Spinning

I love the pure joy of little girls, from all corners of the world, rejoicing in the raucous spin of a hula hoop at a local carnival.

A Summer Dusting

I love this shot of Doug sprinkling Creole seasoning on the first pile of crawdads, corn, potatoes, garlic, and Andouille sausage that came out of the enormous pot at yesterday's annual crawfish boil party. It makes me feel all kinds of summer-y.

Around the World in a Champagne Flute

A long time ago, maybe fifteen years or more, I happened to catch an episode of Michael Palin's Around the World in 80 Days. The Monty Python alum had matured into a world traveler, visiting ports far and wide and reporting on them for his television show. In the episode I watched, Michael almost literally washed up on the shores of Hong Kong after an arduous journey by ship on the South China Sea. I didn't know much about Hong Kong at the time, just that it was an exotic, modern city of skyscrapers that either was or wasn't part of China. I'm much clearer on that whole topic now.

In the episode, Michael was picked up by car and whisked away to his friend Basil's apartment high in the sky. Basil was a cute Asian gentleman with nerdy glasses and a pretty wife carrying their newborn baby in her arms when they welcomed Michael in broad daylight to their home. Even though it was maybe lunch time, the first thing Basil offered Michael was a glass of champagne, which he happily accepted and they proceeded to enjoy the bottle on the balcony of the skyscraper apartment. I remember watching that and thinking it was about the most sophisticated thing I'd ever witnessed. I mean, who keeps a chilled bottle of bubbly on hand for visitors who happen to swing by? I was enchanted by the idea of a friend popping by to see me some afternoon and me suggesting we pop a bottle of champagne and sip the afternoon away. I vowed at that moment that I would always keep a chilled bottle of bubbly in my refrigerator, ready should a friend come by during broad daylight. I'd never seen that episode of Around the World in 80 Days again, but I'd thought of it often when I saw the bottle of bubbly keeping cool next to my butter and juice.

And now, more than fifteen years later, I still keep a bottle of champagne chilling in the fridge, just in case. Of course, I've never had the opportunity to casually pop open a bottle because my friends aren't really the pop-in types and I'm usually at work during the day, but still I keep restocking a new bottle when I inevitably drink the other bottle myself because I don't want it to get too old.

Fast forward to Hong Kong, March 2011. The country is now back in the possession of China after a long stretch under British rule and, more importantly, I'm going to visit for the first time to see my dear friend Lisa and her husband, who moved there a couple of years ago for her job. After ten long, hot, beautiful but challenging days in northern India, my parents and I arrived in Hong Kong where a car picked us up at the airport and whisked us off to Lisa and Kwesi's apartment high in the sky. As we settled into the comfortable leather furniture on a beautiful, sunny afternoon, Kwesi offered to pop open a bottle of champagne. My head started spinning, I had certainly never shared the Michael Palin story with Lisa and Kwesi, yet here I was in Hong Kong, in broad daylight, high up in a skyscraper overlooking Victoria Harbor, drinking a flute of champagne with friends. It was like my life had come full circle and some unintentional self-fulfilling prophecy had come to fruition.

Fast forward again to Minneapolis, April 2011. Upon returning home I shared this story with my sweet boyfriend, Doug. I told him how magical it was to feel like I was walking in the shoes of Michael Palin, going around the world and serendipitously repeating a part of his journey that had meant so much to me. Just recently Doug and I were out for a walk and went past the wine and spirits store in my neighborhood. We ducked in to see what looked good and Doug purchased a really nice bottle of Moet & Chandon champagne, even though I protested that it cost too much. When we returned to my place, Doug placed the bottle of bubbly on the counter and next to it a new DVD copy of Michael Palin's Around the World in 80 Days, so that I could watch the Hong Kong sequence once again after all this time and relive the magic that I had lived in real life just weeks before.

Feel free to stop by some afternoon, the champagne is on ice.

Quantum Leap

I get just a little bit too excited about winning stuff, even if it's just a can of pop or a balloon or something. So imagine how over the moon I was when tonight I found out I won a cool $60 scale!

I have a blog roll that I follow pretty regularly, all sorts of blogs about food, photography, travel, and anything else that tickles my fancy. From time to time certain bloggers have giveaways but I'm not usually interested in the products. This time, however, I was intrigued when Ex Hot Girl, a photographer and weight loss blogger, posted a giveaway of something called a Quantum Scale. So I left a comment on her blog, which doubled as a drawing entry, and when I visited Ex Hot Girl's blog tonight, I saw my face staring back at me with the announcement that my comment had been randomly chosen as the winner!

