101 in 1,001 update

With just over three months to go, I'm making some more progress on my 101 in 1,001 list. I'm starting to get close to finishing a full section (my list is divided into different categories) but I have no idea what one is going to get closed first. I'm so curious!

Also, I recruited cartwheel help last weekend (that's goal #6) from a former gymnast. I will revisit our conversation later in the summer. She makes it sound feasible!

Here's what I wrapped up recently:

#46 Eat or shop at 10 (new to me) local businesses in Minneapolis. Turns out that I prioritized the "eat" part of this goal: all 10 places I recorded were restaurants. I liked having a reminder to branch out from my St. Paul favorites. This month I checked off my tenth restaurant with a visit to World Street Kitchen on Lyndale. I had the Bangkok Burrito (red curry with chicken) and it was incredible. (The other nine: Pizzeria Lola, Nami, Anchor Fish & Chips, Red Stag Supper Club, 5-8 Club, Parkway Pizza, Sonora Grill, Cafe Lurcat and Al Vento.)

#53 Put change in someone's expired parking meter. This was fun!

#16 Go to a drive-in movie theater. We finally did this last night! I didn't realize when I set this goal how scarce drive-in movie theaters had become in Minnesota, but it turns out that Vali-Hi theater is just off the interstate and a quick 15 minutes east of St. Paul. We were there primarily for "Neighbors," the middle movie of the triple bill, but we arrived in time to get situated before the first movie started around 9:00.



The lot really filled up by the end of the first movie, and it seemed like most people watched from inside their cars (like we did), though some brought camping chairs or sat in the back of their trucks. We bought popcorn for $1 (twice) and kicked back on a pretty spring night to watch some movies. Going to the drive-in was a fun and novel outing, and I am both amazed that we stayed til 1 a.m. and fiercely curious about how many people stayed for the third movie, which presumably got started around 1:15. (My husband and I did bring up the median age, from what I could tell.)

#47 Volunteer at six races. I wrapped up this goal on Sunday by volunteering at packet pick-up at the City of Lakes Loppet Foundation's Salomon City Trail Loppet. The race, which had 10 mile and 10K options, started in Robbinsdale and then meandered, mostly on trails, all the way down to the finish line at the Walker Art Center's Sculpture Garden in Minneapolis. Pretty neat place for a finish area, no?

Because of my year-round volunteer role with Twin Cities in Motion, I'm on site at nearly all of TCM's events, but I decided to focus on non-TCM races for this goal for more of a stretch. That made it more ambitious, but I learned a lot and enjoyed supporting other events in this great running community.

#52 Register to be a bone marrow donor. I first donated blood in high school and have been intending to join the bone marrow donor registry since before I made the 101 in 1,001 list. I wish I would have done it ages ago, but I finally registered to be a bone marrow donor last month. Please ask me if you have any Qs about either process.

And one I am attempting:

#100 Read 30 minutes per day for two weeks. I set this goal to make sure I was prioritizing how much I enjoy reading. I thought I read a lot, but this one is trickier than I expected, mostly because I've been reading at night and falling asleep minutes into my designated half-hour. I've been waking up earlier in the mornings thanks to the earlier sunrise, and I think I'm going to become a morning reader (besides or instead of my magazines over breakfast) for this goal. I'm three days in.

That's 65/101 complete and 9/101 in progress. A few are not likely to be completed, but 36 items left on the list isn't as daunting as it sounds. There are a few left in each category, with several delightful summer-specific goals. I'm looking forward to the last three full months of my first 101 in 1,001 list.

Summer vegetable adventures

Back in the spring, Josh and I decided to sign up for a larger CSA share than we've had in past years. With the warm, sunny weather lately that I've documented extensively here, the crops are going crazy, and the CSA's box contents get better every week.

