Just wanted to let you know that our order of pasties arrived safe and sound at my parents in Seattle.  I am Elmo Negro's son-in-law ( everyone seems to know him from the "tower")  and currently reside in Gavle, Sweden where I play hockey for Brynas, a team in the Elite League.  My wife and I decided to order pasty for my family in Seattle who have at one time or another enjoyed pasties.  We enjoy visiting the site and following the pictures from the pasty cam. 

Happy Holidays to everyone back home!!!

Tom and Celia Bissett

(Yes, Elmo's Tower was certainly one of our big stories in 1998 :o)

Hello Pasty Central,

Yes, I confirm my order.  I will call ahead and make sure someone is there to receive the order and place in refrigerator.

I love your website!  I'm a transplanted Yooper and it is wonderful to look at all the pictures from the old hometown area!  What a great idea you have started!   I'll be following pasty.com news faithfully.

V Haas

I am having trouble accessing last week's page of pastycam photos.  My browsers tells me that the file can not be found.  Would you please check into it.  Thank you.

P.S. I like your site.  It is nice to see some of the places I visited while attending Michigan Tech.  Living in Chicago I don't get to see as much fall and winter color as I did those years.  Keep up the good work.

Mark Moen

(Thanks for alerting us to the glitch, Mark.  We here at Pasty Central are working so hard to make our pasties Y2K compliant, that we forgot to link to last week's pictures.  It's fixed now :o)

I love your PastyCam pictures.  Being way down in Houston TX seeing snow on Pasty.com is fun.  Snow up there, of course!  Snow is not "fun" down here!

Can you tell me if there is a screen saver with pictures of the Copper Country available?

Thanks for your delightful pictures and comments.

Betty Burg

(we'll have to get Toivo and Eino working on your screen saver idea)

I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy the "PastyCam".  I grew up in Houghton County (in Winona) and it gives me great pleasure to be able to get a little bit of "home" when I live so far away.  I guess Yoopers are a unique bunch and "you can take a person out of the UP but you can't take the Yooper out of a person."  Keep up the good work.

Sincerely,
Judy Leppanen

I am long parted from my life in the Copper Country, and memories of the hardest parts of the winters are fading, but the memories of pasties, saffron buns, overheated houses, and deep faith and love continue.

Sent Hilltop rolls to some transplants in southern Michigan, and they will split up one for the four of them for breakfasts!!!  Even they, moved south only 8-10 years ago, they had forgotten how HUGE they are.

Warm memories, great affection, and the joys of the season be yours,

MaryJane Butkus

Thanks for the veiws which made me "homesick".  When I was a student at Tech, (US 41) was one of my favorite drives.   I found an old postcard Eagle River from my greatgrandfather to my grandfather remarking about a Sunday drive.

I have sent your URL to all my Tech friends.   Happy Holidays!

Cary

Can't make out the indicator arrow on the snow thermometer picture. Mom & Dad say there will be a very white Christmas after all. We are very cold here in NE Oregon, but not much white stuff ={

Dawn M.

(The Keweenaw County Road Commission had not yet mounted the indicator arrow this year, due to lack of snow.  However, that has all changed in the last couple of days.  Our updated photos on the snow thermometer page should soon have the pointer)

I received my pasty shipment yesterday at noon.  Thank you so much for your service - we can't wait to try them on Christmas Eve.  We also placed an order for Vollwerth sausage which arrived last Friday so we're going to
have a good old-fashioned UP Christmas.

R Cogger

I learned about your site from reading the Daily Mining Gazette.  I was raised in Laurium by my grandparents when I was a little girl.  I visited the Copper Country every summer up until 1983.  I returned in 1997 and 1998.  To me this is the most beautiful place in Michigan.  Although I no longer have family in the Copper Country, I will always feel this is home.  That is one reason that I now subscribe to the Mining Gazette.

In October of this year I bought a computer, and went online the day after Thanksgiving. When I discovered this site, I told my daughter and my sister and her husband.  There is not a day that goes by that we do not go into your site.  We all enjoy your pictures of places that mean a lot to us.  It is like going on vacation without leaving our homes.

You have asked for suggestions of different places/scenes to take pictures of for your daily updates.

Our family camp is one fourth mile from the JamPot.  After you pass the house that is now occupied by the monks and head North, the camp is on the right hand side.  The family name is Butala.  If you could take a picture of this (or of the outhouse in the back) would mean a lot to us.  I also think others would enjoy the picture, especially if there is snow in the yard.

Thank You and keep up the good work.