But I didn't win just any scale, it's the Quantum Scale and instead of registering your weight, it only registers the amount you've lost (or gained, gulp). When you step on it for the first time, it secretly records your weight and then every time you subsequently step on it, it lets you know how much your weight differs from your starting weight, without reminding you what that actual number was or is. So, in theory, you can just keep track of the amount you're losing without obsessing about your exact triple digits. I know it might just be a mind game, but I'm excited to give it a try - for free! Woo hoo!

What's Being Missed

Just over one and a half weeks into a month of eating vegan and people are asking quite often what foods I miss most. Honestly, I don't really miss too many foods, partly because it hasn't been that long and partly because I know I can have them again in a few weeks. But that said, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I might be missing chicken, at least a little bit. Everywhere I turn there's chicken. A new cooking show called the Spice Goddess introduced me to a dish of chicken and yogurt and spices that made me swoon just a little, and an article in a work publication today about the expansion of the delicious Portuguese chicken chain Nando's almost pushed me over the edge. Which got me to thinking about the wonderful Amish chicken I had at Cafe 128 the night before this month started (photo above). Oh, that chicken with blue cheese mashed potatoes was good. It's just a few more weeks, right?

The Weekend Vegan

My first vegan weekend wasn't as bad as I worried it would be. That's probably because I'm not a healthy vegan, but rather I take it as it comes. What I mean is that I don't mind supplementing my healthy, green vegan lifestyle with Puffcorn and vegan chocolate. Hey, life is short.

Friday night Doug and I spent a lovely evening walking to Chipotle for a little din-din. Chipotle has great vegan options, like their black beans, fajita vegetables, rice, salsas, and guacamole. A big salad was in order downed with an undrinkable, skunky Corona beer. Didn't finish that, to be honest. Then we walked to the movie theater in my neighborhood to see Cedar Rapids (funny and local!) and I enjoyed a nice bag of Sour Patch Kids (naturally and accidentally vegan!). Doug got popcorn but poisoned it with butter, or buttery topping. I'm not sure if my local theater does the real thing or not, but I don't like my popcorn with any sort of liquid topping. I'm a salty purist, so it wasn't tempting for me to cheat.

Saturday morning my parents arranged a breakfast out for the whole family, and to accommodate my vegan lifestyle, they chose the Triple Rock Social Club. Yes, the Triple Rock is known for Free Bacon Wednesdays, but they also have tons of vegan menu choices. I opted for a mush of potatoes, fake nacho cheese sauce, scrambled tofu, and toast with vegan butter. Oh, and two delightfully large vegan Screwdrivers. After that we ventured on to a couple of meat raffles. Yes, that's wrong for a vegan, but to be fair, I didn't win any meat. Doug did, and lots of it - ha! But I shan't eat it until next month. Dinner was a delicious Thai vegan curry feast from Sen Yai Sen Lek that I would love to try again because just a little while later it was all gone when I barfed my guts out against my will. Curses! A perfectly fantastic vegan meal - gone!

On Sunday I tried to eat a little, a vegan banana pancake from the Seward Cafe, but while it was absolutely delicious, my stomach wasn't ready for it. Instead I watched Doug down the vegan biscuits with mushroom gravy and vegetables. The color of the gravy, I won't lie, was a bit off-putting, a weird gray hue instead of the usual whitish with peppery flecks. Doug, who was being nice and ordered something vegan, said that it wasn't horrible. He said the gravy lacked a certain depth but he liked the hearty biscuits and the unusual inclusion of vegetables.

The rest of my first vegan weekend was uneventful because no kind of food was good. Barfing makes it much easier to eat vegan because you don't miss food of any kind. Lesson learned.

Please Don't Mock Me

Eating vegan for three days hasn't provided any insurmountable challenges, it's just that you have to think/talk/dissect food so much! "Is this vegan? Does it contain milk solids or egg whites or honey?" In a way, that's probably a good thing. It's easy to sleepwalk through your food life, eating whatever you want whenever you want - which isn't the healthiest way to go and something I'm very guilty of. Veganism has forced me to consider every bite. It's made easier by having backup options always available - Holy Land brand jalapeno hummus and vegan crackers, plantain chips, peanut butter, Ezekiel brand sprouted grain bread, and fruit are always available to fill the void with little thought. But vegan woman does not live by hummus alone. Sometimes one must branch out and try canned mock duck.

