The Bergen Bar and Grill

My co-workers seem to be very focused on my food. I feel like we are always talking about food which is strange because we rarely eat together because someone needs to be available to help at the counter all the time. Sometimes I feel self-conscious when this interest results in someone peering into my lunch bowl that's filled with poultry bones, but mostly this Minnesota-nice interest in your food ends up in some fun recommendations that I wouldn't know about otherwise.

When we moved here way back in October we would get restaurant recommendations all the time, and one of the places that was repeatedly recommended by everyone we've met in the area is The Bergen Bar and Grill in Bergen, Minnesota. Everyone said it was the best place around for steaks - but I personally think Calhoun cooks the best steaks so we've been putting off the Bergen Bar. 

But this past week we got some news that means that we needed to check some things off of our southwest Minnesota bucket list, so we decided to go to the Bergen Bar!

The most important thing to know about the Bergen Bar is that it is SMALL and has a serious reputation around here for being a place that's hard to get in to...if you eat dinner at 5 o'clock sharp. When the Bergen Bar was first recommended to me it was December, and we were warned that we needed to be there at 5 o'clock sharp or we needed to be prepared to wait in our car for them to call us because the restaurant wasn't big enough to wait inside.

But no one knew what would happen if you went for a later dinner. Who in this town eats after 5? Apparently just us!

So we went for "late" dinner at the Bergen Bar and didn't have steak. I'm afraid we missed the epic story of waiting in our car for an hour for a seat and ordering a hugs slab of meat, but we had a great time anyways.

First, we drove into Bergen seemingly without warning to find a bunch of trucks parked outside of what appeared to be a house. We figured it was the spot and it was. No wait (dinner about 8 seems to be the key) and some great burgers, each has a beer and spend under $20!

Second, this mural was on the old Bergen Store. Love.

Third, I got a new job and we're moving! It is crazy to be checking things off a bucket list.

Jason D. Smith over at the Flensburg Files does Bergen much more justice than I have, check it out. 

The Good Life Cafe - Park Rapids, Minnesota

Calhoun and I have been up to Itasca State Park almost every summer since we first started dating way back in college. It's the state park that he grew up going to as a kid and when we drive through now he doesn't need a map to find the boat launch or the headwaters.

As we were on our last leg of our trip to Itasca this past weekend we stopped in Park Rapids to pick up a few birthday sweets and grab a snack to tide us over at The Good Life Cafe. We ate at The Good Life Cafe for the first time last summer when we were all up at Itasca for the Headwaters 100.

It is a gem.

First of all, don't let the "cafe" fool you, this place is a full on restaurant, complete with a patio out back, beer on tap and an incredible menu to take you through every meal of your day.

Second, while they have an established menu they have a full selection of daily specials. I love that they have thought about what they're going to offer you and why it might be good, and they use local foods to inspire their selections.

Finally, their food is spectacular. So - I'm just going to say it. Here in the midwest, we live in a meat and potatoes kind of world. It is not hard to find a place to serve you chicken and wild rice hotdish or steak and potatoes - I've eaten both in the Itasca/Park Rapids area. But if you're looking for something a little finer, a little more adventurous, stop by The Good Life Cafe.

Calhoun and I ordered Bruschetta with Berries because we wanted something small and something we couldn't get here in Windom.

The dish was the perfect. I love desserts but I love savory more and although this was presented as an appetizer I thought the savory goat cheese made the sweet components perfect. 

The next time you're in Park Rapids stop by The Good Life Cafe and enjoy!

Cooking is Going to be Different Down Here

I'm on Pinterest now. I'm a little obsessed. My email is now full of recipes from Pinterest and from wherever on the web pinterest has led me, but cooking is going to be different down here.

Snelling's recipe for Kielbasa Stew was not on Pinterest, but I was thinking about food and it led me to her blog as a standby for food I know has been vetted by a friend, tasty and healthy. So, in anticipation of Calhoun's return home I planned on making Kielbasa Stew!