This week's box was heavy. It contained:

Cabbage

Cucumbers (lots)

Fennel

Garlic scapes

Green beans

Green top red beets

Green zucchini

Purple kohlrabi

Romaine lettuce

Salad mix

Scallions

Snap peas

Yellow summer squash

Our household is particularly enthusiastic about cucumbers, green beans, zucchini, scallions, snap peas and yellow summer squash, and I expect those vegetables to go fast.

This has already become known as Wish's Summer of Cucumbers. He thinks a chunk of cucumber, especially the end of one, is extra-fun because it functions like a ball but is edible. His face in the following photo is either DON'T TAKE MY CUCUMBER or PLEASE GIVE ME MORE CUCUMBER.

But besides seeing your favorite vegetables in the box, part of the fun of a CSA is figuring out what to do with new-to-you or strange-to-you vegetables. Each week, I've focused on trying a new trick or recipe, either on tried-and-true favorites or vegetables on which we haven't gotten hooked yet.

One week, we grilled zucchini and yellow squash for the first time. I loved the yellow squash, and the zucchini turned out okay.

Last week, I tried a watermelon salsa recipe I had clipped from a Food Network Magazine when we were in Colorado. I was short on mango but used watermelon, cucumber, jalapeno, red onion, basil and lime juice and zest. It was good served with chips, but it became infinitely better when I came home parched from a hot run and scarfed it like a salad.

That week I also used up cabbage with my first try at making cole slaw. I also used the food processor for the first time that my mom gave me and swore I would love. I was intimidated for a long time but can now confirm that it's an amazing machine. I tried a chipotle coleslaw recipe (with chipotles in adobo sauce) from the same issue of Food Network Magazine. We used most of the batch in pulled pork tacos, which was a good match for it.

This doesn't really have anything to do with CSA tips because we haven't gotten mint yet in a box, but if you do find yourself with extra mint, you should definitely make yourself a mint fizzy. If you've read Miles and Laurel in previous summers, you know that it's one of my favorite summer drinks: mint muddled in sugar, with club soda poured over it. Bonus points if it's in a mason jar.

One of the keys, I've found, is to address the box's contents right away. Cook a batch of something, cut up some veggies for snacks, bag everything up. Tonight (after the cucumbers) I turned my attention to a vegetable I'm not hooked on yet: beets. The farm provides a newsletter with tips about how to use each vegetable, and the beet paragraph noted that the author's favorite way to eat beets is roasted with sunflower oil, salt and fresh rosemary. Not only did I have those ingredients on hand, I had just been musing inwardly about how I loved any vegetable roasted in sea salt and oil (see: kale chips, another CSA-related experiment earlier in the summer). This could be just the ticket to learn how to love beets!

And you know what ? It was. Oh, my, beets are good when they're roasted with rosemary.

This week's project, I think, might be fennel, another vegetable that I haven't conquered (but not for any good reason). Any tips from you guys about fennel? Your help is much appreciated!

The rest of the week

I've been all confused this week because of our travel and the shortened workweek. It's Thursday, I think?!

Some notes about the week that have piled up:

1) I tried a new recipe last night (tortilla pie) and we demolished it so fast that I might have to try it again with the leftover ingredients. I got really excited to see a recipe that riffed on some of my favorite ingredients (black beans, cheese, corn, tortillas, etc. - the things you see in about half of the recipes I post) but also brought eggs into the mix and seemed like such an easy, weeknight-friendly meal.

It was not quite as weeknight-friendly as I hoped because, while the prep takes about 10 minutes, the little pie takes a full hour in the oven. I think this would be a good meal for days when one is puttering around the house and has time to wait for a meal but doesn't quite want to spend a lot of time cooking. Heck, it's still good for weeknights. (While I waited, I indulged a random urge to clean the refrigerator, which turned out  to be a good, productive and presumably overdue exercise. Ugh.)

2) To continue on the cooking theme, today I tried making cilantro pesto (with almonds instead of pine nuts) and I'm not sure why it took me 29 years to arrive at cilantro pesto.

