Conner's Blog

Well, maybe not wholly unexpected, but the truth is I had a great weekend and a lot of it wasn’t exactly written on the calendar. A few highlights.

1. The Mac and Cheese at Wilde Roast Cafe. Delicious and something I’ve been meaning to try for months now.
2. Stopping by a birthday party for my friend Jessica, meeting new people because I knew no one but Jessica, and then hanging out with Sarah Burt talking food.
3. Hitting up both the Mill City Market and Northeast Farmers Market on Saturday followed by the Minneapolis Market and Kingsfield on Sunday. I love the markets, they all have such a unique personality.
4. Crepes by Spoonriver at Mill City, Tacos from the Chef Shack at North East, Falafel from Foxy Falafel at Kingsfield and a few mini doughnuts from the Chef Shack at some point though I don’t remember when.
5. Drinking with my friend Nola and her friend Andrea at the Red Stag Supper Club after the Northeast Farmers Market because it was pouring out and none of us wanted to get soaked.
6. Biking in the rain after finally giving up, going to Aster Café and participating in a photo shoot with Paul, Nicole, Nicky, and Laura. Alex took some great shots of all of us, both indoors and out.
7. Grand Old Days on Sunday. Even though it rained, seeing Dessa, Jeremy Messersmith, Doom Tree, and a few other random acts was awesome. In addition, the people watching was fantastic.
8. Getting a phone call at 7:30 on Sunday night asking if I wanted a set of tickets to Dawes and Edward Sharpe.
9. Watching the lead singer of Dawes bounce around like a school kid because he was so excited to be on stage. One of the best live acts I’ve seen in a while. Actual enthusiasm coupled with fantastic music is the best.
10. The sight of a girl walking up to her bike, which was locked in a way that didn’t allow me to get my bike off the tree. Considering I was a minute away from walking all the way home to get my previously forgotten bike lock and walking all the way back to First Ave to secure it, this was a very happy sight. Even if I was extremely annoyed prior to this.

So that was my weekend in a overly wordy nutshell. How was your weekend? Did you take advantage of the summer weather and do something fantastic?

According to Pillsbury’s website, Toast Strudels are “your family’s favorite breakfast solution.” Breakfast Solution? It’s words like this that should make everyone stand up and take notice that the food we have been consuming isn’t real. Food isn’t a solution, it’s not a way to fix a problem, it’s a necessity, it should come from the ground, have roots, or eat stuff from the ground that has roots. It should only have other things that follow those rules added to it. Granted their are exceptions to this rule, salt doesn’t have roots, some fish eat other fish, and mushrooms are kind of an oddity. But still the point is if it is a “breakfast solution” something is wrong.

What exactly is a Toaster Strudel made of? Well it’s true that it does contain flour, bleached and processed of course but it is still flour, and some fruit. Other than that it’s a mixture of chemicals, nutritional additives, processed sugars, preservatives, and coloring that are combined into something they refer to as a “breakfast solution”.

Now don’t get me wrong, before I started paying attention to what I was putting in my body, I used to really enjoy Toaster Strudels, the flaky crust, the sweet fruit, and of course the do it yourself frosting was delicious. It was similar to a turnover, only easier to heat up and take on the road since I sure wasn’t going to get up in time to warm up anything else.

So I have a mission, I’m going to develop a recipe that replicates the Toaster Strudel of my youth using only real ingredients. I have an idea of how to do this, it’s doesn’t seem too complicated, and other than the pastry dough I’ve actually made everything I need at one point or another.

So stay tuned, I’ll post my triumph in the near future.

It wasn’t that long ago that someone called me a prolific local blogger.  Wow, to think that used to be the case. Someday maybe I’ll get back to blogging regularly. Until then I guess I’ll just stick with posting updates like this occasionally.  Here’s a quick taste of some of the things I’ve done the last six weeks or so.

In March I organized a photo walk with some fellow Flickr users. We had a great time. I hosted a small pre-walk at the Car show that was happening that weekend. I took quite a few shots at that walk. The Fairground on the other hand were pretty much a failure for me. Don’t really know why.

More pics from the car show can be found here, the fairground here.

I had a fantastic brunch at Spoonriver. The quiche was incredible.