Unfortunately, the grocery stores had a different plan. I stopped at two, the HyVee and Sunshine Foods, and neither had kale! No where. Nada. I also wanted to surprise Calhoun and make this incredible looking mug cake (courtesy of Pinterest, aren't these pictures awesome?) and couldn't find espresso powder either, and no one in the grocery store knew what it was. It's clear that I can't just pick a recipe out of the sky and expect to find the ingredients. Clearly, more thought and planning is going to have to go into meals if while we live down here.

So, adaptation was required. Although one of the main reason's I wanted to make Snelling's Kielbasa Stew was because of the kale in it, I love Kielbasa and rice so I decided to go with it anyways. And, since I also love mushrooms I figured there was no way I could go wrong. And I didn't! Although the final dining result was a far cry from Snelling's beautifully green stew, it was still delicious. And, as usual for our household, I doubled her recipe. So, we had:

Kielbasa and Mushroom Stew

2 lbs. Kielbasa

A bunch of carrots

2  eight ounce packages of baby bell mushrooms

1 c. rice, uncooked

2 white onions, chopped

4 cans chicken stock

salt and pepper to taste

Brown onions and kielbasa, then toss in chicken stock and rice to cook rice, add mushrooms and carrots until done!

So, the next night we had a different strategy for dinner. We had a lot of food we needed cooked, so we cooked it! We love sweet potatoes in this house and usually use them in a standby mashed sweet potato recipe from America's Test Kitchen. I will not post this recipe because it is a strong belief of mine that you should own their cooking book, "The Complete America's Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook " - well worth the $30. Anyways, we love sweet potatoes and had a few of those and some chicken thighs that needed to be cooked soon. Calhoun set about finding a recipe and we ended up taking inspiration from a variety of recipes and made amazing

Roasted Chicken and Sweet Potatoes with Honey Glaze

Three chicken thighs, skin on

Two sweet potatoes, skin on, cut in 1/2 in. chunks

aprox. 2 tbs butter

Roasted in 400 degree over for 80 minutes. Cover with tin foil, remove after about 50 minutes.

Make glaze:

Butter

Honey

Apple Cider Vinegar

Parsley

Oregano

Poultry Seasoning

(according to Calhoun, "until it tastes good")

Both cooking adventures were successful! Even though the local grocery stores don't carry all of the variety of the metro area, we will still be eating well down here, even though the cooking will be different!

Canning in Minnesota

I learned how to can this weekend! Calhoun and I went up north to his parent's house this weekend and the weather was BEAUTIFUL! It was sunny, breezy and about mid seventies during the day. It ended up being great canning weather, so Bemidji and I had an afternoon adventure canning tomato juice!

Canning requires a lot of tomatoes. Good thing Bemidji's garden has had a great summer, we blanched and peeled fifteen pounds of garden tomatoes with pounds left over.

Tomatoes from the garden

blanched tomatoes

almost fifteen pounds!

Next, we cooked the tomatoes along a handful of other ingredients to make tomato juice.

Bemidji's tomato juice recipe. She got it from her sister who got it from Cuisine Magazine. 

Some modifications have been made.

Cooking - it smells better than it looks 

After cooking, we had to strain the ingredients so that the texture was actually juice like.

The juicer - who knew canning tomato juice required so much equipment?

Finally, we poured the juice into the jars

Sealed the jars and boiled them for fifteen minutes...

I successfully canned for the first time EVER!

 Although writing this now makes the process seem simple, it took us over two and a half hours to complete the whole process but Calhoun and I brought home seven pints of tomato juice - we'll be hosting blood mary's sometime soon :)

Sea Salt Eatery, Minneapolis

The Minneapolis parks are awesome. The bike trails extend for miles throughout the city, there are public areas for picnics and swimming near lakes and trails and the dog parks are fabulous.

We're especially lucky because we live in the Longfellow neighborhood, so we can take advantage of the trails along the River Road and we're very close to Minnehaha Park. Minnehaha Park is one of those places I remember coming to as a kid and it's really fun to live so close to the park now. We're able to take Sogn to the Minnehaha dog park almost every week day and ride through the park on most of our rides.