Canned mock duck, available at Asian grocery stores like United Noodles, sounds disgusting. Truth be told, it looks disgusting, too. The producers add that duck-like skin texture to the mock duck that is both intriguing and creepy at the same time. Doug has used canned mock duck in the past and though he warned that it can have a canned flavor, he volunteered to make us a mock duck lemongrass soup from a vegan website that I had found. He released the mock duck from its tin environment and marinated it in shallots and soy sauce and ginger and other delicious things and then finely julienned red peppers and onions and created a plate of toppings that included fresh mint and cilantro. Meanwhile, organic vegetable broth from an aseptic package simmered on the stove with fresh ingredients that Doug had added. At dinner time he put them all together with rice noodles and made a pretty nice bowl of soup. To be honest, the vegetable broth left something to be desired, now we know this particular brand wasn't anything to write home about. But the rest of the meal was quite delicious, including the mock duck. I was surprised, but I liked it. Doug separated the remaining mock duck from the soup when we were done and I think it will make a great salad with all the same fixings, just not the broth.

So, while I would love a big Buffalo chicken sandwich, the alternatives are not so bad. Canned mock duck - who knew?

I Guess Camel Meat Is Out

I work in a creative workplace where food ideas are constantly being bounced around and dissected and reworked, so I shouldn't be surprised when I open my big yapper and end up agreeing to eat vegan for a month!

Recently my coworkers and I were having an important (ha!) discussion about our favorite TV show, Top Chef. Our favorite chef on our favorite show, Richard Blais, had returned to the all-star edition looking much thinner than he did during his season of the show. There was an article about him in one of our work magazines and he explained that he kick-started his weight loss by eating vegan for one month in order to sort of detoxify his body and get back to the basics. Without much thought, I innocently volunteered that we should try that, but I don't think I really meant it at the time. However, Lizzie, ever the willing subject when it comes to food experiments, leapt at the idea and said "Let's do it!"

Still cautious about enlisting myself for this silliness, I suggested we really figure out what it means to eat vegan. Most importantly, could we still drink alcohol? Turns out we can, and so the decision to do it became that much easier! There are alcoholic beverages that are not vegan, but most are, so even if eating vegan sucks, we can drown our sorrows in booze to forget the pain. We tried to encourage our coworkers to join, but after a few false starts, only three of us are in. Chickens.

We agreed to start on Monday, March 28 so that I would have one week after returning from a whirlwind three week trip around the world (Amsterdam, India, Hong Kong and Borneo) to eat all my favorite meats and cheeses that I had dearly missed while traveling. We will continue through the end of April. Before agreeing I totally forgot that Easter falls in the month of April this year. No Easter ham, no deviled eggs, none of my mom's sweet bread, no seven layer salad, no buttery mashed potatoes. I could go on and on. As I am usually in charge of preparing some of the desserts, I have already researched one vegan dessert to make (lemon coconut bundt cake!) so that I can have something, and will have to make some side dishes as well! I will happily make non-vegan food, I just won't be able to eat it. Phooey.

I'll Be Back

Remember me? Me neither. It's been awhile, I've missed you. I wish I had a good explanation as to where I've been, but I would be lying. I'm just here now.

I'm not much for resolutions, which is the thing people say right before they announce their soon-to-be-failed resolutions, but I'm really going to try to get back into this blogging thing. Not sure why, as the digital world has already heralded the death of the blog. Guess blogs are too wordy, if we can't express ourselves in 140 characters or less, we don't have the patience. But I want to buck that trend, to keep my little wordy corner of the world alive regardless of what social media gurus have to say.

So while I don't have time to post a real entry right now, I am posting something - anything - to show that I mean it. I'm back. And to prove it, here's a photo I took in a market in Cuernavaca that I manipulated in ColorSplash on my new iPad. Too much fun.

Please stop by again soon, I'll be back.

That Thing I Love Too Much

It's been awhile since I've written about one of my favorite topics, nachos. That's because generally there's not much to report. There are a lot of monumentally bad nachos stinking up this world, and I usually choose not to report on them because it's so much more fun to talk about the good ones. Too bad they're so few and far between.

Recent events have changed all that. The first was a visit to Acadia Cafe on Cedar and Riverside, kitty-corner from the 400 Bar. Acadia Cafe is definitely a college hangout, super casual and borderline dumpy without going all the way there. They host live music and boast one of the most amazing beer lists around. Last week Doug and I went there for dinner before a beer tasting event at the nearby Cedar Cultural Center. We settled on a grilled cheese with bacon and tomato and an order of the nachos, because we were eating healthy. Ha! Anyway, the chips for the nachos are fried on the premise and it shows in the final result, there's a definite homemade taste to the chips that is quite delightful. As for toppings, they were basic, but generous. Cheese, black beans, tomatoes, with a side of salsa and sour cream. They're not going to win any awards, but they're solid and deserve a chance.

