Thanksgiving at Sheep Mountain

Our second Thanksgiving at Sheep Mountain Lodge with Mary and Lance Mearig was a big success -- not as much snow as last year, but the turkey and everything that accompanied it was at least as good!  We headed up there on Wednesday night and relaxed in the cabin with a jigsaw puzzle after fish stew and homemade bread and a wonderful salad with pomegranate seeds, candied pecans and goat cheese with leaf lettuce and arugala -- and a honey mustard dressing - really good!  Oh, and I played speed scrabble for the first time!

It was below zero overnight but balmy single digits during the day -- we took a long (uphill) walk in the morning after waffles and eggs, then more jigsaw puzzle (and food preparation) before Lance and Brian and I went for a pretty good ski - no tracked trails but enough snow to diagonal ski anyway.

Brian picked up a Nouveau Beaujolais, which doesn't usually make it to Alaska in time for Thanksgiving, and we had a mid-afternoon glass of wine while the turkey was finishing.  Dinner was great, as was the company!  Then more games - dominos this time.

We finished off with a chocolate torte that I made and then forgot to take a picture of!  Take my word for it - it was over the top - a flourless torte with a little cayenne and cinnamon topped with a bittersweet chocolate ganache and finished off with sliced almonds and dried mango.    And a walk after dinner in the cold, cold, cold before the other two couples went for the wood-fired sauna they'd built up over the evening -- Brian and I chickened out and went back to our cabin next door to finish our jigsaw puzzle!

Actually we had one going in both cabins, and they just finished theirs this morning (Friday) before we left -- one more ski on the way out, skate ski this time up the road a bit.