3) The cilantro is from our first CSA box of the season, so it's fitting that I tried something new because it's one of the CSA's fun draws. I also got bok choi, garlic chives, green garlic, purple potatoes, radishes, red chili dry beans, spring onions and spinach, so I don't think my cooking adventures are done for the week.

4) I met up with my brother and sister for happy hour. Here is my first photo effort, which I kind of love more than anything:

And the second:

We ordered the Lyndale Tap House's stampede fries, with cheese, bacon, scallions and beef jus all poured on top of the French fries. It reminded me of poutine in Montreal and it was good. Also, I think you can tell from the photos that it was a truly gorgeous summer day and we got to sit on the patio.

5) I have a big, heavy watermelon on my counter!

Jeepers, that was a really food-focused hodge-podge. There's just something marvelous about eating and cooking summer foods, isn't there?

Summer's not over!

Just because the calendar has flipped to September and this weekend marks the end of meteorological summer and school starts for everyone tomorrow if it hasn't already, I don't think summer is over yet.

Why?

Because I realized today that I hadn't made guacamole once this summer! Argh!!

I set out this afternoon to remedy this miscue.

The first good sign was when I found a billion pretty avocados at the grocery store.

The second good sign was this precarious pile of avocado skins - meaning all of them were good and ripe and ready to use!

Also good: I usually make this recipe with frozen corn, but the grocery store also had fresh corn. And I usually make it with canned tomatoes, but this time I got to use two tomatoes filched from my brother's CSA! (Can I figure out a way to use the word filched in every post?)

The guacamole batch is chillin' in the fridge to let the flavors blend. I have a bluegrass Pandora station on thanks to a podcast from the weekend (recommending the band Carolina Chocolate Drops) and there are plenty of songs about long summer days. It might officially feel like September, but summer's most definitely not quite gone.

The almost-Friday recap

This week has been a quiet one: some What is the What reading, some cooking, some running - the usual. The major new adventure continues to be my Core Power Yoga classes.  I did my second heated class last night (opposed to the nonheated classes I took last week) and it's a little funny because this is a super-challenging and fascinating new little journey for me, but it's not one that's easily captured in photos unless you're interested in a picture of my red, sweaty face. (Please don't be!)  

The major good news is that I have not fallen on my face in yoga for a full week now.  But like one of my yoga teachers said: if you're not falling, you're not learning, no?

I bring you Three Things Thursday:

1) Josh and I went out to breakfast before work this morning!  I had a truly beautiful egg and sausage sandwich, with sweet potato hash. We generally fly around each other in the home each morning in various stages of hurry up, so the mid-week morning mini-dates are something to which we both look forward.  We're trying to do these weekly this winter and spring.

2) I launched an Explosions in the Sky station on Pandora today - that is the band possibly best known for the Friday Night Lights movie soundtrack - and the second song to pop on was "The Winner Is" from the Little Miss Sunshine soundtrack (i.e. one of my favorite movies and songs of all time). Pandora is mysterious and all-knowing.

3) I saw 40 Things That Make Corgis Happy.  Go.  Just look.  Happy Thursday!

You Joan, pho and the theater

The snooze button is such a ferocious friend.  But today I didn't feel too bad about it.  (Oh!  If you are considering moving to this fine state - and you know who you are - I give the green light to skip the rest of this post.)

The background: I got home very late last night from my fabulous cultural event (tackling #67, friends!) with Sara. Earlier this month, she had come across two tickets to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Guthrie.  Part of my 101 in 1,001, as you can see on the list, is taking advantage of all of the rich theater, art and cultural events that the Twin Cities offers.  I am not well-versed in the theater scene at all, so I figured I had homework to do.  I read Cat on a Hot Tin Roof last week for the first time.  It was so much fun - and more seriously, so much more meaningful - to have read the script and the playwright's directions before seeing the play unfold in person.  There was dialogue I couldn't wait to see acted out and parts I interpreted differently when I saw them in person.  I thought the whole thing was fabulous.

I got home really late!  I set the alarm clock warily (and wearily, ha ha) for 6 a.m. in hopes of getting an easy run in before work, since I had other commitments at lunch and in the evening.  