The other nachos I tried recently could win an award, if there were such a contest out there. And if such a contest exists, I beg to be invited to judge. Friday night I celebrated my upcoming birthday with the Hags - my girls, my peeps. Originally I had wanted to go to Bar LaGrassa, but that is not the place you go with a big group on short notice. All of the Twin Cities wants to be there and they make early reservations, which we couldn't. So instead I chose a place where I hadn't been in years but remember enjoying, a place centrally located for all of us in downtown Minneapolis, a place where reservations wouldn't be an issue. Eli's Food & Cocktails is on the periphery downtown, at 13th & Hennepin, but has the most important thing a restaurant downtown could have - a free parking lot adjacent! Love that.

The menu at Eli's is substantial, with great appetizers and entrees and specials that include ingredients like pork belly and duck confit. The atmosphere is laid back, with Ella Fitzgerald and Ray Charles crooning in the background, and the lighting is subtle. We decided to share a few apps to get things started and, thankfully, Maria suggested a half order of nachos with chicken. The menu says they fry their chips at the restaurant but I couldn't tell. Still, these nachos may just be my new favorites in town! Just the half order was a good size, piled high with chips and cheese and spiced chicken and the requisite tomatoes and onions and salsa and sour cream on the side. There wasn't a big pile of dry chips left at the bottom, the sin committed by so many restaurants. I truly didn't want the plate of nachos to end and briefly considered ordering another plate for my dinner entree. But I came to my senses and realized I could actually return to Eli's and enjoy them again. Which I will be doing, soon.

A Beautiful Reminder

Anyone who knows me well understands that I pretty much always want to be anywhere but here. Certainly I am here, but my head is usually in the clouds dreaming of faraway places, countries where I could be working and playing and living and loving. But plans don't always work out the way you thought they would and life moves in mysterious ways. You don't always turn into the next Sebastian Junger or Annie Griffiths, you don't always write the great American novel. There are no guarantees.

But it's certainly not with a heavy heart that I remain here in Minnesota. Yes, I complain bitterly each year as the gales of November come early, yelling "I'm moving!" to anyone within earshot, but I have a million reasons to love living here as well. I love my family, my friends, my sweetie, my gigantic kitty and just the quality of life here in general. Still, I need reminding now and then just why I haven't left my birthplace. This past week I received that reminder, in spades, during a two day vacation on the North Shore (that's local speak for the stretch of shoreline on Lake Superior that runs northeast of Duluth). Even during this cold month, when the leaves have blown away and the grass has faded, the beauty of this area of northern Minnesota cannot be denied. At one point during a drive from the lodge where we stayed in Beaver Bay north to Grand Marais, I couldn't help but think that the beauty was so alarming that people living on the other side of the world could come here and be bowled over by what they saw, by what they were missing back home. That's the reminder I need to take with me, that as beautiful as the rest of the world is - the pyramids and the walls and the mountains and the seas - that same beauty resides right here under my nose, just waiting to be encountered.

Too Much of a Good Thing

Recently Doug had the day off from work and picked me up for lunch. It was beautiful out so, after an unsuccessful attempt to get anyone to acknowledge our presence at Sushi Tango and walking out, we found ourselves sauntering into Uptown Cafeteria & Support Group, the new and oddly named restaurant in Calhoun Square. The Cafeteria has windows that open completely, so even though you're inside it feels like you're outside, which is fantastic until some loser's car alarm goes off ten feet away for twenty minutes. Suddenly you find yourself longing for the dark, cavernous booths of a local burger joint.

Nonetheless, we were happy to be enjoying the late summer warmth and ordered, somewhat foolishly, two bleu cheese menu items - a bleu cheese salad and the bleu cheese nachos. Both came with an (over?)abundance of bleu cheese, something I never thought I could feel. Too much bleu cheese? What? But the salad was covered, absolutely covered, in bleu cheese crumbles, and sometimes more is actually too much. Perhaps if we had only ordered one or the other I'd feel differently, that might have been our mistake, but I'm pretty sure each were overkill nonetheless. The nachos were a fun twist on traditional corn tortilla/cheddar/salsa nachos, with bleu cheese sauce, crumbles, bacon and green onions atop crispy fresh homemade potato chips. The bacon was a fantastic addition, but the chips suffered from an all too common nacho issue - chips drenched in toppings while many others went without any. Still, I'd order them again with just beers and no bleu cheese salad and share them with several other people because a little goes a long way with these.