Made some homemade tacos that rocked, even without award winning guacamole.

Went on a few #bikegangrides, and caught some people playing bike polo near Lake Calhoun.

Went to a game at Target Field, I haven’t made it back but I will be going to several games in June.

Last weekend saw the debut of my friend Erica’s exciting new venture, Foxy Falafel. Seriously, if you like good food you need to go try some of her falafel.

This weekend also saw a bacon themed party, I made a bacon pizza, the highlight of the night for me was the bacon deviled eggs. Yumm

My friend Sarah capped of Saturday by inviting me to her place for a fantastic supper. This was a garam masal cheddar stuffed meatball on a garam masal tomato sauce topping homemade noodles. It was incredible.

They ended the evening with a cheese plate. Lemon Thyme Ginger Raw Milk Cheddar, Domestic Gouda, Merlot Parmesan, and smoked blue cheese.

That’s just of taste of my last few weeks of course, still can you see why I’m never blogging anymore.

First, I should apologize for leaving you all hanging with such a strange and confusing last post. For the record, I’m doing fine, still living life, cooking, and spending more time away from home then at home.

Still, I think I needed last week off, it was good to avoid any self imposed pressure to write. That post gave me the ability to just shrug off any pangs of guilt that creeped into my conscious thinking about all of you readers sitting at your computer hitting refresh every minute or so hoping I would write something new. Don’t lie to me, I know you did this all week.

But after a lot of great conversations with some really awesome friends, hanging out with some of my best friends from college who I don’t see nearly enough, I think I finally at least have a general goal for the next few months in place. As I stated before, I’m working on several projects, all website, that I hope to have launched in the next two months or so. I’m not ready to publicly announce what they are, but if you see me in person and want to know, I’ll give you the inside scoop. I’m really excited about two of them and the third is something I’ve wanted to do for a while. I’m not 100% certain I can make it work, but I’m going to try.

I have a few other things I’m working on and also need to do as well, some of which I can post here; others that I have to keep close to the chest for now. Still, I can give you a short list of a few things I’m working on, and am planning on doing in the coming weeks.

• Make ricotta and mozzarella cheese – I recently began getting whole milk from a local farm, and since I don’t drink much milk, I need to work on using up a half-gallon of milk a week. My goal is to try making some different cheeses and see if it’s something I can do weekly.
• The gym – I’ve been awful the last two weeks, and it’s time to remedy that. I enjoy food way too much to not be at the gym three days a week.
• Cook, cook, cook – I’ve been slacking in the kitchen as well and I need to start cooking again.
• Talk to some freelancers – This may be giving somethings away, but I really need to sit down with some people who do freelance work and figure out how one goes about getting started. I have some ideas of what I want to do, I just don’t know what I need to do to do them.

Well that’s a short list, some of which are always on my list, others are new. I like putting things up on my blog because I always feel guilty when I can’t write about how I succeeded. So now I need to get to work on accomplishing some of these things.

Have a great Monday everyone, time to get this week off to a great start.

As usual, I spent my weekend eating and drinking more that I should have. Friday night I went to Barrio and had a pretty good dinner, nothing that totally blew me away, but dang good food. Saturday, I tried Black Sheep pizza for the first time. I was really excited to try finally try their pizza.  I recommend a stop there if you are in the neighborhood, or even if you are not.

That evening, my friend Nicky hosted a sushi making dinner. We were taught by her friend Peter how to put together the rolls and then to roll them. We had some tuna, salmon, and sea bass.  All were really tasty and the rolls were excellent.

My friend Neely who broke her wrist a short time ago even managed to roll some sushi with one hand.

Sunday, I went to brunch at Red Stag Supper Club. I’ve gone there a few times for dinner, but this was the first time I had their brunch. It was excellent. I ordered one of their daily specials which was a crab cake, served with eggs and greens. It was fantastic. Unfortunately, I left my camera in my car and didn’t get a picture of it.

Finally, on Sunday night, Nicky once again hosted a dinner party, this time with our friend Erica. They made some amazing Asian dishes.

We were served bacon wrapped dates.

