The New Blog Is Up!

We are safely arrived in California. Actually we've been here almost two weeks. We're still getting settled, but I did put together a new blog, complete with a few posts about our first weekend in Santa Monica. I decided to call it simply The Torr Guide. From now on we'll be posting there rather than here. Go check it out!

Last Post from Minnefabulous

OK, I just uploaded the state fair pics to Flickr.com and to this here blog. I am sitting in our living room on the floor, with the laptop. Everything else is in the moving truck, and I gotta wrap this up so we can go return our modem to the cable company.

See, what I'm trying to do here is paint a picture of how quickly this all snuck up on me.

There's so much more about Minneapolis that I wanted to blog about. For example, following up on my post about 3.2 beer, at the going-away BBQ that B's coworkers threw her, her boss was explaining to me that after Prohibition, *all* beer in Minnesota was 3.2, and most bars were only allowed to serve beer. A few designated "sin districts" had liquor stores and bars that actually served liquor, and to this day many of the older bars have the word "liquor" prominently displayed on their signs -- a relic from the days when most Minnesota bars served only beer. Steve (B's boss) said that the area where Memory Lanes and the Hexagon Bar now are was a "sin district," as was Uptown, and of course this designation profoundly affected the development of those areas. Just fascinating stuff.

There's also so much more of Minnesota we wanted to see: Duluth, Lake Superior -- heck, everything north of Minneapolis, which is an awful lot!

So are we a bit sad about leaving? Yes. Will we miss Minnefabulous? Of course. But we gotta look forward. As much as we've grown to love Minneapolis, we're incredibly excited about Santa Monica.

Thanks to everybody for all the comments over the past year. B and I value this blog as record of all the fun times we've had out here, but it's also great to think that our friends and family are enjoying it too. My next and final post to this blog will be the announcement of our new blog, which I'll set up once we're all settled!

The Minnesota State Fair: The Pictures

B and I had a blast at the State Fair. Well, really all we did was eat, but we had a lot fun doing that.

I had planned to take a ton of photos, and was hoping to top my food-on-a-stick montage from last year. Two things got in the way of this:

1) All the packing we'd been doing left us kinda tired, and the packing we still needed to do made us pressed for time.
2) It was overcast, and without direct sunlight I knew I wouldn't be able to get better-looking pictures than last year.

So we said what the hey, ate a bunch, and grabbed what pics we could. Here goes:



Me with a pork chop on a stick.



This is where we got out sausage sampler -- half a link each of andouille, potate sausage, and weisswurst, cut up and served with peppers and onions.



They were serving, um, milk here. Notice the "all you can drink for a $1," which reaises the question of how much milk one can drink. I read a book recently, sort of a cheesy detective thing set in Las Vegas, in which one guy cons another into betting that he can drink a gallon of milk in an hour. The con if it was that the enzymes in milk will make you puke if you try to drink that much that quickly. But maybe a Minnesotan could do it . . .



Saw the sign, had to have one.



Pretty much chocolate sauce and some jam on bread, grilled like grilled cheese and covered with powered sugar. I loved it, B did not.









This is where we got a chocolate milkshake.













Someone visited the Oink Booth.



Cheese curds! Probably our last for a while.



Hot dish on a stick was this year's newest on-a-stick novelty. "Hot dish" is sort of Minnesotan for "casserole." We passed, both because it didn't look all that exciting and because we were still working on the milkshake and cheese curds. Our stomachs were beginning to complain but we willed them to silence.



Time for some lighter fare . . . pickle on a stick.



Map on a stick!



Governor on a stick!!



Don't know if you make out the text on this menu, but this place was selling milkshakes with cereal mix-ins. As in, "I'll have a vanilla shake with Fruit Loops."



Again, don't know if you can make out the text, but on the right it says they are offering "Italians."





Hot dago on a stick! Oh my.



Walleye on a stick. It was actually really good.



Belgian waffle on a stick! We had to walk around a bit to give out stomachs time to settle, and I actually suggested that maybe we could skip it, but B insisted. Good thing, too, because it was delicious.





On our way out we saw the butter scupltures of the dairy princesses. Throughout the year, princesses in each county of Minnesota are crowned, and at the state fair, their heads are sculpted in butter. It's a tradition.

OK, if you made it this far, congrats! The state fair is so much fun -- wish we could've stayed longer, but mainly I'm happy that we didn't miss it altogether.