But when the alarm sounded, I grabbed my shiny new phone and noticed that in addition to telling time, the main screen also included a large temperature reading.  This is two hours later, but it looked exactly like this.

I've run in that kind of temperature before.  I contend that it's possible to do it without being dangerous, assuming you have a huge facemask with only your eyes peeking out.  But is it fun?  You know, at 6 a.m. this morning, I begged to differ.  Snooze!

And later in the morning, when I went to work, I knew I had made the right choice.  This has been a pretty mild Minnesota winter, and I had forgotten what that sort of temperature with a breeze feels like on one's face.  I got into the car and noticed that the temperature had soared all the way to -9.

As an aside, this car provides song titles. Sort of.  It's correct maybe half of the time.  Sometimes it mashes together the song and artist, other times it's a completely random word.  I like to imagine that there was actually a song playing called "YOU JOAN."  It sort of sounds like an insult.  "You Joan!"

Then I went out to lunch and tried pho for the first time!  Yahoo!

The day I got a huge box of soup

By the time I got home today, the wind was howling and the skies were pitch-black.  Okay, I exaggerate a bit.  It was kind of crummy and kind of dark.  But that's how November plays sometimes.  It was beautiful and sunny during the day, anyway. 

The point is that I was feeling a little bit chilled because I haven't ponied up for a big long down coat yet, and I'm clinging to my friendly, light fall jacket.  As I was opening the door, I noticed a big brown box sitting on the porch, unmarked except for my last name.  Ha!  It sounds like I'm setting up a suspense-filled story.  The truth is, it was just my soup delivery from Local Roots Fine Foods!  Hooray!

I nabbed a Groupon for this, but it's a pretty cool arrangement even sans Groupon.  Per the website, it seems to be a married couple who started the business with the goal of "making the finest frozen products from the freshest local ingredients," buying from local farmers and supporting sustainable agriculture.  For $26 (half off the regular price), I got a big box full of six tubs of frozen soup (each with 2-3 servings).  I think this will come in very handy on cold nights (like tonight, for example) when I don't necessarily have an elaborate dinner plan in mind but sure would appreciate a bowl of hot soup.

I made room for them in the freezer eventually, but I stacked them pyramid-style for your viewing pleasure.

Other items of note - call it Mini-Marvelous Thursday, if you prefer:

1) Boot camp was great, again.  On our first day of class, one of my friends said it made exercise feel like track and field day from elementary school, and she's totally right.  It's never boring!  We dash and shuffle and gallop from station to station.  Today some of our work involved throwing medicine balls down to the ground as hard as we could (which is surprisingly satisfying) and doing squats to lift a big old tire, among many other exercises. 

2) I encountered a neat local organization tonight.  It's called the Community Design Center of Minnesota, and its mission is "to build vibrant and healthy communities through food, conservation and youth development." One of the CDC's programs is a Nutrition Corps, in which kids age 14-18 can intern.  There were four interns at tonight's Bolder Options nutrition meeting, and they did a great job walking the Bolder Options kids through making healthy quesadillas: chopping up broccoli and peppers and cilantro, assembling a salad, preparing the toppings on a whole wheat tortilla and so on. 

Yesterday was Give to the Max Day in Minnesota, designed to draw awareness and funding toward Minnesota non-profits, and it made me pause, notice and be grateful for how many people are doing Really Good Work around here.  It was great to learn more about the CDC tonight and see the interns teach the Bolder Options kids about nutrition and healthy habits.

3) Finally, today at Target I overheard a woman asking an employee to help her locate the "Barbie Ginormous Castle."  Isn't that more helpful than using the product's actual name, Reader?  (I guess I will eat my words and give Mattel credit if that company actually named something the Barbie Ginormous Castle.)

Happy Thursday to you!

Marvelous Monday

Whoa!  Thanksgiving is next Thursday?  How did that happen?

