Random things I've been up to

With the holidays and recent craziness in our lives, it's been nearly two months since we've seen our new house. Now finally I'm up north for a visit to the building site. Unfortunately there was craziness with the house as well and not a huge amount has changed but what has been done makes a big difference. The drywall has been hung which defines the rooms and makes it feel less like a pile of sticks and more like a house in the making. We spent the last two days taking hikes on our property and poking around in the house. When we came back to the lodge we are staying at I made some delicious posole.

The posole was made with a kit given to us by my parents for Christmas. They took a trip to New Mexico last year and fell in love with the food. For their Christmas gifts this year they made a posole kit (tomatoes, hominy and a homemade spice mix), pine nut brittle, biscochitos and jam and marmalade made with prickly pear cactus fruit. Everything was wonderful but my favorite part was the posole kit. I brought it with me and I made it for lunch after one of our hikes. My parents also passed on the recipes in their kit but I'm not going to post them here. My dad has been thinking about starting a foodblog of his own and I don't want to discourage him by stealing his recipes. He has a lot to share and I can attest that blogging is a lot of fun. If you'd like to see the most recent pictures of the house visit my other blog Building on Dog Hill.

A view of the icy East Grand Traverse Bay
(our lunchtime view from the lodge)

**My recent Foodbuzz browsing brought me to a great blog, All About Cakes. Rose, the author, has an impressive collection of cake recipes. She's also giving away a Betty Crocker 100 Piece Cake Decorating Kit to celebrate her 100th post. Check out how you can enter here.