The Minnesota State Fair: Preliminary Report

Foods consumed include:

Pork Chop in a Stick
Sausage Sampler: Andouille, Potato Sausage, and Weisswurst, with peppers and onions
Grilled Chocolate Sandwich
Chocolate Mikshake
Cheese Curds
Pickle on a Stick
Potato Lefse with Lingonberry Jam
Walleye on a Stick
Frozen Apple Cider
Belgian Waffle on a Stick

What can I say -- we didn't hold back. We're gonna get to Califonia and then it'll be all grilled chicken and fruit smoothies, so we figured let's go nuts. I'll post pictures once this food coma passes.

Just a Couple Days to Go

Our last few weeks in Minnefabulous have been really, really hectic, and this blog has suffered for it. Two weekends ago B and I were both out of town for work (I was in Indianapolis for GenCon, and she was in Montreal for an academic conference), then last weekend I met her in Montreal for a friend's wedding, then this last week at work was exhausting, as I tried to get several projects at work finished and squeeze in a couple fantasy football drafts. Saturday night we attended a very nice farewell barbeque thrown by B's coworkers at the U, then yesterday we resumed boxing up everything we own. We go get the rental moving truck tomorrow (Tuesday), spend the day loading it up, and then we leave for Santa Monica on Wednesday. We will arrive on Saturday, get all moved in Sunday September 3, and then we plan to spend Labor Day at the beach!

But back to Minnefabulous: The packing is mostly done, and today we are going to pop over to the Minnesota State Fair. I plan to get more pictures of food on a stick, so I'm not done with this blog yet. Stay tuned (all 3 of you :)

Milwaukee Park

These are some photos of Milwaukee Park, which is right across the street from our apartment. We're on 22nd Avenue, and between 22nd Avenue and 23rd Avenue is Milwaukee Avenue, which was made into a pedestrian thoroughfare back in . . . well, I don't know. But the thoroughfare is lined with these small houses that used to be homes for railroad workers. They're very cute, and B and I have taken many a walk by them.









And the playground is a tribute to the railroad workers of yore:

3.2 Beer

Man are B and I tired. We've been out of town for the past weekends, first for work (Berna in Montreal and me in Indianapolis) then for our buddy Matt's wedding in Montreal. Last night we both had one of those nights where you're just SO happy to be back in your own bed.

Then today, B and I both went in for the first day of our last weeks at our current jobs. Actually, I'm going to stay on full-time at my job, but still. My point is, our final days in Minnefabulous are flying by, and there are still many things I want to blog about.

3.2 beer. I've been meaning to blog about this since we first moved here.

Hmmm . . . where to begin. I'm always fascinated by the beer and liquor laws in different states. For example, in Pennsylvania, beer is sold at beer distributors and convenience stores, while wine and liquor are sold at state-run stores. For most of the time we lived in RI you couldn't buy any alcohol on Sundays, except for the Sunday before Christmas and the Sunday before New Year's. Just amazing that laws like that come to be.

Anyway, when we moved out here the deal in Minneapolis was thus: Beer, wine, and liquor are all sold in privately operated liquor stores. These stores are not allowed to be open on Sunday, and until recently they closed at 8pm on the other days (since June they have been allowed to stay open til 10pm, but still no Sundays). However, bars are open on Sundays, and grocery stores and convenience stores are allowed to sell beer on Sundays. However, the beer they sell (on Sundays and ever other days of the week) is 3.2 beer. Most beers have 4-5 percent alcohol by volume, while 3.2 beer has, um, 3.2 percent.

The brands I normally see in the grocery store are Budweiser, Miller, Leinenkugel, and most interestingly to me, Corona. There are no indications on these beers' packaging that they are any different from "normal" Budweiser, Miller, Leinenkugel, and Corona, so for several months I just assumed that the megabrews just had that much lower alcohol content. I just couldn't believe that these major brewing companies would make a separate, lower-alcohol content product just for states with 3.2 laws. But after some googling, I confirmed that the aforementioned beers all have alcohol contents well above 4 percent, so they are making a separate 3.2 product. Amazing.

I have tried the 3.2 beers on a few occassions, such as back in the fall when I was caught without beer and there was a good football game, or at least one Sunday this summer when it was just So Damn Hot that I needed some suds, weak though they be. But drinking 3.2 Miller Lite really isn't very different from drinking water. Oh well.

The other interesting thing I heard about 3.2 beer is that back in the 70s they used to have 3.2 bars, that served only 3.2 beer, and 18-year-olds were allowed to drink at them. Sounds like a cool idea to me, but alas, they are no more.

