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.

Rocking Out at the Hexagon Bar

So B and I had quite a July 4th 4-day weekend. Saturday night we went to the Hexagon Bar, around the corner from Memory Lanes. Why would we return to the place that I described just 3 posts ago as a "scary dive bar"? Two words: surf guitar. Saturday afternoon we read this on Citypages:

We may be living through what Midwest fashion historians will someday call The Summer of the Hawaiian Shirt. Seems like every middle-aged dude in town (including me) is getting in touch with his inner Jack Lord, Don Ho, and/or Jimmy Buffett. A sacred fellowship, to be sure, and tonight the palm-tree-draped boys and the women who tolerate them will take to the dance floor, as the Awkwards, Baron Von Ottomatic, Big Surf, and DJ Jean of KFAI's Radio Rumpus Roompreside over Tiki drink specials, contests, and random cowabungaing. 21+. Free. 9:00 p.m.

It was very cool, and I even purchased a T-shirt, since I could not resist the tagline, "Surf Music from the Inland":



Unfortunately both B and I had about 3 too many beers, which put crimp on our Sunday. The beer was just going down too easy!

Izzy's Ice Cream

We are having quite a nice July 4th Weekend. On Saturday we popped over to Izzy's Ice Cream, a place B had read about on Citypages:

Standing in line at Izzy's is an arduous endeavor. Not only is the scent of the sweet, creamy frozen confections almost overpowering, but the longer you stand there--and in summer the queue usually goes out the door--the more often you'll change your mind about which mouthwatering flavor to order. Cinnamon bun? Pistachio? Strawberry cheesecake? Cotton candy? Chocolate? Vanilla? The list seems endless. Fortunately, when your turn comes and you finally decide, the clerk will ask, "What kind of Izzy would you like with that?" For the uninitiated: An Izzy is a melon-ball-size scoop of ice cream that tops the (much larger) scoop you ordered, a chance to add another flavor from the list! As if inventing the Izzy scoop wasn't already a revolution in ice cream, this delightful parlor keeps the innovations coming. There's the Izzy Pop, a diminutive Izzy scoop dipped in chocolate. There's the malted waffle cone, a freshly made cone sealed at the bottom with a malted milk ball. And then there's the latest and greatest, the Izzabella--a waffle cone whose edge is dipped in chocolate, then rolled in Marcona almonds; there's a chocolate-covered almond at the base of the cone, and every Izzabella comes with its own fortune. Our prediction for your future? You'll be returning to Izzy's.

I was feeling tropical, so I got a scoop of coconut with an Izzy scoop of banana. B got a scoop of banana with an Izzy scoop of coffee-oreo and a bit of hot fudge topping.

Field Mice

OK, I know that cats sometimes kill mice or small birds and leave them on your doorstep. Cats that we had growing up did this, and Mojo left us a small mouse back in the fall, to our knowledge his first and only non-bug kill.

On Friday (before we went to Memory Lanes) I tried to get some photos of Mojo sunning himself on the sidewalk. But he was very preoccupied with something in the grass.



I assumed it was a bug. It wasn't. It was very small mouse, so small that it was effectively hidden by the not-that-tall grass. This was right in our front lawn.

Growing up in Willow Grove, PA, I played around in the grass just as much as any kid, but I have never seen a freakin' mouse just walking through it. I should've gotten a picture, but I was busy holding Mojo back, and the mouse was really was hard to see underneath the grass.

Mother Nature's just more hopped up out here. I should take a picture of the backyard just after our landlord's mowed the grass and trimmed back all the trees and bushes, then take another picture 2 weeks later. Everything just grows like mad. I think I've mentioned before that we've got a ton of bunnies in our neighborhood. You can't walk a block without seeing 2 or 3. I googled "do rabbits eat mice?" and the answer is that some species do. Next thing you know we'll have foxes moving into the neighborhood. Crazy.

Memory Lanes

I can't believe B and I have lived here for almost 1 year (just a couple days to go) and we haven't been to a bowling alley. Til last night, that is. We walked over to Memory Lanes, which had been closed when we moved in but re-opened sometime in the spring after renovations. It's a little less than a mile from our house.