I have a lot for which I am grateful.  I have no doubt that I'll whip up some thanks-giving content in the next week or two.  For now, though, I bring you Marvelous Monday!

1) I mentioned yesterday that Grandma always sends me home from her house with a bag of cookies, raisin bread, and embroidered dishtowels.  This morning, a dishtowel was one of the first things I saw when I started puttering around in the kitchen, and it totally made me smile.  Look at that little chilly snowman!

2) I guess I am finally easing into the holiday spirit, now that we're inside the two-week window before Thanksgiving.  Last night, Josh and I stopped over to visit my mom.  My dad is traveling for his job, and in his absence, my mom turned the basement into her own personal holiday decoration planning area. She elevates holiday decorating to an art form, Reader.  I counted, like, nine wreaths - including this one, my favorite.

3)  Grandma's raisin bread! I love the swirls of raisins.  Next time I visit her, I will ask how she does this.  My earliest memory of eating Grandma's raisin bread is from age six.  It is a major, major staple of my childhood.  It tastes best to me toasted - and, like most food items, is even better with butter melted on it.

4) Josh and I stumbled across a new restaurant recently - and guess what?  It's in Minneapolis.  That's way out of my normal St. Paul comfort zone.  Sun Street Breads is in the Kingfield neighborhood of southwest Minneapolis, and we went there for lunch.  Josh had "The Susan," otherwise known as a meatloaf sandwich with apple butter.  I scanned the menu and my eyes locked onto the "biscuit sandwich" category. 

Is there any word in the English language that is more specific and wonderful and communicates exactly what you're getting into better than "biscuit"?  Gah!  It was buttery and very serious and sooo good.  Some egg and cheese was involved, too.  We might need to go there for our next dinner date so I can get past the biscuit sandwiches and explore the rest of the menu.

5) Tonight I will go for a walk - because it's still 53 degrees and sunny! - and then make a pot of minestrone for the week.  Yum.

What's on your mind, Reader?  Got five marvelous pieces in your own Monday?

Meal planning

I love themes, I love sports, and I love making everyday events feel a little bit special.  

These hobbies mash together perfectly when matching food to places and events.  For each major sporting event on the calendar, I dream about hosting a party coordinating a menu appropriate for each team's home city.  (I guess it should be added here that I also love corny and hokey ideas.)  When I brainstorm with Josh, the conversation usually involves one really easy set of answers and one awkward silence.  Take baseball's 2010 World Series, for example, which pitted the San Francisco Giants against the Texas Rangers.  

San Francisco: sourdough bread, Ghiradelli chocolate, etc.

Texas: ...barbecue?

But every Southern city claims the best barbecue, right?

I tried to do the same thing with Arizona for the 2011 All-Star Game and totally struck out.  (Ha!  Good one!)  Same thing with this year's Super Bowl: Green Bay would've been pretty easy: beer, brats, cheese, etc.  But Pittsburgh?

So you get the idea that my great dreams haven't always panned out, okay?  But I still keep an eye toward matching a city or team to its iconic food traditions, especially whenever I travel: in New England it has to be clam chowder.  If I ever get to New Mexico for the balloon festival, I'll be eating chilis all day long--and in Philadelphia, I'll have to eat a cheesesteak.

Here I am in a region of Colorado known as the Melon Capital of the World:

Secretly, Josh loves it, too.  See?  He's in Maine and his heart is all aflutter over a lobster roll.

There's an opportunity coming up soon to build on this exploration.  I'm spending a weekend in Chicago in October for the Chicago Marathon, and part of my trip-planning includes food-planning.  I've been dying to visit one of Rick Bayless's restaurants for years, so that's inked into the itinerary.  The rest of what I knew about Chicago food traditions is pizza, pizza, pizza, and I'm staying an extra night in the city post-race specifically so I can leisurely enjoy a deep-dish pie.  Yum.

