Author: Ann Bauer

  • Ganda: Rhymes with Wanda, not Panda

    Simply the best, most entertaining food site I know: check out Eat Drink One Woman. It’s the project of a young New Yorker named Ganda (rhymes with Wanda), who polls random people on what they eat, provides knock-out recipes, and makes touching, honest, memoir-ish entries that make me feel more human. Also hungry.

  • Peace (Coffee) Be With You

    October is Fair Trade Month (in addition to being Breast Cancer Awareness Month and, strangely, National Popcorn Month) and in observance of this, Peace Coffee will host an appearance by Monika Firl, Coffee Farming & Production Liaison of Cooperative Coffees, and Teresa Ortiz — a local activist, organizer, immigration expert and former Director of el…

  • Minnesota's Fatal Flaw: Politeness?

    Verlyn Klinkenborg of the New York Times comments here on our state’s pathology of politeness and the tentative nature of most female writers. As a Minnesota writer and a woman who tends to err on the side of brashness, I’m curious what others think. . . .

  • Fetal Drinking: I'm Against

    The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in the United Kingdom came out this week with an astonishing pronouncement that pregnant women past their 12th week can safely drink “1.5 units” of alcohol per day — the equivalent of a single, small glass of wine. This, in my opinion, is bullshit. No one…

  • Nick and Eddie: Sounds great

    I strolled across Loring Park last night and popped into Nick and Eddie simply because I saw activity through the windows there. Turns out it’s not technically open to the public yet. They were having a “friends and family” night, and I’m neither. But the practicing staff were nice enough to let me have a…

  • A Damn Good Jug o' Wine

    I was in Rhinelander, WI, giving a reading last week and someone in the audience, hearing I was a wine critic, raised her hand and said, “You have to go to House of the Spirits before you leave!” I nodded and said I’d try, but she insisted, “NO, I mean it. It’s this weird little…