Bowling alleys are a big deal out here. Before moving, we had read about the most well-known bowling alley in Minneapolis, the the Bryant-Lake Bowl in Uptown, and we still need to check that one out. But we figured we should check out Memory Lanes first since it's so close to us. And yes, in the previous two sentences I linked to both bowling alley's websites. I'm pretty sure that none of the bowling alleys in Rhode Island and few in Pennsylvania have their own websites, although please correct me if I'm wrong. The Bryant-Lake Bowl has its own freakin' Flickr group.

Well, we didn't know about Memory Lanes's website before we headed over there last night. We had just seen it in our strolls around the neighborhood and decided to spend Friday evening there. I pretty much wanted to check it out just based on its punny name -- inside the bowling alley is also the Flashback Cafe Bar & Grill. So we strolled over at about 8:30 Friday night, but to our surprise there was a $5 cover to get in. We kinda balked at this, both because we are cheap and because we did not expect to pay a cover to get into a freakin' bowling ally. So we headed across the street to the Hexagon Bar to have a beer and discuss.

I had mentioned the Hexagon Bar in my post on meat raffles, but B and I had never been there. It had a rather rough crowd. B remarked that this was the first time in a long time that she had been the only woman in a bar. We sat at the bar and ordered two Miller Lites -- and the bartender served them to us in red plastic party cups. No one else was drinking from party cups, and B later said that we were clearly being treated as tourists among the regulars. It didn't help that I was carrying around a plastic grocery back with my bowling shoes in it. Oh well. A scary dive bar in Minneapolis ain't got nothing on a scary dive bar in Philadelphia or NYC!

OK, so we drink our beers and decide that we need to stop being cheap and just pay the $5 cover.

Turns out the cover is for all the bands that are going to be playing all night. There was a big stage erected over 4 or 5 of the middle bowlng lanes, with a grungy/hard rock band wailing away people standing/dancing right in front of it, on the actual bowling lanes. And a few people were bowling away to either side of it. Weird.

I found this picture of the Memory Lanes stage on Flickr:



The coolest part of the place was the decor. Everything was very clean and shiny and new, which we always like. But everything also had a nifty 60s feel (kinda like the Voodoo Lounge in Las Vegas that we went to after our wedding reception). B described it as "retro Jetsons," which is funny because this morning looking at the Memory Lanes website the first paragraph is:

Come visit Minnesota's newest indoor entertainment center. Memory Lanes will be like nothing seen before in the Twin Cities. Memory Lanes has 30 lanes featuring a state-of-the-art sound and light system as well as modernized scoring and furnishings. Amenities also include 2 game rooms with all the top titles to fulfill guests of all ages. Meanwhile the décor will take you down memory lane. We call it "Modernized Retro."

You can take a video tour of the place at the website! (It's terribly grainy, but it does have surf guitar playing in the background!)

Anyway, we had a beer at the bar, then took a stroll around the place. A lot of people were sitting at the booths behind where you sit when you're bowling, so we grabbed one of those. We got a waitress's attention and I ordered a burger and B ordered fried ravioli (diet's out the window for the 4th of July weekend). But as we ate and watched the bands play, we noticed that fewer and fewer people were bowling; everyone was watching the bands or just "hanging out" instead, like the place was primarily a bar and not a bowling alley. It wasn't even a super-young crowd, either -- there were plenty of folks our age or older. By the time we were done eating, only 3 or 4 out of the 30 lanes were actually being bowled on. B remarked that a group of folks at her work were discussing organizing a bowling night, and one of her friends (a guy, even) said that he'd be happy to go but probably wouldn't bowl. B said she thought that was odd when she heard it but now she understood. But we decided that since we haven't bowled in forever, we didn't really want an audience, so decided to return to bowl on some other night when everyone else was actually bowling too.

Well, like I said, bowling alleys are a big deal out here. A night at the bowling alley is far more of a hipster, see-and-be-seen thing than we could've guessed. Other cities have night clubs, Minneapolis has bowling alleys. I guess this is a good thing, I'm just still having trouble wrapping my head around it.