Carole Krueger

(Thanks for the note... we'll try to send the Pasty Cam on assignment to the Jacob's Falls area this week)

I have lived in Sarasota, Florida for 49 of my 51 years.  Twenty years ago I met a Yoopers girl in an RV park here in Sarasota and my life hasn't been the same (thank God).  I have spent the last 20 summers at Sunset Bay Camp on 5 mile Point Rd in Ahmeek.  The girl I met was Ellen Lukonich and she said she was from Ahmeek, Mi.  I my first thought was, where the !@#$  was Ahmeek,  Mi?  If the Keweenaw gets in your blood you haven't got a chance!  I always tell my friends from Florida when they come up "Don't stay more then 24 hours or your done for.  Anyway enough of that.  We LOVE PASTY.COM!!!!!!!

Bill & Ellen Howard (Lukonich)

Pasty-cash--What a concept! What a country! And you retained the old currency layout (not that new, funny-lookin' design that is seeping into our currency).

Wishing all Yoopers and Yoopers-at-heart a very Merry Christmas and a New Year blessed with many, many pasties!

John L. Hoh, Jr.

I enjoy your site.  It helps those of us in the lower part of the state to follow snow conditions in the upper.  We all appreciate it.  Keep adding the pics!

Chuck Pelham

My shipment of 6 beauties got here late in the day on Thursday, and once again, the smell of pasties rushes me home to the Copper Country, with saunas and deep snow, and woodstoves, and warm hearts, even if the toes and fingers are a bit cold....

May the joys and light of Christmas be with everyone at Still Waters!
 

MaryJane Butkus, 
an Ohio transplant

Lonesome for the U.P... 

I was born and raised in Keweenaw and now live in Oregon.  I am delighted to be able to visit this website and see the pictures so close to home.  We hope to move back there in a couple of years when I retire.

Shari (Bruneau) Chase

Our Pasty Order was received this afternoon (Tues, Dec. 15) via Priority Mail, with the pasties defrosted, but in good condition, and with a wonderful mouth-watering aroma.  We are warming up the oven to eat half the order for supper, and the second half will be eaten in a day or two (we did put them in the freezer, just in case we are delayed, for some reason).  Thank you--THE CHECK IS IN THE MAIL (as we used the honor system).

Carol and Charles Quandt

Love your site!  My folks were born & raised in Hancock and Houghton and we visited every year as kids. We kids aren't official yoopers, but we get together and make pasties, we love saunas, (yes it's the Finnish blood), love the scenery up there-and we still have kin there.  We just found your website and LOVE the pics!  Keep it up!!  I can't wait to show my Mom!  She'll love it!  Will be visiting family in June-see you then! 

Lin (Dix) Bailey from Still in Michigan, but almost Ohio 

Well this is great.   A reminder of home.  Hot in Sarasota, FL.  Suppose the hammer will come down there, but what a great few months.  What they going to do with the salt?  Will pass this site on to others down here.  Ellen made pasties the other day.

Thanks
Jerry Mars

(someday it will snow again, though we're beginning to think maybe not this year)

My pasties arrived on Friday in great shape (what an interesing shiping process). Three were in the oven for Friday nights dinner and they were great.  Too bad we don't have smell-o-vision to go with the photos on the net. The other three wil disappear soon.

I thought you might like to know that PASTY.COM is part of the final exam in my Internet class at the Royal Oak campus of Oakland Community College.  As a measure of basic net navigation skills I sent them to PASTY.COM and had them find who runs the site, what the current total snow acumulation has been,and the cost for six pasties. Its a pretty simple task that gets them set up for some qustions on search engines, FTP, Telent, Front Page 98, etc.  The students enjoyed the site and it should give you some more exposure.  We even discussed PASTY.NET and compared it to HOTMAIL in or class discussions of email systems. (I already have three email addreses and I'm not sure that I could remember a fourth but pasty.net is an interesting idea.)

Keep up the good work.

Lary Molloy

The pasties arrived safe and sound on Thursday at  11:30am in Allegany, NY.  They were in our stomachs by 7pm.

There is a story behind these pasties.  Gene, the person who order them lived in the UP during 1980-1981.  He went to Michigan Tech.  We were looking his school up on the internet and I asked him what a paste-y  was?   The first thing he said you mean pasties.  I was curious about it so we went to your site and saw that we could order them. 

So they came today and I followed your instructions and he was in heaven when he ate it.  I did have to ask what you put on it.  I would have to say no to ketchup, maybe applesauce, and yes to gravy. We had a side order of french fries.  Is this what you have with them?  While they were in the oven Gene read your newspaper (Daily Mining Gazette).

Gene faxed a co worker who also use to live in the UP(Michigan Tech Grad) and told him that he  was having a pasty.  Trying to make him jealous.  Tomorrow, he is going to tell two more people at work  who used to live in the UP,   about how delicious they were.  I also told a friend who lived in Michigan what we were having for dinner.  He wanted to know where I was getting them.  So you might get four new customers from southwestern NY.