On the other hand, The Uptown Cafeteria & Support Group has something really wonderful to offer its guests - the best table sauce selection I've seen in awhile! Always at the ready no matter what you order, soy sauce and bright green jalapeno Tobasco sauce share the caddy with Sriracha sauce and a giant, shiny bottle of Mrs. Butterworth's syrup. What more could a diner need?

Thank You, Mother Nature

As regards weather in Minnesota, there is a lot to complain about. Our winters are long and cold and frustrating, we can get some awful heat waves in the summer, tornadoes in the spring and fall can sometimes last about an hour and a half. But this summer and fall have been spectacular, and I must give credit where credit is due. Thank you, Mother Nature, you have been very kind to us (or those of us who don't live in southern Minnesota where everything is underwater).

Doug and I took a road trip a couple of weekends ago, just for the day, to St. Peter. The air was warm but not too warm and the fields were gorgeous as we drove on and on past one after another. Then last weekend we spent in northern Minnesota on a golfing weekend with my best friend and her husband. I was pretty sure the weather would be bad and mentally planned alternative activities that we could do while the rain fell, except that it not only didn't fall, but the skies were the most beautiful shade of blue and dotted with puffy white clouds that reflected off the cold lakes like a mirror. On top of that, the leaves were changing color, from deep greens to vibrant shades of yellow and orange and red that looked like classic paintings. Today we visited the farmer's market and then an apple orchard in Delano, a lovely brisk and sunny drive due west on 55, and once again couldn't believe our good fortune. The sun shone on us the entire day, lifting spirits that can so often be down during overcast Minnesota weather.

Thanks again, Mother Nature. We owe you one.

Debbie Is a Carpenter

For years now, my brother has given me tools for my birthday and Christmas. Hammers and saws, screwdrivers and Leatherman tools. He actually did have to buy me a Leatherman, one of those all-purpose Swiss knife-type things, on two occasions, because I forgot I had one in my purse at the airport in Beijing shortly after September 11. Nobody was fooling around about possible weapons being brought on board and now some nice Chinese family is hopefully getting lots of use out of my first Leatherman.

As of today, I am getting a lot of use out of my power drill! Dave gave it to me last year and, I'll be honest, I never even opened it. While I own an impressive array of tools, a collection that would make any handyman pretty proud, I usually hand them to my dad or brother and let them do the tough stuff. But all that changed when I purchased a roll-out lid holder recently for all of my cooking pot lids. I've always kept the myriad lids precariously perched atop one another in a cupboard next to the stove and every time I went for one, it was pretty much a lid avalanche onto my foot. But small spaces need tremendous organization, so I invested in the lid holder, not really knowing I would need to use a power drill to install it.

Last night I pulled out the drill instructions and then spent a good hour trying to extricate the drill from its plastic prison. Man, they don't make it easy to get stuff out of its plastic packaging! But when I finally did I was very excited to start drilling, until I read even more instructions, this time for the drill itself, only to learn that the drill would have to charge for seventeen hours before I could hope to use it. I was a little concerned that I would never actually do the project, as I'm prone to procrastination when I am not granted immediate gratification, but when I got home from work tonight I found myself picking up the instructions again. Nobody was more surprised than I was.

I was especially shocked when I read that not only would I have to use my cute little power drill to drill in simple screws, but I would also be required to use a 1/8" drill bit to drill a starter hole before that! Yikes. Thankfully, Dave also gave me a pack of drill bits that included a 1/8" bit, or else I would have been out of luck. I pretty much guessed what to do and how to do it, and when I was finished I had used an Allen wrench, a Phillips screwdriver, and a power drill with various attachments to install my lid rack. I would be lying if I said that every screw went in perfectly straight like it does every time on HGTV, but they all went in well enough that the roll-out rack glides with ease from its tiny cupboard space. And I'm no longer in danger of bruising my foot when I open that cupboard to grab a lid! What will my next power tool project be? The sky's the limit! Or else maybe I'll just hang a poster. Either way, I'll be ready.

No Man's Land

Note: I was going through old electronic files tonight looking for some information when I stumbled across this essay I wrote after returning from my first lengthy trip to Ghana, West Africa in 1991. What you're about to read is all completely true, and horrible. I clearly didn't finish writing the tale, because if I did it would have included an account of the angry border agent who threw my and my friend Lisa's luggage out into the rain and my semi-illegal re-entry into Ghana without a proper visa, but still it's an amusing story. Maybe someday I'll expand on it. Hope you enjoy...

