Ann Bauer I have a wicked wanderlust. This is one of the reasons I ride a motorcycle: because on any given Saturday I’m willing to take off and hit a small town in South Dakota — as long as it’s one I’ve never seen before. I’ll also seize whatever random opportunity comes my way to get on … Read more
A reader e-mailed this morning to tell us about a South Minneapolis bistro (I won’t say which one. . . .because this is a common practice) where she and a friend enjoyed their entrées but were completely put off after being charged separately for the bread — a couple paltry, obviously store-bought slices of baguette … Read more
I drink at dusk in autumn. This is dangerous, as dusk comes a little earlier every day, cutting my afternoon off at 6:30, then 6, and then, suddenly, this past weekend, around half past 5. I can almost feel the lonely, lavender air come down like a curtain, or a veil. The world dims in … Read more
When A Rebours closed earlier this fall, I — and just about every other food writer in the Twin Cities — bemoaned the dearth of fine dining in St. Paul. “I don’t know what’s happened,” I wrote on September 20. “There’s practically nowhere left in St. Paul to get a decent upscale meal. The only … Read more
Today is the last day of Surdyk’s Annual Fall Wine Sale, with 20-35% off bottles throughout the store. So if you’re into the old-style guys-in-ties-and-striped-aprons ambiance of the place — or in the mood for some extraordinary cave-aged Cheddar cheese, also on sale in The Cheese Shop next door — you have until 10 p.m. … Read more
Winner of the best opening line of the day: On Labor Day weekend, a midwife’s favorite holiday, Louise Sloan, a 41-year-old lesbian, had semen Fed Exed to her mother’s summer place in Kennebunkport, Maine. Read the rest of the article here.
At first, I thought it was a joke. Heifer International just sent me a holiday catalog offering me the opportunity to buy a water buffalo for $250 and ship it to Cambodia. I could also buy a share of a buffalo, for just $25. And this is serious. Heifer International is a private nonprofit agency … Read more
Now this. My good friend and loyal reader, Schneider, sent the photo above in response to my October 11 Jug O’ Wine entry about unexpected bottle shapes. Hmmmmmmm. Now, maybe I’ve just taken too many film theory classes (Am I, by the way, the only person in America who believes Die Hard was a romance … Read more
Patricia Olive has no children. So you’d think she’d be spared that dinnertime nightmare: This one hates vegetables, this one eats only bologna sandwiches with ketchup, this one weeps about dead animals every time you serve beef. But when the Guthrie Theater staged Six Degrees of Separation in 2003, the veteran props manager got a … Read more
Back in the late 1990’s, I lived for a year in a house that felt completely wrong. Liminal, oddly oriented. It was set sideways — or rather, along a street that somehow struck me as sideways — on a hill, facing the back parking lot of a school that ran perpendicular. What’s more, the main … Read more