This week I was in Minneapolis/St Paul visiting a college friend, Molly. I haven’t been there in ages. Things I’d forgotten about the land of 10,000 lakes included all of the charming storefronts in the older parts of both cities and the viciousness of the mosquitoes.
On the drive up, I finally stopped at a restaurant that captured my imagination in 1986, when my mom and I drove up to visit what became my alma mater. Their signs along 94 have always been brutally tantalizing: blue ribbon pie! a pie hotline! home cooking! rated among the 10 best in the nation by Roadfood! Twenty-two years of sweet pastry dreaming were realized when I bellied up to the counter at the Norske Nook in Osseo, Wisconsin and ordered peach pie, a la mode, and a cup of coffee. Worthy of my longing, this was pie as it should be: perfectly flaky crust, firm, slightly tart fruit, sweet goo holding it all together. Total bill was $5. [Clearly from almost every post contained herein, I’m no photographer. Also, I lack balls. The swarm of impossibly blonde, attentive, nice waitresses prevented me from attempting anything more than a drive-by shot.]
Once in the Twin Cities, I continued to eat well. Molly and I stayed up late the second night, gabbing and drinking a bottle of wine (from a cute neighborhood shop) and inhaling a slab of darkly, sweetly smoked salmon made by some local guy whom I need to track down and beg him to ship to Chicago. One afternoon, after cleverly depositing her older kid at a friend’s house, we had a chill lunch at Everest on Grand, one of the only Nepali restaurants in the country. Here I was introduced to the momo, a Tibetan dumpling filled with (in our case) ground chicken and steamed. Momos are served with an intensely hot and smoky sauce, momo achar. They are insanely delicious, and fun as one gets to say “momo” repeatedly….A good time even if you don’t have a 15-month-old with you, but especially fun for those times when you do.
Another day, we feasted on the contents of Molly’s garden: a simple salad of sliced cucumbers and tomatoes, dressed in olive oil with a little feta on the side. Her boys chowed on steamed edamame, also fresh from the vine. And we picked tons of gorgeous Japanese purple beans, but for some reason forgot to eat them.
On the drive home, I stopped at the Carr Valley Cheese shoppe in Mauston, Wisconsin to stock up on some outstanding cheeses. Their snow white goat’s milk feta won a blue ribbon at the American Cheese Society‘s cheese-off, which I’d read about in the local paper whilst eating that pie at the beginning of my trip. Full circle, my friends.