Spring rolls served with a lemongrass peanut sauce. Yumm

This soup was incredible, the broth may have been some of the best I have ever tried, and the salmon was to die for. We were served creme brulee for dessert, but I was too excited to eat it to take a photo of it.

Overall, it was a fantastic weekend of eating, I’ll hopefully be posting some photos of the Art Sled Rally and the Art Shanties later this week.

Let me start off by saying that I hate the concept of dieting. Diets can be good for some people, but usually only work for as long as they are on them. What you need to sustain your weight is a lifestyle change, and those are hard.

What does that have to do with me? Well I was doing really well at this time last year. I was the skinniest I had been since high school, felt great, was starting to move down to pants sizes I barely remembered. Then I moved into Minneapolis, my social life expanded, and I fell right off the exercise bandwagon. I didn’t notice it at first since I wasn’t weighing myself and I thought all the walking I was doing would keep the weight off. I was wrong.

This weekend I got on the scale for the first time in quite some time, and I was appalled. I weigh almost 20 pounds more than I did when I first moved to Minneapolis. Now, part of the problem is going out way to much, part is portion control, and a good part is a lack of exercise. These are all things I am aware of and can fix if I put my mind to it.

The problem is that I want to lose those 20 pounds at an accelerated (yet safe) rate. So I’m putting myself on a diet. First of all, I’m going to bring back the no-meat pact that I made in September, only instead of no meat for an entire month, I’m going to stop eating meat during the week.  This means that from noon Sunday (come on, you have to have bacon at brunch), until Friday at dinner time, I will not be eating meat. I’m going to start eating more beans, more dairy, and other alternative protein sources. Secondly, I’m going to avoid eating pasta for the entire month of February (an exception will be made for Mac N Cheese tour). This is going to be one of the toughest challenges for me.  I love spaghetti, ravioli, and every other type of pasta you can think of. It’s my go-to main course and I think that has to change. It just has too many carbs and I tend to eat way to much of it. Hopefully forcing myself to learn to cook alternative dinners will help me expand my cooking horizons and help me cut back on the amount of pasta I cook once February is over.

So I’m technically putting myself on a diet, but I consider it a short term solution with what I hope are long term implications. I think reducing my meat intake to 2-3 days per week will be huge, and of course broadening my cooking horizons will be a fun adventure. I intend on raiding the Minneapolis Central Library for cookbooks this weekend.

Finally, I have joined a gym, and my friend Nicky will be making me go until I start making it a habit. Of course I have been going three times per week without much effort since I joined two weeks ago. I even went to Cycle to the Movies on Saturday and biked for a hour and a half. This is the really important step because I don’t want to have to limit what I eat forever, and I know that once I get myself to where I want to be again, if I keep exercising and eat a reasonable diet I can keep it there.

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?

I have no idea, I always end up biting. But if I had to guess, I think it’s somewhere around 37.5 licks.

If you started a new blog, what would the topic be?

Well first I should say that I have tried and failed to start many new blogs. Usually it’s an attempt to have a place to write about technology, or politics, or some other topic I convince myself doesn’t belong at my main site. But I generally end up just coming back to Conner’s Blog.

I think if I was going to start a new blog it would be about food. Restaurant reviews, recipes, photography, and other tidbits. Maybe someday I will actually make it happen.

Where would you most like to take photographs? by briannepitt

This is another tough one, there are just too many choices. In the USA I have to say Glacier National Park gets my vote. Of course the fact that I’ve been there a few times kind of sways my vote, I’m sure in two years I will have found at least 2-3 other places I would love to spend time taking photos.
Worldwide, I would have to say the Andes seem like a fantastic place to take photos. I think I would travel to Peru or Argentina if I was going somewhere just to take photos.

If you magically became a chef, which one restaurant in the Twin Cities would you want to chef at?

Wow, this is a tough one. My first instinct is to go for something like La Belle Vie, Vincent, or 2021. After thinking about it for a bit though I think I’m going to have to say Brasa would be my choice.
Part of it is my love of their food, but mainly it’s because I truly enjoying cooking that belly warming comfort food that Brasa makes. I’m not opposed to lighter fare, but when I’m looking for something I know I am going to be happy with, Brasa is definitely in my top two or three places.