Praise for MGM

So I posted a few weeks ago about the Midtown Global Market and how great it is. This week, Citypages food writer Dara Moskowitz echoed our sentiments:

You know how sometimes you fall in love so hard and so fast you don't trust it at all, so you call all your friends and ask, "Am I crazy, or is it really love?" Well, that's how it's been around here for the past several weeks, as I fall deeper and deeper under the spell of the new Midtown Global Market, the indoor, city-block-covering, 50-plus-vendor market that fills the ground floor of the old Sears headquarters on Lake Street.

She gives a little mini-review to each of the main eateries. For La Sirena Gorda, our favorite place, she writes:

I could write a whole review of La Sirena Gorda. If you like Mexican seafood, be absolutely sure to try this place. In short, though, please know that the cheerful, blue-tile-bedecked stand is owned by one of the founders of downtown Minneapolis fine-dining and dance hotspot Babalu, and at La Sirena Gorda they cook fine-dining, restaurant-quality food.

Anyway, we got a small kick out of beating Minneapolis's best food writer to the punch, even though, um, we have about 4 readers, none of whom leave in Minneapolis :-)

Popcorn in the Style of Dave

Good stuff. Note the hot-dog-and-ice-cream lights. We've gotten the carmel corn a couple times, but we may have to go back and try herbcorn.

Adriana at the Airport

So Berna was in Santa Monica this past Wednesday through Saturday, finding us an apartment. She was successful, and now the move seems that much more "real." I was telling my mom about the new place on Saturday, and she joked that in L.A. we would be bumping into celebrities all the time. Then that night I headed down to the airport to pick up Berna. I'm waiting at baggage claim at the airport when I notice that a few benches over from me is Drea de Matteo, the actress who plays Adriana on "The Sopranos" and Joey's sister Gina on "Joey." She was with a small entourage of 4 or 5 guys, at least two of which seemed like bodyguards (they were standing and looking kinda watchful). But pretty much she was just sitting there waiting for baggage, at 10:30 on a Saturday night. Weird.

Update: I told this story to my landlord, and he told me that when he was 10 years old he met Tim Reed (Venus Flytrap from "WKRP in Cincinnati") at an airport. That tops my story big time.

Songs About Minnesota (and other states, too)

OK, I've been meaning to post about this since July 4th. In celebration of these great United States, a blogger names Robert, who has a blog called Trees Lounge, put up a huge post linking to hundreds of songs about each of the 50 states. Minnesota is in the post about the first 23, and you can go read it here (you gotta scroll down to get to get to Minnesota, it's the last one of the 23). The best part is, this guy isn't just writing about each song, or linking to where you can buy them -- if you click on the links in Robert's posts you will be able to listen to the actual song (provided you have Quicktime installed). Pretty cool.

He's promised to follow up with songs for the other 27 states, but as of this writing . . . he hasn't yet. But c'mon, you gotta go listen to Weird Al Yankovich's "Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota"!

Lord Fletcher's in 102 Degree Heat

So it was 102 degrees in the Twin Cities yesterday (Saturday July 15). B and I were tempted to hide in the A/C all day, but instead we headed out to Lake Miinnetonka. We'd been wanting to go to Lord Fletcher's for a while. Lake Minnetonka is the biggest lake near the Twin Cities, and Lord Fletcher's is sort of The place to go on Lake Minnetonka. It's a restaurant and bar right on the lake. Dozens of boats pull right up to Lord Fletcher's dock and sunburned Minnesotans pour out for a burger and a beer. We'd actually done that (pulled up to Lord Fletcher's in a boat) back in 2000, when we were in Minneapolis for my buddy Kirk's wedding.

Anyway, we sat outside and got daiquiris and salads and listened to a nice band play, but the heat nevertheless took its toll on us. B was fairly "wilty" and I was just kinda dazed from the heat. Guess we'll have to acclimate once we get to L.A.

Before heading to Lord Fletcher's we stopped by Crystal Bay so we could get a pic of the area we ice fished at in February:



And here's another shot of Lake Minnetonka:



I thought this sign was really cute:



And finally, here are a couple pics of us at Lord Fletcher's. You can see palm trees behind me -- they were in pots, but they really lend the place a cool tropical flair!

Arguably the most ornate outhouse in the Midwest

Norge Outhouse
Originally uploaded by Johnny Blood.

THE BIG NEWS

B has been offered a very good job in Los Angeles, and we will be moving at the end of August. B's heading out there to find us a place to live in early August. Our last day at our jobs will be August 25th, then we'll pack up everything we own and hit the road.