Gene would like me tell you he will be making a trip back to the
UP.  I will be going with him this time and I can not wait.  Hopefully it will be during winter carnival.  I saw some pretty pictures.

Thank you for a great meal.  We both enjoyed them and we will be to ordering  them again.  Happy Holidays!

E.D. Rochelle 

(we hope to have Pasty Cam coverage of the Winter Carnival again this year... come to think of it, we hope there IS a Winter Carnival this year... Heikki Lunta has not done his job so far this season)

I think reminiscences by the pasty makers would be intriguing--what was life like growing up in Copper Country in days gone by? What were Christmases like (good topic for December), the Depression, the mines, the winters. Please add a section for the residents' reminiscences so that us young-uns can have a link to our nation's history, even this small portion of our nation's history.

John H.

(perhaps another feature we could add in the coming year...)

I have received the pasties.  The check is on its way.  Thanks to you I will be eating in style tonight.

Also, I had time to read some of the news papers that were used as packing.  You might want to advertise this free benefit!  Next time I would like mine packed with the Ironwood Daily Globe!!!

Take care & happy holidays.  You guys are doing a great job.

Bob McEnroe

Kids are finally old enough that they have to bear with dad's desires of doing vacation the way he used to do it so many years ago.  We're coming north!

We'll be staying in Houghton and Eagle Harbor (we hope!) and figure it would be nice to stop by for a pasty meal.   You have any outlets in the area?

Matt Berigan

(You are welcome to stop in at Still Waters in Calumet, corner of Mine and Elm Street.  We make pasties just about every Wednesday, and we always have frozen ones on hand, because we ship hundreds every week.)

I received my pasties last Thursday and they were soooooooooooooooooo delicious.  I'll be ordering again soon. Thanks to all the folks for making such great pasties!!!

-Linda Murray

Dear Pasty Cam, 

Think of this unusual warm weather as Mother Nature's was of giving those who otherwise couldn't afford it a brief southern vacation for the holidays.

Peter Chiomenti

Wonderful, wonderful shipping!  Friend received pasties Wednesday (they were shipped on Monday).  He and his mother absolutely loved them.  They have never had them before and thought they were marvelous.  Thank you all for the most wonderful work you all do.  How wonderful to be able to ship a little piece (and I might add a mighty tasty one) of this beautiful U.P. to friends all over the U.S.  Hats off to the wonderul work you are all doing!

A most grateful customer.....

Helen Chamberlain

Thank you for the great pictures!!!  I grew up in Hancock and it was like going home for me.  I spent my childhood camping, swimming and cross country skiing in the Keweenaw Peninsula.  Looking at these pictures is like revisiting my carefree days when everything was beautiful.  I will have my whole family visit these pictures, we all live all over the country now and we always say there's no place like the U.P.  It's nice to know that it hasn't changed that much...it's still more beautiful than ever.  Thanks again!

Christy Moscheck Schultz

I grew up in White Pine, Michigan, and spent my childhood visiting my grandparents in Hancock, and my parents now live in Calumet after the W.P. mine closed.  I just discovered this site, and checking out your pictures, I am homesick!!!!!   If your PastyCam get over by McLain State Park anytime soon, could you put a pic of that on the site?  My  parents live on Lakeshore Drive, and I sure miss the view of that lighthouse!  You have a fan!!  Keep it up!! 

Tresa Kempainen

I have been visiting you site everyday .....  I live in Darlington, England, which is about as far away as possible from Cornwall (where Cornish pasties were first made).   I can honestly say that I have never heard of this UP every is talking about but I think it is marvellous that someone has dedicated a site to such a delightful culinary creation.  Darlington is really nice, Encarta devoted a whole paragraph to it in their latest encyclopaedia.....Trains were invented here!

King Pierre IV

Hello it's Alex,

I'm happy to have news about you, thank you for the message.  You spoke about Thanksgiving but I remind you that I'm French, and the French do not have this "us", I'm sorry.  Some American friends  did it but it is not really deployed around me.   But thank you for asking....

Of course I'll send a mail to Kathryn.  It's a symbolic Burthday for everybody I suppose, and it's great.  I hope I'll have friends who will congratulate me for  my 100th burthday to.  I hope I will live old enough.

We do not have Thanksgiving, but we have St Nicolas's day.... It's a kind of prototype of Christmas, made by the Sweden...

I would be happy to help Kathryn blowing out her candles, but it's impossible for me to jump right now over the atlantic ocean. Maybe an other time.

I would be glad to know how the party was !

Alex PASTY

(Alex's actual last name is PASTY.  Pretty good English for a second language, eh?)