Wunderbar

Last night I went to my first ever German themed holiday party.  It was wunderbar!  I brought Zweibelkuchen (onion tart).  We had sauerkraut and potatoes and warm potato salad and rye bread and cheese and lots of other goodies.  The carnivores had brats.  But everyone had sauerkraut balls which were delicious deep fried balls of sauerkraut in a ritz cracker breading.  Yummy.  The food was great but the conversations are what made this a great party.  This group of master naturalists are great talkers. Over the course of the evening we talked about cutting up moles and mice for raptors and how moles make your hands smell worse, owls, the Clean Water Act, farming practices, genetically modified organisms, neonicatoids, pesticides, wheat rust, overpopulation, BT modified corn, electrical engineering, medical devices, the accident in 1967 on the aircraft carrier USS Forestal and was John McCain responsible, John McCain, the Keating Five, Vietnamese prisoner of war camps,  Japanese prisoner of war camps, the new movie coming out "Unbroken," Crex Meadows, the Harriet Alexander Nature Center, playing the accordion, the Saint Paul Waltz, the water levels of White Bear Lake, what Wisconsin thinks of the effect Minnesota has on the St. Croix River, snakes, the short days of winter, seasonal changes, seasonal affective disorder, the Glockenspiel restaurant, making spatzel, making sauerkraut, children, grandchildren, and topics to study in 2015.  What a great evening!