If this big huge news is coming as a shock to you, we're sorry -- we've tried to tell most of our friends and family, but with people scattered everywhere, it can be hard. That's one reason this blog is here, to keep in touch with people we don't talk to enough in person or on the phone. If you'd like more details on B's job, etc., give us a call!

We have slightly mixed feelings about this move. On the one hand, moving back to California is a dream come true for us. We didn't realize just how much we loved the ocean, the sun, the palm trees, and California's unique culture until we left San Diego back in August 2000.

On the other hand, we are sad to be leaving Minnefabulous. Neither of us are happy to be leaving our current jobs after only one year, but more than that, we really have enjoyed exploring this wonderful city. We can honestly say that we could live in Minneapolis for the rest of our lives and be very happy. In a perfect world, we would've at least liked to have had one more year here.

Well, we've still got a solid 6 weeks here, and I've got several more posts planned. However, August will be very crazy for us: We've got a wedding to attend in Montreal, B's going to L.A. to find us an apartment, B and I both have work-related conferences to travel to, and we need to pack up everything we own. [shudders thinking about it all]

Once we are actually in L.A., we plan to start a new blog. We haven't decided on a title for it yet, but I think it might *not* be "The Torr Guide to Los Angeles." As much as I've enjoyed "reporting" on our explorations of Minnefabulous, I think the real value of this blog has been how it's helped us keep in touch with faraway friends and family. So the next blog might be less about the city we're in and more about us. I'll keep you posted.

Belacan at Peninsula Malaysian

OK, in my last post I blogged about how B and I like to be culinarily adventurous. Well, sometimes we get burned.

One of the neatest areas of this fine city is Eat Street, which is the nickname of a long stretch of Nicollet Avenue that has a ton of restaurants. The banners on the lamp posts proclaim that it is "17 blocks of eating adventure."

A couple weeks ago B and I went over to Eat Street and checked out Peninsula, which offers Malaysian cuisine. Here's Citypages's description of the place:

Are you missing your hot, tropical nights among the famous food hawker stands of Kuala Lumpur? Well pine no more, for Minneapolis now has Peninsula, a vast, spic-and-span new restaurant that offers an almost countless array of authentic Malaysian dishes, foods that, as you know, spring from that melting of Indian, Chinese, and Malay cuisines. Start your meal with that quintessential street food, satay, here available in beef, chicken, and tofu variations, and be sure to add an order of achat, a tangy, crisp vegetable salad cloaked with a silky peanut dressing. Consider trying the stickily delicious niblets called volcano pork ribs, as well as the remarkably simultaneously crisp and custardy "spicy & salted golden tofu." Hot pots, like the tofu curry one, are intensely flavored and unforgettable, and the chow fun noodles are silky as rain clouds. If you're really feeling in the mood for something ultra authentic, order the kan kun belacan--water spinach in a spicy fermented shrimp sauce that's as Malaysian as tuna hot dish is Minnesotan. The restaurant has friendly service, room for you and all your friends, a beer and wine list, and is open till from 11:00 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. most days, and until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays, making it perfect for those hot, not-so-tropical nights when you're stuck at your desk till way after all those other Eat Street restaurants close.

We'd never had Malaysian cuisine before. I got the beef rendang (slow-cooked chunks of beef, lemongrass, chili paste, coconut milk, cinnamon, cloves and red curry), and B got a seafood hot pot. Both were delicious. We also had a great appetizer called Roti Canai (kind of like a flaky Malaysian tortilla with a delicious dipping sauce). The only odd thing was that towards the end of the meal we noticed a horrible smell. B speculated that it was one woman's feet (she had taken her shoes off). It was raining that day, and I thought someone must've stepped in some particularly nasty mud or dung. But we soon forgot about it.

Then tonight we went back for dinner. I got the "Queen's Tofu," which was delicious. B had fried whole fish, Malaysian style.

And from it we realized what the smell from two weeks ago had been. A major ingredient in many Malaysian dishes is belacan, which is described on the menu as "shrimp paste." Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry for Belacan:

Shrimp paste or shrimp sauce, is a common ingredient used in Southeast Asian and Southern Chinese cuisine. It is known as terasi (also spelled trassi, terasie) in Indonesian, kapi in Thai, belacan (also spelled belachan, blachang, balachong) in Malay, and bagoong alamang/aramang in Filipino.

It is made from fermented ground shrimp. To many Westerners unfamiliar with this condiment, the smell can be extremely repulsive . . . [emphasis added]

Yes, "extremely repulsive" is how I'd describe it. The sauce on B's fish was by far the worst-smelling food I've encountered in all my life. Strangely, it didn't taste all that bad at all, and to our credit, we did eat the entire fish. But damn was that smell awful.