I can think of few things less glamorous than being attacked by a fierce colony of swarming black flies as you empty your bladder in a makeshift toilet in West Africa. It happened to us while we loitered impatiently in that stretch of land where one country border meets another, a place literally referred to as No Man’s Land because it belongs to no one, perhaps in the case I refer to here because no one wants it. This particular No Man’s Land is at the border where the western post of coastal Ghana meets the eastern post of Ivory Coast in sub-Saharan Africa. Lisa and I were simply trying to survive the brutally long car trip west from Ghana’s old, boring capital, Accra, to Abidjan, the contemporary capital of Ivory Coast. After several months hanging around provincial, small town Accra, conducting research for our college degrees and at the same time trying to stay healthy, we were excited to visit a city where we’d heard stories of skyscrapers and croissants and nightclubs. To us at that time, Heaven didn’t hold more promise than Abidjan.

The journey to the Promised Land was a rough one at best. Our overstuffed hired vehicle raced down roads impossibly laced with deep holes, like a highway made from Swiss cheese and dirt. Every few miles our car was stopped in the rain by military police men looking for something to break up the monotony and, if it was a good day, a bribe as well. As we sped past villages comprised of mud huts and an occasional lonely tree, we ran hard over a fleeing chicken. Normally something like that would have been devastating to me, but after three months of being rudely awakened at four in the morning by the roosters outside my window in Accra, it felt like some sort of karmic justice. That was the first animal ever hit in a car I was in, but in Africa, sadly, it wouldn’t be the last.

By the time we reached the border to Ivory Coast six hours after leaving Accra, both Lisa and I were more than ready to use the facilities. There at No Man’s Land, a local (of which country I wasn’t sure) pointed a bony black finger towards a cement structure free of the usual dust that permeated most buildings on this part of the continent. The old man proudly declared that the toilets there were new and very nice. Delightful! We ambled down the rain-soaked path to the new concrete box that would certainly compete with the bathrooms at the Beverly Hills Hotel, the nicest bathrooms I had ever seen. Perhaps my expectations were too high. Inside the box were smaller, door-less boxes and in each box a single hole in the ground and a box of crumpled-up newspapers. Ouch. We each entered a stall and commenced doing what you do when you’re in a small concrete box with a hole in the ground in West Africa. Seconds later there was a roar coming from somewhere nearby, a sound unlike anything either of us had ever heard before. I thought it sounded like a train careening down the tracks and said as much to Lisa. Since there were no doors in the structure, just walls, she was able to hear me, but just barely over the roar. Before I even had the opportunity to consider that there were no trains in that part of the continent, the source of the noise became only too clear. Giant black flies came shrieking out of the cement holes, obviously disturbed by our presence and bent on revenge. Without any discussion, Lisa and I adjusted our clothing and ran screaming from the nice new toilets, trailed by flies the size of gold finches. Filthy, disgusting, disease-ridden gold finches.

Ginger the Bear Cub Potato

I hate starting each new post with an apology for not having written sooner, so I won't. Instead, I present you with this peace offering - a potato that looks just like a bear cub! See, you feel better already.

This potato, which I named Ginger because of her uncanny resemblance to a nice big knob of ginger, came out of the ground in Byron, Minnesota, on the farm of the Hanson family. I didn't notice it till I got home, but the second I took her out of the sack of potatoes, I couldn't believe my eyes. Much how you might be feeling right now.

Because potatoes don't last forever, I had some professional shots done of Ginger. You know, just in case the Letterman Show calls. So far, not so much.

Puff the Magic Pastry

I'm in love. With puff pastry. But not just any ordinary puff pastry, I'm in love with Dufour Pastry Kitchen's All-Butter Puff Pastry Dough. Once you go Dufour, you never go back. I haven't made a ton of things out of puff pastry, just enough to know that while widely available Pepperidge Farms' puff pastry sheets will do the job, they won't deliver the flavor that Dufour will. This is one of those cases where the higher priced product, in this case much higher, is worth its weight in gold.

Last week I made these Blueberry & Cream Tarts from Sprouted Kitchen, a gorgeous website filled with food prepared locally and organically whenever possible. The tarts, while a little putzy to make, were certainly not difficult and I feel they were worth the effort. Then today I caught an episode of What Would Brian Boitano Make? on Food Network (yes, ice skater Brian Boitano has a cooking show, and it's really funny! Who knew?) and he made Bourbon Bacon Apple Tarts using Dufour puff pastry dough, and my mouth watered as he cooked the diced apple in the bourbon and bacon and spooned it into the prepared puff pastry shells and garnished them with bourbon whipped cream and a small piece of bacon. Is there anything that puff pastry can't do? I doubt it.

