Welcoming in the New Year with a crazy giant radish and a trek through the arctic tundra

Such a busy holiday season this has been... Lots of family, lots of food, and of course, lots of snow. Christmas flew by, as it usually does, with a flurry of presents and food and holiday cheer, and then suddenly it was new years' eve. Mike and I were invited to ring in the new year with some friends at Dave and Tara's place. Tara was making fondue for dinner, so I was on deck for the appetizer.

Good thing I got this new cookbook for Christmas - Martha is always good for a fun recipe or two!

Flipping through the section on starters, I found one that called for this ingredient:

a crazy giant asian radish (aka: a daikon radish)

This is how you make it (click here for the recipe):

peel and slice the radish

dredge halved scallops in flour, cardamom, cayenne pepper, and two other 'c' spices whose names escape me just now... then sear the scallops in a pan, and stack them on top of the radish slices, and a few skinny strips of lettuce

And here's the whole pan ready to go to the party!

The party was great, but alas, the photos are not fit to be shared... so lets move on to that Arctic tundra I mentioned...

We've had a lot of snow over the last few days... on New Years day, we decided to take advantage of that by going cross-country skiing through the Arboretum down the street from our house (ok, its a few blocks away, but still...)

Here's Mikey waxing up the skis

The arboretum is on the side of the Rideau Canal - as you walk (or ski!) alongside the canal, you eventually come to the locks that mark the start of the skateable part of the canal (when its fully frozen, that is... its been so mild that the canal isn't frozen yet). The little wheel thingie on the left of this picture is the mechanism to open and close one of those locks. Behind us is Carleton Uni, the smaller of the two universities in Ottawa.
we passed this little pond on our ski... the barn in the background belongs to Agriculture Canada's Experimental Farm

And here's Mike trekking through the tundra on the way back home, right before I caught up to him and pushed him into the snow! (see how high the snow is compared to the tree?!!)

Happy 2008 Everyone!