Here's an excerpt from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's review of Peninsula:

There is no symbol on the menu to warn diners about smelly dishes, but perhaps there should be. . . . The waiter tried to warn us away from the penang rojak, a salad of cucumber, jicama, mango and pineapple, drizzled with a dark sweet sauce made with belacan, a fermented shrimp paste. He told us that he personally couldn't stand the smell of it, and that he had been told to discourage Westerners from ordering it.

We received no such warning, and as B later pointed out, if I had read this beforehand I probably would've insisted on ordering it. I'm kind of an idiot that way :-)

Here's Wikipedia on the history of shrimp paste:

Many shrimp pastes seem inedible to those unfamiliar with Southeast Asian cooking, so the development of such a potentially repelling food can seem odd. Possibly, fishermen first created the salted aged shrimp product as a means of preserving their catch. Another theory is that it was created so tiny apparently unmarketable shrimp could be sold. Whatever the reason, shrimp paste is now an integral part of highly regarded Southeast Asian cuisine. The shrimp paste industry has been important to the development of many coastal Asian communities.

And here's how it's made:

After being caught, small shrimp are unloaded, rinsed and drained before being dried. Drying can be done on plastic mats on the ground in the sun, on metal beds on low stilts, or using other methods. After several days, the shrimp-salt mixture will darken and turn into a thick pulp.

If the shrimp used to produce the paste were small, it is ready to be served as soon as the individual shrimp have decayed beyond recognition. If the shrimp are larger, fermentation will take longer and the pulp will be ground to provide a smoother consistency. The fermentation/grinding process is usually repeated several times until the paste fully matures. The paste is then dried and cut into bricks by the villagers to be sold. Dried shrimp paste does not require refrigeration.

As B remarked, "It doesn't require refrigeration because it's already gone bad."

Oh well, live and learn.

I also had a pineapple-coconut smoothie with my meal . . . and it came with "black pearls," which are pea-sized balls of black tapioca floating in the drink. B and I had read about this Asian trend and I wanted to give it a go. I found the oddest part to be the huge straw they give so you can suck up the tapioca balls. The black pearls didn't do it for me, but at least now I can say I gave it a try.

Well, like I said, the non-Belacan dishes we've had at Peninsula were all incredibly good, so we'll be back there soon enough. I just can't get over how bad that smell was.

The Midtown Global Market

Berna and I have always been very into food. We love the Food Network, we love cooking, and most of all we love eating out. The only things that have ever held us back are that 1) eating out is expensive, 2) we love food but we don't love being overweight, and 3) sometimes we feel bad about being food snobs. Example: For almost two years (about 1998-1999) we basically refused to eat in chain restaurants, but then we kinda decided we were being assholes :-)

We can't do much about #1, and we're dieting for #2, but as far as #3 goes I am ready to just embrace our food snobbiness. I'll still eat in chain restaurants, because I'm just that sociable, but at heart B and I are "foodies." We are always looking for food that is unusual, exotic, or innovative. If it's not any of those things, then we want it to be extremely well-prepared. (Chain restaurants usually don't meet any of these criteria. . . .)

All this introspection is just a lead-up to the subject of this post, which is that a couple weeks ago we discovered foodie heaven in the brand-new Midtown Global Market. It's located between where we live and Uptown, on Lake Street. It's a large indoor market, kind of like Reading Terminal in Philadelphia. There is a produce stand and other things you'd expect at a market, but there is an emphasis on the "global." United Noodle has a little grocery area, and there are many food stands, offering Mexican, Middle Eastern, soul food, Tibetan . . .

The Tibetan food is very interesting, and La Salsa y Salsa (which we blogged about months ago) actually has a sit-down restaurant in the building. But our favorite place by far is La Sirena Gorda -- the Fat Siren:







They serve nothing but Mexican seafood, so of course we love it. On our first visit to the MGM, I got the fish tacos, and they came with a delicious pineapple salsa. When we went on Saturday, B got the shtimp tacos and I got the special of the day, snapper marinated in some kinda chipotle sauce. Really good stuff.





There was a band playing in the central area, so we watched while we ate.



Here are some other random photos of the market.







This is the ad for Manny's Tortas, a great place that deserves its own post. I find this ad totally weird and hilarious though. It's like the sandwich is whispering to you:







This is the Tibetan place:



On our first visit to MGM I had some very tasty momos, which are Tibetan dumplings.