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.

 

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.

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. 

Little House on the Prairie

Thank you all for your kind send off wishes and words of wisdom.  Since arriving in Minneapolis on the 18th, I have been busy dodging raindrops and reacquainting myself with Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs. Ten days into things, I've got the basics of food, shelter, etc pretty much covered and am writing to catch you up on the details of our move.

I am a little bleary eyed as I write this, having been kept awake by heavy rain and thunderstorms over the past two nights, with predictions for more of the same tonight.  It rained continuously throughout my first eight days here.  After a day or two of rest, the rain has returned, with forecasts of hail and 80 mph winds.  Right now the only adjective I can think of to describe the recent storms is thunderous.  I realize this word choice is completely redundant, but it really is also very accurate.  For example, several thunderclaps and lightning strikes have succeeded in setting off car alarms in the neighborhood, adding to the din and my general sleeplessness.  At times the sounds of the storm have made me feel like I was in a standalone house on a windswept prairie, instead of on the ground level of an insulated brownstone apartment unit surrounded by other row homes.  Sorry to bore you with endless details of the weather; maybe I've been quick to adapt the stereotypical Minnesotan habit of talking about the weather nonstop.  Thanks to the weather, I'm getting a lot reading and knitting in at 3 AM.

I must take a second to brag that in our amateur moving endeavor, we didn't break a single thing!  Everything arrived intact and in one piece.  The closest we came to disaster was when a load of B's albums took a spill down the stairs on their way to the moving truck.  No real damage was done, but it made me grateful that in knitting, I have found a much less breakable hobby.  Dropping my yarn down the stairs wouldn't produce the same effect as B's vinyl collection. 

Once the truck was loaded up, our cross country drive was blissfully uneventful, filled with This American Life podcasts, Lucinda Williams (whose Live at the Fillmore album earned the #1 spot in our musical rotation), circus peanuts (B’s choice, not mine), and overnight stops to crash with family along the way. 

This being a road trip, there was optimal time for knitting.  Unfortunately, the scenic views inside and out of the car did not cooperate and converge in one breathtaking shot.  Each is scenic in its own right, so here you have a clear shot of the Mackinac Bridge with EZ's February baby sweater in the shadows.

And now for the flip-flop reverse effect, we have a slightly better shot of the same sweater, with the bridge hidden in the glare of the sun on the windshield.  The sweater has been seamed and finished, but will remain in the bunchy, blobby state shown to preserve an element of surprise for the recipient.  I'll post a final photo in a week and a half once the present has been presented to its owner. 

Lunch Break

Clotilde of Chocolate & Zucchini is having a book tour event at 12:30 tomorrow at Dean and Deluca, just up Broadway from my office.  I'm breaking away from my desk to check it out.  I don't usually get out for lunch, so it will be a perfect excuse to break up my day!