One of the greatest features of Minnehaha Park is Sea Salt Eatery. I don't really know how the deal works out, because it's a privately owned restaurant on park property, but I do know that I love it. It's in a beautiful building in the middle of the park and offers fresh seafood, great tacos and even raw oysters. They also serve beer and ice cream! The one thing some people seem to dislike about Sea Salt Eatery is the epic wait. But I think it's great, what's better than taking someone you love and hanging out with them for hours! There's a wait in line, then a wait for food, which just means that it's a great time to grab a pitcher of beer and enjoy the people watching in the park.

On this latest visit we were going to celebrate a friend's birthday. Sadly, we were the late arrivals, but that just meant that we had about two hours of chatting with friends before our dinner came. While we were standing in line we also ended up chatting with a woman who was in town from Ohio and had heard about Sea Salt. She didn't know the line would be so long but we loved her loving the Minneapolis vibe of the restaurant. Apparently she was in town for meetings at the University and had taken the light rail to the park, grabbed a beer out of the beer line and settled in to the food line. She said she was enjoying the park and her favorite part of Minneapolis was that people take their bikes with them everywhere, including the food line. It was fun chatting with her and really fun to hear that she was enjoying the Minneapolis experience!

It was a great dinner once it arrived. I had calamari tacos and Calhoun took a risk on fried oysters. It was great and we got to watch some cutes kids with their new puppies and talk about how beautiful the park was all lit up at night.

the view from our table, complete with my fabulous Duluth Pack purse

I seriously recommend Sea Salt Eatery if you're not starving and you're looking to spend an evening with the people you love and some great food.

Minnehaha Falls, lit up at night

Summer Sandwiches

I have not been leading a very balanced life lately. The joys of graduation came paired with my last few weeks of work, a final 25 page paper that had to be completed and a surprise job

interview that required hours of travel (no job, don't worry, I'm not leaving Minnesota yet).

But, the paper is complete and there are no interviews on the horizon so I've been able to just enjoy the first week of studying for the bar exam and letting the thrill of hours of property law wash over me.

But seriously, it's been kind of nice. For the first time in years I have lunches off and for the first time ever, Calhoun and I have been

eating lunch at home in the middle of the weekday!

We've been enjoying the average sandwich, but I came home yesterday to

a wonderful surprise! Since Calhoun had grilled a whole

chicken the other night and we still had plenty left over, he

had decided to make fresh chicken salad for lunch. In his typical way, he did not follow any recipe exactly but was inspired by a few of the recipes from Whole Foods.

So basically, these were our ingredients:

1 cup mayonnaise

4 teaspoons apple cider vinegar

5 teaspoons honey

Asparagus

Chicken

Tomato

Salt and pepper to taste

Mixed in a bowl and served on a hoagie bun!

Paired with a glass of lemonade and served on a picnic table made for the best Thursday lunch I've had in a really long time! I'm looking forward to more summer sandwiches and lunches like these!

A Spring Weekend!

We've had a few busy weekends around our house and it was nice to finally have a weekend that was ours!

The good news about having some time on the weekend is that we get to cook! Calhoun is a huge pizza fan and takes every opportunity he can to order from our favorite pizza place, Parkway Pizza. It's delicious but, also greasy, and expensive when he wants pizza at least once a week. So, inspired by Snelling's recent pizza post, we decided to make our own in preparation for Final Four viewing on Saturday night! We took it in a little bit of a different direction, making a hamburger pizza complete with fresh tomatoes on top! It was DELICIOUS!

We're not the only ones in the house happy to have spring back in the air. Sogn has been enjoying the sun, he's finally back to spending hours on the back step and causing general mayhem wherever he goes. The only downside is that he eventually comes inside and when he does, he looks like this:

In fairness, this dirt is from the dog park and is the result of Sogn's love of water and some good exercise. I'm just grateful every day that we have linoleum in the kitchen!

Still Snowing!

The Start Tribune is reporting that the Twin Cities has received 12 inches of snow so far, and we may have four more inches to go!

I haven't been outside yet today but from what I can see from inside the house I believe the reports of 12 inches. So, I think it's official, we're snowed in!