But my horizons were broadened over the weekend thanks to Jeff Mauro, otherwise known as the Next Food Network Star.  He won the competition last week, and his show debuted on Sunday.  In the episode, Jeff featured a recipe for Chicago's famous Italian beef sandwiches--a phenomenon completely new to me.  He toured the kitchens of these little restaurants and delis to showcase this legendary sandwich, and I was hooked.  Another meal to add to my itinerary--probably another post-race one. 

It reminded me of all of the other regional specialties out there that I don't even know about.  Reader, help me add to my idea bank.  What foods is your city known for?  What about your favorite city's traditions?  If you live in Minnesota, what is ours?  Is it walleye-anything, or something completely different? 

Burgers and maple creamees

Last night's Church Street view

This shall be known as the food post, with barely a dash of Lake Champlain mixed in.  Tomorrow, my fellow conference-goers and I are going on a boat cruise around the lake, so if you were a betting reader, I would not bet against never seeing another photo of Lake Champlain on Miles and Laurel.

Last night, a new friend and I walked downtown and shopped the sweetest group of boutiques.  I might have purchased jeggings (pipe down, Blogger spellcheck!) but will probably never fully admit it, even when I wear them.  Sonja and I found a restaurant called The Farmhouse but the wait was an hour, so we ate at a pub on Church Street.  It was just fine, especially the outdoor seating on a 75-degree evening with people-watching galore all around us.  But today, it seemed that everyone at the conference had dined at The Farmhouse to rave reviews...so we had to try again.

Tonight we went earlier, and we snagged an outdoor table.  I ordered tomato-fennel soup and a bacon cheeseburger with Vermont cheddar (and local beef and bacon too, but that doesn't have a ring quite like "Vermont cheddar").  Our meals came with a condiment tray that included root beer barbecue sauce, which was amazing--and I'm not even a major barbecue sauce consumer.  All in all: I'm ready to pronounce that meal the best burger I've ever had.  Please do yourself a service and go here if you are ever in Burlington.

But the Vermont food tour was not complete.  Last stop: the ice cream stand by the lake, for maple creamees.  "Creamees" is the Vermont equivalent to soft-serve ice cream, and this stand boasted maple creamees. The ice cream was perfect, with a gentle but not overpowering touch of maple--as I said so articulately when I tasted it, "like syrup but way better!"

And then, on the shuttle back to the dorms, we were chatting with the driver about Burlington, and I saw my chance and grabbed it: I got to ask a local if he ever forgets to notice the lake.  "Oh, no," he said emphatically, and his face changed in a way that showed how much he loved it. He told us that he lives a stone's throw from the lake, outside town in a house that has seen his family through five generations. "Morning, evening, it's the same water, but it always looks something different."

It'll be hard to top his view, wherever I'll be in 30 or 40 years, but I hope I get a monster-sized kick out of my neighborhood the way he does.

Roar!

Memorial Day Weekend



Here I am, at one of my favorite markets in Colorado. 

 If I was nervous to start the blog writing about an anticlimactic marathon, I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum regarding this entry.  Watermelon.  It's fitting for me to start Memorial Day Weekend (in Minnesota, summer's unofficial start) with a note on watermelon.  I imagine suspect that I consume my body weight in watermelon in a typical summer - and probably even more since I started making annual summer trips with Josh to his hometown in Colorado, a huge melon producer because of its hot, dry climate.  

I'm no culinary expert.  My watermelon consumption usually involves either using it in smoothies or just devouring it after a hot run.  My most exotic use of watermelon was last summer, when I tried making watermelon, lime, and cilantro popsicles. (Hint: in slush form, this is one of life's true delights, assuming you are a lover of cilantro.) 

Yesterday, I went to Cub Foods with a five-item shopping list that did not include watermelon. Unsurprisingly, as soon as I saw a big pile of melons next to a big shiny sale sign, I found myself slinging one into my cart, completely forgetting that I had parked way, way on the other side of the parking lot.

Anyway, the long haul was totally worth it. I'm heading out soon for my first post-marathon run.  Can you think of anything better to find in the fridge upon return? I can't.