Green Dilly Beans

Feeling Minnesota

An article about Portland's dining scene is currently atop the NY Times' Most E-mailed article list. 

At a time when it's rainy and gloomy and I'm feeling a little lonely in my new home, it's easy to feel that everyone is moving to Portland.  Hell, I even found a blog post entitled "Portland Sure Has a Lot of Knit Bloggers", which has done nothing to improve my current mood.

In the midst of my woebegone slump (or considering my geography, wobegon) I'm nonetheless feeling inclined to put in a good word for the mini apple  Hip or not, I do love my post-its. 

Going to the Fair

It’s been a while, but I intend to keep my promise to post about the MN State Fair.  Without further ado, and a hearty hello from the green gopher greeter, here is my day at the fair. 

In my humble opinion, state fairs are all about the biggest, most ginormous "fill in the blank".  Therefore, the "biggests" were my first stops. 

The biggest pig:

The biggest pumpkin, clocking in at 990 pounds:

The "also rans" in the Great Pumpkin contest:

Creative craftsters even got in on the gourd action.  A few highlights:

 

The biggest ever categories weren’t limited to pigs and produce.  My search for the biggest of them all extended to the midway carnival prizes.  It didn't take much effort to spot the most gargantuan stuffed dog I’ve ever seen, won in a lucky game of bottle toss.  The big dog scale is slightly thrown off by the big dude carrying it.  Check out the shorter guy in blue on the right for an idea of just how big the dog is compared to your average human. 

After scoping out the produce, I was getting hungry and went off in search of something to eat.  Fair food is famous for its wide array of fried food on a stick, and the MN State Fair is no exception.

                                          

For the uninitiated (eg: me), hot dish on a stick = alternating pieces of Hormel meatballs and tater tots skewered and served with a cream of mushroom soup dipping sauce. 

The sign is a little hard to read, but a pickle dog amounts to a pickle, on a stick of course, smeared with cream cheese and wrapped with pastrami.  For some reason I was almost tempted by this, but thought better of it and moved on.  Does this sound appealing to anyone else?  Maybe I'll recreate this at home just to satisfy my curiosity.   

      

It's good to be back in the land of pop. 

I finally settled on some local lunch fair fare, meatballs on a stick made with elk, wild rice and wild mushrooms and a portobello mushroom gravy.  Washed down with a cup of Leinie’s, it made for a perfect fair feast.

As the saying goes, everyone loves a parade.  Lunchtime entertainment came to me by way of a marching band.

This parade even had a rolling band!

After lunch, my visit took on a special sense of purpose, tracking down prize winning embroidery entries submitted by Michelle’s mom.  They are amazing, I was literally pressing my nose up against the glass display trying to get a closer look at the detailed stitching.  Check out the best pics here. 

My last stop was to pay tribute to Princess Kay of the Milky Way butter busts. 

I was lucky to see a sculpting session in progress.  I learned that a sitting can take 6-8 hours inside the 38 degree refrigerated.  It made me glad to be on the outer side of the glass on a warm September day!

The newly crowned Princess Kay was shown sporting her tiara on top of her buttery, sculpted coif. 

Many contestants host sweet corn parties in their communities following the fair.  Everyone uses the butter busts to butter their corn!  Click for more stories about the post-fair lives of the butter sculptures.

I ended the day with some dairy goodness, a chocolate malt.  Yum.

 

RIP Elephant Clock

I just witnessed a 42" x 30" mirror come crashing off the wall above my mantle, bringing down everything else around it, including my elephant clock. 
 

More than the broken possessions, I was upset that the mirror fell in the first place.  I was been so proud of the job I did hanging it, measuring not once, but twice to line up the hooks on each side with the brackets, getting everything to line up perfectly on the first try.  I saw my success in the DIY hanging job of a heavy object as a small victory in my single living adventure.  It was the kind of job that would have been much easier with two pairs of hands and two sets of eyes, but I had done it all by myself.

Less than 30 minutes after finishing the job, I was sitting on my couch when the mirror peeled the hanging brackets off the wall and fell towards me - I had a front row seat to my very own domestic disaster.  There are currently shards of glass and plaster everywhere, plus microscopic mirror dust produced by the impact of hitting the coffee table.  I'll need a big box to safely transport all these pieces to the dumpster out back and right now, the only box I have is a shoe box.  I'm finding it hard to ignore the irony of this particular  detail of my situation.  I just unloaded the last of our big moving boxes through Craigslist. 

Logistical cleanup details aside, I'm a little too shaken to think about cleaning up right now and it just feels more appropriate to sit down in the middle of the mess to post these pictures.

This next picture provides a glimpse of my seat on the couch (bottom left) ....

If anyone knows a good source (I'm already searching Ebay) for finding a vintage elephant clock, please let me know. 

Quick! Keillor on Colbert

I don't get cable, or even have a tv anymore, but thought you would be interested to know that Garrison Keillor will be paying Stephen Colbert a visit tonight.  11:30/10:30 EST/CST.  Even though I won't be watching, I'll take comfort in knowing that you will be taking in the show.

Twelve Days

That's how long it took me to lose my keys since I began living on my own.  Now mind you, I didn't just lose them, my friend Amy sold them at a garage sale.  Yes, in an episode that was entirely my fault, the keys to my apartment were accidentally sold in a garage sale. 

Let me explain.....

My friends Amy and Courtney were organizing a garage sale to benefit Education for the Future Foundation, a non-profit organization they co-founded to fund secondary education for students in Kenya.  They were collecting donated goods to sell at the sale, I was looking to unload assorted items following our move.  It was a win-win situation.  I would get to clear out piles of unused goods from my apartment, the goods would avoid a date with the dumpster and find new life with another owner, and EFF would reap the financial proceeds from the sale. 