This picture of the backyard is actually from a few hours ago, but I wanted to be able to post a good during and after pictures so I'm keeping this one for now.

Well, since we're snowed in and didn't make the winter storm grocery run last night like many people probably did, we had to be a little creative this morning for breakfast. Calhoun wanted pancakes but we're out of mix so he found this simple recipe online:

1-3/4 c. flour

2 tbsp sugar

4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

2 eggs

1/4 c oil

1-3/4 c. milk

The problem is that we didn't have any milk! We almost always have cream in the house, for our coffee, and some whipped cream and vanilla yogurt, but no milk! So, we got a little creative and substituted egg nog for the milk. We needed to add some extra water to the batter, as egg nog is quite a bit thicker than milk, but the flavor turned out great!

One thing we have been dealing with this morning that's been a little strange is Sogn's behavior. He's has fun in the snow and enjoys it when he's outside, but when he's inside he seems very worried. It's the first time I've noticed him ever just watching out the window, which seems to make him more worried! Calhoun thinks that Turtle the bunny seems a little worried about the weather as well, which is kind of hilarious because she has never been outside and definitely can't see out the window.

With the exception of the nervous animals in the house, it's been a wonderful snowed in morning so far!

The Jucy Lucy

Calhoun and I don't have cable TV which is great, because it seriously reduces the amount of TV I watch. One of the downsides is that on a Saturday morning when we're just lounging around the house there's not too much to watch on Saturday mornings. As a result, we've become devotees of the Saturday morning coking shows on PBS, which are actually pretty good. One of our favorites is America's Test Kitchen. America's Test Kitchen take popular recipes, kitchen gadgets and ingredients and tests them. America's Test Kitchen is great because they test every-day recipes, chocolate chip cookies, spaghetti and meatballs and this week - Jucy Lucys! The credited the Jucy Lucy to either Matt's Bar or the 5-8 Club, both in Minneapolis.

Jucy Lucy's are famous. And if you're from the metro area and you haven't had them from both Matt's Bar and the 5-8 Club I hope you've been living under a rock for the entirety of your adult life. It's an amazing burger, and I would say that sampling Jucy Lucys around the cities it a good use of one's time.

Not only is the Jucy Lucy a good burger, it's a food that has put Minneapolis dining on the map. America's Test Kitchen has picked up on its popularity, testing the recipe enough to come up with a well-tested recipe sure to make your backyard BBQ an event to be celebrated. The Travel Channel's Food Wars and Man v. Food have been to Minneapolis to test the burgers. If national television shows are coming here to test the epic burger, shouldn't you get out there and do the same?

I also think that it's only fair to mention that there are also some great versions of the Jucy Lucy in St. Paul. The Nook was one of our favorite burger places when we lived in St. Paul, they serve the "Juicy Nookie Burger" which is their version of the Jucy Lucy. The Blue Door Pub also serves cheese stuffed burgers, their flagship burger is the "Juicy Blucy."

I like a Jucy Lucy just about anywhere, as long as the cheese has cooled down enough that it doesn't burn my tongue off. But, I'll throw my two-cents in and say that I Matt's Bar's Jucy Lucy is my favorite. My preference for Matt's Bar is based primarily on the ambiance - the menu is posted on one wall and it's a cash only kind of place where it really is about the burger.

If you haven't tried all of these Jucy Lucys, get out there!

Esox Lucius: Northern Pike

I like to eat fish, especially fish that is breaded and fried. This means that I like when people catch fish and cook them, because you really can't get breaded fish in a restaurant that's fresh and delicious and out of a Minnesota lake.When I was young I relied on my grandparents to provide me with fish. I remember eating the pieces of fried fish almost immediately after they came out of the pan, leaving very few to actually be had at dinner. It was wonderful. But, they're getting older and are enjoying gardening more than they enjoy hauling a boat out to the lake so I have to get my breaded fish elsewhere.