His Name in Lights

When I just checked my last post here on this blog and saw the date was Thursday, August 5, I breathed a sigh of relief. I'm not as far behind in posting as I believed, I thought to myself. Thursday was only a few days ago, after all. And then I thought a little bit more about it and remembered that since we celebrated my dad's 70th birthday on Friday, and his birthday is on August 13, it's actually been more than a week since I posted last. Dang. What's up with that?

Well, while we're on the topic, let me assure you that we celebrated my dad's big decade marker in style, with a cocktail at Sapor with his family and old friends from high school and then with a Twins game at the gorgeous new Target Field in downtown Minneapolis. It was hot and humid when we started out, just like it has been for the last two weeks, but within a short time of the game starting, the sun went down and everything cooled off to a perfect temperature. It couldn't have been a more perfect evening to enjoy the Twins beating the Oakland A's while shoveling Kramarczuk's Polish sausages and nachos down our gullets.

While we happily noshed on our stadium grub, we anticipated the coming of the fifth inning when our "Twins O-Gram" birthday message for my dad would appear on the jumbotron for everyone to read. And then we kept anticipating, kept anticipating, and anticipated some more as messages of all sorts were flashed up on the big screen for seemingly every person in the stadium. Finally we saw ours, excitedly pointing it out to Gordo while I took a photo of his name in lights. It was pretty neat, and the celebration continued with a fireworks show after the game for a delighted crowd. Not that the fireworks were actually meant for my dad, but he likes to think so. Happy birthday, Dad!!

Happy Birthday to My Best Furry Buddy!

Fourteen years ago the world welcomed the friendliest, furriest, fattest feline ever, and his name is Hakeem Wallace Ellis. Tomorrow is his birthday and while he's old now, and slow and sleepy most of the time, he's still the furry love of my life and makes me laugh all of the time. He's with me every moment that I'm home, and I think about him constantly when I'm not. I'm very lucky that he came into my life so many years ago, despite all of the fur on the couch, the occasional pile of puke, and the never ending job of cleaning his litter box. He's worth every tape roller I've purchased, every ounce of prescription cat food I've bought, and I don't even care that he's the world's worst mouser. He's an amazing kitty, and I wish him the happiest fourteenth birthday ever!

Weekend in the City

By mistake, Doug got an extra Saturday off this month so we decided to make something special of it. Our first instinct was to go away somewhere for the weekend, perhaps a getaway to some tourist town outstate. After some investigation, we determined a weekend trip too expensive and decided to make a weekend of it right here in the twin towns. We decided we'd throw in one night at a hotel downtown, having my parents take care of Hakeem so we'd have no reason to stop at my place for a full twenty-four hour period. And we decided to throw in some things that we wouldn't normally do around town, pretending we were tourists in our own hometown.

First stop Friday night was dinner at Sea Change. Not a new experience for us, but a good one. We sat at the raw bar and Doug waited patiently for the sparkling wine to kick in and wipe away my busy day. He's really great about that! Doug knows the chef from his work so we chatted with him briefly and he sent out an order of delicious oysters for us. In addition, we ordered a variety of small plates - albacore, langostinos, octopus, and a main dish of fish, pork, egg and ramen in a too salty broth. For me to say that something is too salty, it has to be pretty bad. However, I still really enjoy Sea Change and know that any dish can have a bad day. It won't deter me from returning, if for no other reason than the wonderful location on the main level of the Guthrie Theater. After dinner, we took the world's longest escalator up to the Endless Bridge, the cantilever that juts out over the River Road and provides spectacular views of the Stone Arch Bridge and the Mississippi. It was a perfect Minneapolis night and we continued on outside, walking around the gorgeous lofts that line Mill City and calling it a night.

On Saturday morning we got up early to hit the Mill City Farmer's Market before the crowds got too bad. That's the secret to enjoying the experience of the whole thing, arrive during the 8:00am hour to avoid the annoying crowds that inevitably gather later in the morning. We met up with my parents and enjoyed softshell crab sandwiches, deep fried and slathered in homemade tarter sauce, from the Chef Shack, plus my absolute favorite Indian-spiced mini donuts from the same vendor. We sauntered around, buying Green Zebra tomatoes from the Amish booth where the men all wear wide-brimmed hats and I can't help but wonder if they're costumes or they really dress like that. We walked around some more and Doug introduced me to Brenda Langton, the owner of Spoonriver and the former venerable Cafe Brenda, who now also runs a crepe stand at the farmer's market that doles out both savory and sweet crepes with ingredients like homemade Nutella and cheese and fresh fruit. I love those crepes. Brenda could not have been sweeter, it's no wonder she's one of Doug's favorite customers at Coastal Seafoods.