I packed all the items in a duffel bag, which was conveniently one of the items being donated to the sale, and delivered them to Amy without another thought.  It was only coming home later that night and fumbling for my keys as I got off the bus that I realized my error.  Leaving the apartment that morning and looking to free my hands to get out the doors, I had tucked my keys in an external pocket of the duffel bag.  A quick call to Amy revealed that the duffel bag had sold within the first hour; she had no idea who had bought it. 

Thankfully B and I had the foresight to leave the spare set of keys with his sister, who also lives in Mpls.  Spare keys would do me no good residing with B in NYC.  A bus trip delivered me to her door and a visit to the local hardware store has already produced a replacement set, so as far as minor crises go, this was pretty easy to fix. 

This story does, however, slightly account for the fact that I still owe you all, especially you, a post about my adventures at the State Fair.  Missing keys and other sidetracks aside, I promise I'll get an entry out as soon as I can.

Cooking for One

I usually don't delve too deeply into the personal on this blog, but I'm realizing that there is a chunk of my life which is quite different from before, one which will impact future writings on this blog. 

To make a very long story short, I am here in the Twin Cities to start graduate school, while my husband B has returned to NYC for his job.  B got a new job at the beginning of the summer, a job which he initially turned down due to our pending move back to the Midwest.  This employer responded by offering to find a way to make this work for everyone involved.  For now, B will be staying on to live and work in NYC until at least the end of this year.  2008 will have him making a transition to dividing his time between NYC and Mpls. We're not exactly sure what this dual citizenship will look like yet, but are greatly encouraged by the flexibility that his company has shown in their willingness to consider B as a virtual, long distance employee.

Clearly, living apart is not an ideal situation, but we are excited about all the opportunities that lie ahead and pride ourselves in rolling with the changes as they come our way.  We are certainly learning valuable lessons in flexibility and compromise! 

This post was not intended to be a pity party.  It come to mind tonight when I finished my dinner (yum!), ladled the leftovers into a container, and realized that I am ill-prepared to cook for one person.  My family is one that grocery shops as a hobby; I learned long division by comparing different volumes of canned tomatoes to calculate the price per ounce.  In turn, my fridge looks like it is equipped to feed a family of five!  When faced with the bounty of ripe August tomatoes at the farmers market, I simply lose all self control.  As a result, I have been feasting on a lot of this and this.  I have enjoyed the latter with fried eggs and toast in the morning, and am getting good at frying my own eggs to perfection. 

For the first time in my life, I find myself living alone.  I'm already finding that my grocery shopping prowess could be reined in a little.  Beyond the food front, I am very interested to see what sort of company I am for myself, but also thankful that this grand experiment has an end in sight. 

Settling In

Slowly but surely, I am starting to settle in here.  My internship begins tomorrow, classes will follow on Thursday and Friday, providing more routine and structure to my days.  As I prepare for the coming week, here are a few snippets of life in Minneapolis that are making me feel grounded in the midst of all these changes...

* Dilly beans.  A gift from my dad - along with two jars of strawberry jam, a jar of blackberry jam, and a jar of pickled quail eggs, all of which he canned over the summer. AND I can't believe I forgot to include this in the first version of this post - salmon fillets from a fish my brother caught out of Lake Michigan last week.

* Morning walks in Loring Park.  Spotting the great white heron that hangs out at the lake.  Discovering that the park's community center allows you to borrow free horseshoes to use at the horseshoe pit. 

* Lost treasures.  I am finally able to display accumulated treasures that date back to high school when I worked at a neighbor's antique store.  I never had the space to show off things like my elephant mantle clock or vintage croquet set (perfect for Loring Park outings) in NYC.

* Art for art's sake.  As with my elephant clock and other assorted oddities, I now have enough wall space to hang some of the special pieces we have amassed.  This wall shows the first arrangement we hung, and each piece has a special story.   From the top left is a baobab batik from when I lived in Senegal.   My grandmother painted the trillium watercolor and the blueberries were painted by my elementary school art teacher.  I bought the multicolor abstract for $8 at my college's art department silent art auction (bidding started at $5!).  The last piece is an architectural sketch my friend's mom did of my parent's home (which they recently sold).  The painting intended for the blank space has been chosen for another area, so I get to reshift once again.  It is fun to think about finding special places for different items.

* Bells, bells, bells.  With three historic churches in the area, church bells always seem to be ringing and echoing in the distance.  An old fashioned bring-a-ling school bell rings across the street every morning at 7:30, the source being a Spanish Immersion school for students from kindergarten through 8th grade.  Today is the first day of school for them, I've listened to their shrieks and squeals from my front stoop as they are let out for lunch and recess.

* I have a stoop!  How ironic that I should come into this architectural feature only by leaving NYC.  I love watching the city pass by as I watch from my perch. 

* Mystery piano solos.  Often in the evenings, when the sun is fading from the window in my reading nook (I have a reading nook!), I hear the sounds of a piano drifting from a neighboring apartment.  There is no pattern to when he/she decides to play, so I love the surprise element of these spontaneous concerts and feel lucky that I can hear the muted melodies through my window.

* Minnesota Public Radio.  Three stations (contemporary, classical, and news), one fierce commitment to broadcasting.  A couple mindboggling stats from Wikipedia indicate that MPR is the second largest public radio organization in the US, behind NPR, and that %15 of Minnesotans over the age of 12 listen on a weekly basis.