In comes Calhoun. You know by now, he is awesome and an outdoorsman and has been fishing since he could carry his pole out to the river behind his house. So, when the fishing season came around I thought I was in luck. Except I wasn't...his first three fishing trips were totally unproductive. Apparently the Minnesota DNR classifies streams as "trout streams" merely for purposes of funding allocation...Calhoun learned that one the hard way.

So I was thrilled a few days ago when I got this picture. Success! Thank you Lake Elmo!

Sadly, we had a few busy days in a row and were unable to fry the fish up right away but tonight we finally had our feast!


The beauty of fish at home is that it's not restaurant fish that is designed for presentation perfection, it's just plain old wonderful fish. And, Calhoun was educating me, apparently a Northern Pike is a tough fish to bone because of its unique skeletal structure, including something called a "Y" bone. This unique structure means that it doesn't always make a beautiful, boneless filet, but that doesn't mean it's bad for breading and frying!

We have enjoyed the rain tonight, the primary election results and the homegrown, Minnesota fish.

The Dandelion Cafe

Calhoun and I went to the Midtown Farmers Market for the first time yesterday. It was AMAZING and I recommend it to anybody who is looking for a great place to shop for local produce. The Midtown Farmers Market is different from some of the other farmers markets around the cities because there are certain rules that all of the food sold there has to be from within a certain distance of the market. This means, that unlike some of the other farmers markets in Minneapolis, there are not pineapples or bananas sold at Midtown.

We bought great hamburger and sausage patties, and skirt steak at a fraction of the grocery store price, from Hilltop Pastures. We bought tomatoes and great sweet corn from a few other growers and bought 15 ounces of homemade salsa that we have already consumed.

But, my favorite part of the market was this great stand, called the Dandelion Cafe. I can't find an actual webpage for them, so I've linked to a Star Tribune Article. This couple took a cross-continent bike trip from Prauge to Bangkok and has brought street food back to Minneapolis. Calhoun and I shared the best grilled cheese sandwich I've had in a long time and I chatted with Natalie for a while and she mentioned that they're still getting things together for their downtown food cart, which is permitted for Nicollet Ave right outside of the IDS. Being the Type-A kind of person that I am I would never imagine such a bike trip, or the bravery that it requires to come home and imagine making something like a food stand your living. But the couple that owns the Dandelion Cafe was cute, and sweet, and in a great place for their business and I hope it all works out!

If you find yourself planning to go to the Midtown Farmers Market, don't eat ahead of time. There's plenty of wonderful stuff there to keep your tummy happy!

Powdered Sugar Goodness

Went to church this morning. We have a neighborhood Lutheran church that we love and we've been going since we got married nine months ago. The music is wonderful and the preaching is very good - but our attendance has dropped a bit this summer. We went this morning with a friend who is church shopping and felt a little less guilty when we got there and realized that we aren't the only people who find it more difficult to get up and attend during the summer. Despite the smaller attendance - we were at the early service - I left feeling wonderful and refreshed.

And then we went to A Baker's Wife (4200 28th Ave, Minneapolis) for pastries.


I love this place. One of the reasons I love it because it's a very no-nonsense kind of establishment. There are a few tables outside on the sidewalk and about six chairs inside but it's mostly the kind of place where you go to pick up a half dozen pastries for $10 and then walk around the lake and enjoy the crispy, buttery, fruity, chocolate goodness. The line usually loops around once inside the shop, and in a very non-Minnesota way you find yourself yelling across people around you to place your order.

Another reason I love it is because selection and quality of the pastries is wonderful. The pastries are large, and there's not question that all parties benefit from sharing. They have a great combination of fruity and sweet pastries. This morning I had a blueberry cream cheese turnover and Calhoun had a chocolate croissant. Not to mention they have the best donuts in the cities...doughy deep fried frosting covered goodness. And, it's an old-school bakery that rewards the early riser, their legendary ham and cheese croissants were gone by the time we arrived about 10 am.

And, they have this cow statue outside. How could you not love this place?!

Then, to work off the blueberry cream cheese turnover I went on a ride with Uptown. She's training for a triathlon and totally kicked my butt, but it was fun to get out on the trails and see all kinds of people enjoying the Minnesota weather, just like we were!