Ask me anything.

What is your middle name?

I actually have two middle names, Allen and Frank. I generally only use Allen unless it’s a formal occasion.

What is your favorite snack?

At first I was going to respond and say this one was really tough, but then I realized that was wrong. Popcorn is my favorite snack hands down. I actually consider myself addicted to popcorn. With or without butter, lightly salted, maybe kettle corn, however it’s made, I’ll devour a ton of it.

Have you ever thought about dying your hair?

I once thought I would look good with black hair, thankfully I didn’t go through with it.

What does the color blue taste like?

The color blue tastes like blueberry ice cream covered with blue Skittles. It’s a little bit gross unless you pick the Skittles off.

What would you want your last meal to be?

This is a really tough one, and brings me back to a conversation that I had with a friend earlier this week. I don’t really have any favorite foods. But I guess if I was forced to choose something it would probably ask for a really well done pasta dish with tomato sauce. Lasagna, spaghetti, ravioli, or whatever. It would be that or else I would just say, “bring me something I’ve never eaten before”.

Tell me about your worst restaurant experience…

I don’t usually dwell on bad restaurant experiences, I try to forget them and move on. So when I was thinking about this, the worst experience I remember actually happened when I was a kid. It was mothers day(or my mom’s birthday, I don’t really remember) and we went to Plentywood, which was the big town in our county. We went to this new restaurant that had opened and I remember waiting forever to get in, and then something else happened and my dad got mad. All I remember is my mother crying and us going across the street to the Blue Moon for dinner.

It might seem strange that someone who is obviously a food snob can’t come up with a more recent experience, but it’s the truth.

Ask me anything.

I’m certain 95% of my readers are planning on watching the Vikings game this Sunday. It starts at 5, and since the winner of the game goes to the Superbowl, it’s kind of a big deal. I don’t know if I’ll watch the whole thing, but I plan on keeping my eye on the score regardless of what I’m doing.

I can’t say I’ve watched much of the Saints this year, but I know they have a killer offense, and what some call a good defense. I expect all the experts are predicting a Saints win, especially since it’s in the Superdome. I disagree, I think the Vikings will pull off a victory, and not a small one either. I think the final score will be somewhere in the 14-31 point range in favor of the Vikings. Why? Well first off the Vikings defense is playing well again, especially their front four. And no matter now good Drew Brees may be, he can’t do anything when he’s lying on his back. Also Brett Favre won a Superbowl in that dome, and regardless of what I said about him in the past, he’s playing at an unseemly level for a 40 year-old and somehow I think he’ll repeat history this weekend. I still don’t like him, but I begrudging have to say I was wrong about how he would impact the Vikings.

But that’s not the only Minnesota related competition happening Sunday. It turns out that the chefs at Saffron were picked to compete on the Food Network’s the Iron Chef. Guess when the show airs? Sunday! It starts at 8 so there might be some overlap with the game, but since the Vikings are going to crush the Saints there will not be much.

So here is the deal, Azia is generously hosting a viewing party for us. The party kicks off at 7 and the show will be on at 8. Along with that, Azia is purchasing a case of Rogue Brewery’s signature Morimoto Soba Ale. So not only do you get to watch some creative cooking you get to drink some creative beer.

So how about it, can you handle cheering for two Minnesota teams in one day? If you can, make your way to Azia and enjoy some good beer, good food, and have a chance to see Minnesota pull off two victories in one day.

RSVP here.

I took a little blogging hiatus and it was refreshing, but now Friday Five is back with more fun, more randomness, and even more awesome things written by people not named Conner.  Today is a roundup of links that came across my reader that caught my eye. Enjoy.

• If you have a birthday coming up, The Heavy Table has a great roundup of great restaurants that give free desserts on your special day
• Bigboxcar points us to a photo of a giant rubber ducky
• Febgiving has been declared and I’m coming out as a supporter, get your stomachs ready
• MN Headhunter posts a really great writeup of being offered his dream job
• Unclutter showcases the best unitasker items of the year

Have a great weekend all, I’m off to the frozen tundra of Grand Forks to take in a hockey game and catchup with old friends. It should be fun, and I hopefully I don’t have a repeat of last years trip.