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!

Smokin' Jakes - Arnolds Park, IA

Even though Calhoun and I have been down here in Southwestern Minnesota for almost three whole months we've only been out to eat twice! One was Perkins - it was breakfast desperation our first morning down here, the other was Smokin' Jakes, in Arnolds Park, Iowa.

The restaurant was a recommendation of Jemmerson, the incredible handy-man who's working on our house. Calhoun was sold on it when Jemmerson mentioned that Jake's offers a daily lunch special, controlled by "Bar Time" that is around $4.00.

So, a chilly night a few weeks ago Calhoun ventured out to Jake's. I'm sure it's a lot more crowded in the summer, but it was really chill and generally a great place to have dinner.

First of all, as we are discovering much to our pleasure, there are great beer specials in the Lakes area. We got a pitcher of beer, served with handled Bell jars, for around $7.00. Well, you just can't pass that up.

Second, the decor was awesome. It's fun to eat in Minneapolis and St. Paul restaurants that are refined, with well thought out decor in a very "designed" atmosphere. But there was no "design" at Jakes, and it wasn't filled with chintzy stuff collected by some corporate employee assigned to search for nostalgia at local antique shops - the place rang with authenticity. Huge bar signs, milk cans, random stuff. Loved it. And, the booths were awesome.

Finally, the food was pretty good. I can't remember the prices off the top of my head, but I had a half-rack of ribs (as Jemmerson and many Yelp reviewers recommended) and Calhoun had the roasted chicken special. It wasn't anything fancy, but it's exactly what you can can hope for from a BBQ joint in northern Iowa - a lot of well flavored food. All and all, a great place! I'm sure we'll be going back.

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

Love and Pizza in Wisconsin

I love my college friends and it's crazy to think that I have known a lot of these people since I was 18, that's almost ten years! We've shared a lot of experiences together, learned and celebrated together and we've done a lot of growing up.

Recently, a major part of our growing up has been marriage. Sometimes I can't believe I'm married and a lot of the time I look around at our friends and can't believe how many of them are married, or pretty darn close, as well.A few weeks ago the group of us got an email titled "A Top-Secret Proposition," inviting us to join Red and Swan for Pizza Night at A to Z Produce and Bakery in Stockholm, Wisconsin. Swan knew that she and Red were headed to Pizza Night to mark the one year anniversary of their last visit to the farm. What Swan didn't know was that Red was packing heat in the form of an engagement ring and had invited all of us to come for a rusprise and celebration.

It was one of the most wonderful nights I've had all summer. Calhoun and I picked up Cedar who just recently moved to Minnesota, packed up her and her green goddess pasta salad and drove out to Stockholm, WI. We rolled up into beautfiul rolling fields and precariously parked the hatchback on the side of a dirt road and walked to the farm.

I had previously heard and read about the pizza farm and knew that guests were asked to bring their own setup, including blankets, dishes and beverages. What I did not expect was to see that people had packed in complete dinner settings, complete with table, chairs, tableclothes and centerpeices! It was fabulous. The lawn was packed with people and wine and pizza! We looked around and finally laid eyes on the newly-engaged and got to celebrate on the spot!

We added our contributions to the table, poured wine and toured around the pizza farm. The location, atmosphere and community was beautiful. Pizza Night is gets its energy from the farm's beautiful wood fired pizza oven, and on a July night the wait can be longer than an hour and a half. I think it was well worth the wait.

Red had been in contact with the owners and shortly after we arrived wonderful pizzas came out of the brick oven, topped with homemade sausage and bacon, peppers, cheese, olives and a variety of other fresh and wonderful ingredients. I'm not sure what was better, the pizza or the friends and celebration. Either way, both lasted into the night and Cedar's pasta salad was delicious (I'm so happy she's in town so I can eat all the food she writes about on her blog).

Although this amazing night occurred in Wisconsin, we did transplant all of our Minnesota friend there for a great evening so I thought it was fitting for the blog!

It was a beautiful Tuesday night, complete with love and pizza in Wisconsin.

Nomads for a Day

The other day there were people working on the house putting new shingles on. Our landlords kept us in the loop and we knew they were coming and we thought that it would still be possible to work here in the house while they were working on the roof...we were wrong.

I spent the morning studying for the bar then grabbed lunch with a friend. When I got in touch with Calhoun he let me know he had escaped the cluster of our house and wanted to spend the afternoon studying at a coffee shop! Although we've been together for a long time, we've never studied together at a coffee shop (why buy coffee when you can make it at home for free??), so I was excited!

coffee cups at Turtle Bread

A new Turtle Bread just opened in our neighborhood so we went to check it out. It was awesome! First, they came into a building that has been sitting un-used for years, so we were happy to see a good business go into the space. Second, they did some remodeling but also kept a lot of the charm of the building, so the place is filled with great, sharp word work and open windows and white subway tiles in the bakery area (I'm mildly obsessed with subway tiles right now). Third, the soup and pie were awesome and the coffee refills were free. Finally, we brought Sogn and sat outside and he was so well behaved (he was exhausted after a ten mile run/bike with Calhoun). It was a great way to spend the late afternoon.

Sogn at Turtle Bread

strawberry rubarb pie at Turtle Bread

We left Turtle Bread just before they closed at 6, drove past the house to see that the crew was still here so we grabbed our wooden nickels from Tracy's and headed over for their tacos.

One of my favorite things about Tracy's is the diverse patronage of the place, different people at different times of the day. We first started going to Tracy's on taco nights, but usually post 8 pm so we could catch the wooden nickel happy hour - 8 pm on a Thursday is the start of the weekend for undergrads and about 10 pm the place would always start to get packed with Augsburg students getting a jump start on the weekend (ahh...I remember those wonderful college days). Then we discovered the amazing date night on Friday, date night has different attendance than the thirsty Thursday crowd. We've also nabbed a few other cheap meals at Tracy's, lunches and the half priced burgers. But, we've never been there early on a taco night and we had a great time in the chill atmosphere, used our wooden nickels and loved the discount on our tab.

Finally, we came home and the crew was just finishing. The house looks great and we had a fun, mid-week nomadic adventure!