Spicy Coconut Chicken Curry

I did a very domestic thing this evening... I cooked dinner for my husband! Thanks to Taylor and her great cooking blog, greens and chocolate - where healthy cooking meets sinful indulgence. It was easy and delicious and I can't wait to eat it for leftovers tomorrow. And even though it's called "spicy" it wasn't too much for our Minnesota palate!

Grandma's Marathon - 2010

This weekend we, like so many other crazy Minnesotans, made the annual road trip up to Duluth for Grandma's Marathon. The weather was beautiful and Calhoun finished, which was amazing because he didn't train. Lucky for him, he has a lot of base-miles under his belt so he survived ad was even able to enjoy a flight at Fitger's Brewhouse.


But, I'm sure lots of people out in the blogosphere are writing about Grandma's and how beautiful it is and how much fun it is. I could also write about how great it was to hang out with family and let the dog swim in Lake Superior, but the real Minnesota story about this past weekend is an amazing place on Scenic 61 called the New Scenic Cafe. We scheduled our Father's Day Lunch at the New Scenic Cafe on a recommendation of a friend of my brother-in-law. The food was AMAZING. It cannot be described. It was delicious and the mimosas were a perfect way to top it off. After enjoying our lunch we strolled around the beautiful flower garden in the front of the restaurant and practiced being nature photographers.

When we got Sogn out of the car we wandered around a bit and tried to take pictures and the next thing we knew, ended up talking with the proprietor and chef, Scott Graden. Turns out he owns a few Chesapeake Bay Retrievers and didn't mind Sogn jumping on him (apparently the dog is going through a phase). He chatted with us about the restaurant and about the location, and even walked us down the road a little to a path down to the shore of the lake where we enjoyed the scenery and getting some energy out of the dog.

The New Scenic Cafe was amazing. First, the food was amazing and totally unexpected for a small cafe just north of Duluth. But I would say that the food was on par with anything that you could order in the new foodie places popping up all around the cities. But the wonderful thing about the New Scenic Cafe that is sometimes missing from new/trendy/foodie Minneapolis/St. Paul establishments is the Minnesota nice attitude. I really felt like once we were there, we had visited someone's house and had an amazing meal. They answered all of our questions about the food and we ate like kings, kept the coffee hot and took the time to show us a dog path down to the shore. On a beautiful Father's Day in Duluth, it really doesn't get better than that.

Kubb!

Played Kubb for the first time this summer. Kubb is an awesome (and obscure) lawn game that originated in Sweden and I can only assumed arrived here in the great state of Minnesota thanks to the many blonds who also came here from Sweden.

It is an awesome game. Number one, it is awesome because I am occasionally good at it (although, Calhoun and I did lose the game tonight). Number two, Kubb is awesome because you can play with a beer in your hand. Number three, it is awesome because you get to throw wooden sticks at wooden blocks. Number four, it is awesome because there's no counting involved (contrary to bag/cornhole).

The Kubb King

I love summer, and I love lawn games, and I love friends who have Kubb!!!

Thank you Hale for your Scandinavian heritage and your love of supplying food to others!

Butter Anyone?

Calhoun manages to sneak butter, beer and brown sugar into almost everything he cooks. I try not to watch him make his delicious mashed potatoes because I believe that if I don't know what's in there then those calories don't count. But, on the few occasions that I haven't been able to tear myself away I have seen him add two sticks of butter and a whole container of sour cream to the potatoes. I have since learned that he got many of his cooking tips from his grandmother. Drizzles of honey, pinches of brown sugar and pours of beer make just about everything better! Since Calhoun and I began having dinners together years ago, I have learned to appreciate the value of half and half, fatty hamburger (did you know fat is necessary to keep the burger together) and olive oil. I like to think that I have taught him about the importance of white rice, soy sauce and noodles.



Tonight Calhoun made banana bread (don't I have the best husband?!) and he brought me an over-sized banana bread muffin...complete with three tablespoons of butter. No, I did not eat all three tablespoons, but given my new found appreciation of all things fatty and delicious I thought about it.