anything better than home-made chopped liver pate, some onion bagel pieces, a hard boiled egg, some cheese, some apple, some home-fermented beets, some olives and some sweet pickled onions? and all on a plate? and ready to share with your baby? for your evening snack? is there anything in the world that is better than this?

i think not.

except another usual sunset. they really are all this fantastic folks. i'd upload pics of the sunsets daily if it didn't recquire so much work.

here's another frosty morning. and lots of happy birds.

they are so beautiful to watch every day. we love the birds here.

speaking of beautiful....how about some proper polish cabbage rolls? my grandmother from my mother's side, her name is Audrey Irena Polutnik. she was born in norway, her mother was polish and her father was ukranian. she served in the canadian forces during ww2. and she made some mean cabbage rolls. she taught my mother and my mother taught me.

you core a head of cabbage and then put the head in boiling water and peel off individual leaves. you cook your hamburger and your rice and then combine them. you put a bit of your hamburger/rice mixture on to each boiled cabbage leaf. you line your pan with cabbage leaves. then you put your crushed tomatoes on the leaves. add sauerkraut. sauerkraut is a must in cabbage rolls. add some tomatoe sauce that is stinkingly full of garlic. add your rolls. more sauce. a ton more sauerkraut. more sauce.

cover the top of your cabbage rolls with more leaves. more sauce. more sauerkraut. you must add sauerkraut. cover and cook for an hour at 350.

then enjoy. you can add a side dish if you like. but cabbage rolls fill all of the food groups - cabbage as your veg, tomatoe as your fruit, rice as your starch, hamburger as your meat....and tons of sauerkraut - which is a food group all on it's own.

it's the season. merry christmas to you all.