On our way back to my place from the market, we stopped in the downtown Minneapolis main post office. This is an historical building, an Art Deco masterpiece on the river that supposedly has the longest fluorescent light fixture in the world, and I've never been inside it, at least not to my memory. The building was as beautiful as I'd heard, with long, marble-filled halls and brass cage windows where stamps are sold and parcels mailed. Doug and I marveled about the wonders of general delivery, mailing letters to people in care of the local post office without benefit of address - like in the case where someone is backpacking across the country and has nowhere to receive mail - as we scoped out the fancy post office boxes and that super long light fixture. It's fun to see something new in your hometown, right under your nose!

Once home we hopped on our bikes and headed towards the river, passing through Nicollet Island and over to the west side so that I could show Doug my favorite hidden little bridge that hides away in a little pocket just across from Boom Island. It's off the bike and walking paths, but not difficult to get to, and once there you stand on one little footbridge while looking at another, usually without other people around. In the distance across the river you can see the riverboats and the lighthouse of Boom Island and everything is very beautiful and hidden and nice. We continued on to the store Clay Squared to Infinity, a handmade tile store located in the keg house of the former Grain Belt Brewery. Just cycling around the Grain Belt Brewery is fun, but to go inside where they make the crusts for Punch Pizza and to see the amazing tiles being produced at Clay Squared is a quintessential Minneapolis experience. I purchased a number of little tiles to make a picture frame and then tried to figure out how to carry them on my bike. Once that was done, we rode on down Marshall to Psycho Suzi's, where we sat outside on the wonderful patio on a warm, sunny day and drank Caribbean beers and ate pickle dogs. Nothing makes me happier than drinking in the middle of the afternoon, because it means I have absolutely nowhere to be for at least another day! The feeling of freedom runs through my bones as a sip my cold beer and laugh happily in the sun.

We rode back to my place and spent some time deciding what to do next. We settled on trekking over to St. Paul to share a juicy lucy from The Nook on Randolph and Hamline. Despite heavy traffic to the capital city because of the crowds heading to the Red Bull Flugtag at Harriet Island and because of the closure of 94 east, Doug's knowledge of backroad routes got us there in no time. The Nook was packed, so we headed toward its sister bar, Shamrock's on West 7th. We sat right down and ordered up the Juicy Nookie, two hamburger patties squished together lovingly with American cheese in the middle, which oozes out like molten lava when you bite into it. Incredible, and worth the drive. After lunch, we gathered our things back at my place and went downtown to check into the Aloft on Washington, our destination for the night. We stayed there for a few hours, enjoying the views of Gold Medal Park and some much needed rest before continuing on with our weekend in the city.

Dinner Saturday night was across the street at Sanctuary, a French restaurant with Asian and Latin influences that I had wanted to check out for some time. We ate outside on what might have been the most perfect weather of the year, and it was divine. The food was just fine, Angus filet and striped sea bass, tuna and a cheese plate, but my pear vodka cocktail and our shared bottle of pinot noir were incredible. I don't need to go back to Sanctuary for a full meal, but I'd be happy to go for drinks or appetizers. It's a gorgeous little place with a bar that I'd love to check out sometime. After dinner we walked across Washington and down to the Guthrie, just under the cantilever, where we sat down along with half of the Twin Cities to enjoy the unbelievable Aquatennial fireworks. These are the best of the year, better than July Fourth or the state fair, and seeing them on the river is a wonderful city treat. It was especially nice, after the show was over, walking just a block to our hotel, rather than fighting traffic home.

Sunday morning we moved slowly, since we had no place to be, until we finally got moving and walked across the street to Spoonriver for brunch. We sat outside in the hot sun and ordered a screwdriver and a Bloody Mary, which we enjoyed with our eggs without hurry. After brunch we killed a little time and then went to Boom Island and boarded the Minneapolis Queen riverboat for a one and a half hour ride on the Mississippi, through the very first lock on the river and down to the new 35W bridge and back up all the way to see the progress on the new Lowry Avenue bridge. While nothing on the river trip was new, it was all from a new perspective and it was really fun doing something we wouldn't normally do in the city.

Our last destination for our weekend in the city was to have a beer on the patio at the Bedlam Theater in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. I really didn't know anything about the place until recently, but heard they had good views of the city skyline and would be closing in about a week to make way for a parking lot. They are located off the beaten path, right on the Cedar-Riverside stop of the light rail, in a neighborhood known mostly for its heavy Somali population. We were pretty much the only ones on the patio for a while since it was late afternoon on a Sunday, which was the perfect end to a perfect weekend. We tried new places, enjoyed some old favorites, visited both cities, and fell in love with our hometown all over again. This will not be our last weekend in the city.