Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Weddings and Galas and Buffets, oh my!


Yes, my big brother got married this weekend.  But what's really exciting is all the good food I got to eat!

Thursday night:
Rehearsal dinner at Jensen's Supper Club.  Delicious supper club-y type food including popovers, chicken in a creamy bacon sauce and chocolate cake.  Pretty much everything I didn't want to eat the night before I squeeze myself into a bridesmaid dress, but well worth it.

Friday night:
The wedding! Buca catered and it was amazing.  Penne pasta with chicken breast, artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes and peas tossed in a white wine cream sauce, prosciutto stuffed chicken in a pesto cream sauce, garlic mashed potatoes, green beans and an Italian salad.  It was a dangerous buffet but I managed to keep it to one trip.  We ate amongst family, friends and candlelight and listened as Katie Gearty and the Tanner Taylor Trio provided the music.  The music was beautiful and the food was a definite hit amongst the crowd.  The food was comforting, familiar, yet sophisticated enough for a wedding reception.
The cake went along with the fall theme of the wedding.  It was apple spice with cream cheese frosting and absolutely delicious.  I love a dessert that is savory and sweet and the spiced apples were perfect with the frosting.
 Each table was sprinkled with Hershey chocolates that had fall themed flavors like caramel apple and pumpkin spice.  The bottom of the kisses had phrases from the poem that was read during the ceremony "I carry your heart" by ee cummings.  They also said "Mr. and Mrs. Jansen" and the date of the wedding.  It was a very cute and original idea and the guests loved to try the different flavors.


Saturday night:
40th anniversary of Jazz 88, KBEM.  A wonderful reason to celebrate and a wonderful reason for delicious food.  The event was held at the International Market Square and was catered by the in-house catering company, D'Amico catering.  I happened to have worked for D'Amico and at IMS many a times and was honored to be a guest.  I got to get dressed up and actually enjoy the event and the food, rather than spilling it all over me and quickly stuffing it in my face behind the scenes.  Ever wonder why a server walks out with a plate full of h'orderves and one is missing?  Yeah, I didn't think you did. I ate on my own terms and enjoyed each of the buffets that displayed eats of various D'Amico restaurants.  3 Tiers Cakes provided the cake and cupcakes including a surprisingly delicious bacon/banana/honey Elvis inspired cupcake.
International Market Square


Spicy fried calamari with aioli, beef short ribs and bruschetta

Taco with chicken in chipotle sauce

3 Tiers chocolate cupcake and Elvis cupcake with bacon

Karrin Allyson and the Wolverines Big Band

Overlooking the wedding crowd at the James J. Hill Library

It was an exhausting, overwhelming, emotional, wonderfully delicious, busy weekend to say the least but had to be one of the best weekends of my life.  I got to spend a lot of time with family and eat a lot of delicious food.  What more could a girl want?





Monday, October 18, 2010

Romanesco Cauliflower and a Trip to the Farmer's Market

My mom and I were lucky enough/willing to pay for a very cool event at the Mill City Farmer's Market on Saturday that included a tour of the market followed by lunch at Spoon River where Brenda Langton (founder of the market) is the executive chef.  It was a seasonably cool, yet very sunny fall day and happened to be the last of the Farmer's Market for this season.  The weather felt right, cloggers were clogging away in the middle of the market, and farmers were offering their best produce of the season in attempts to sell enough until next season.  As I sipped my Guatemalan iced coffee (an interesting choice for a cool day, as a random lady pointed out to me) I listened to the Director of the Farmer's Market, Marjorie Hegstrom explain the history/message behind the market.  If you haven't visited this particular market, you really have to when it reopens in May.

Beautiful purple kale
Located on the river between the Mill City Museum and the Guthrie theater, is the five year old Mill City Farmer's Market.  It is the perfect place for the market because it mirrors the trading model of producer straight to consumer that started in that very location when Minneapolis began.  The market was started for the people of Minneapolis to be able to purchase a wide variety of products that are grown locally and on sustainable and often organic farms.  I was so inspired after our tour about the different ideas and concepts the market aims toward and I have since become eager to learn more about this movement.  I learned the term "locavore" to describe someone who eats and purchases their products locally.  A couple of really cool things I learned about the market:


  • To be a vendor, farmers have to fill out an application where they explain their farming practices and philosophies.
  • To be considered sustainable and organic, which a majority of the vendors do, a third party has to approve their application as well to ensure they follow through with these practices.
  • All the vendors of the market are from Minnesota or Wisconsin with three exceptions; and these exceptions stay true to the market's model of having the actual makers of the product at the market selling their product.  These exceptions include:
  • Four different types of garlic
    • A family from Italy who makes olive oil on their land in Sicily
    • A fisherman who sells the salmon he catches from Alaska
    • A Guatemalan family who sells coffee throughout the season at the market and returns to Guatemala in the winter to harvest more (delicious coffee by the way)
  • Every Saturday the market offers demonstrations done by professional chefs that use products sold at the market in order to educate people about the vegetables they are purchasing.  This is so people are not so intimidated by products at the market. You get to taste the food they make and then take home the recipes.
  • One of the beautiful things about the Farmer's Market is that you can buy a wide variety of produce that you cannot by in a grocery store.  One vendor offered four different kinds of garlic and could explain the purposes of each and another vendor was selling Romanesco cauliflower alongside regular cauliflower.

This is where the excitement really kicks in.  My mom and I opted for the Romanesco cauliflower, over the beloved regular cauliflower because of the recommendation of the farmer. If you have never seen or heard of this, you are in the same boat I was.
Turns out, it is absolutely delicious.  I made it the next day during the Packer game.  I cut it into smaller florets, just as I would cauliflower and then browned it in olive oil with some sliced garlic we also purchased at the market.  Then I added a splash of lemon juice and some water and covered it, allowing it to steam for about 10 minutes.  The result was a very flavorful, tender cauliflower-like dish.  If you can get your hands on it, I highly recommend it.

It was an educational day to say the least.  I left feeling inspired about the "locavore" movement and want to do what I cant to learn more as well as educate others about the importance of eating locally and sustainably.  It is a movement that can improve the economy, health and environment within different communities.  And with farmer's markets such as our very own Mill City, it isn't very difficult.

I'm sure I will be writing more about local food, but for more information you can look here: How to be a Locavore.

I'd also like to give credit to World Savvy for putting on the event.  The tour and lunch was put on by them in efforts to raise awareness about global food problems.  The day offered an interesting juxtaposition between eating locally while thinking globally and I encourage anyone and everyone to look into their organization because they are doing a lot of great work toward what they call "global competency."



P.S. Spoon River has gone from my "To Do" list to my "Where to Eat" list!

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Favorite Fall Foods

Fall brings around some of the best fruits, vegetables and dishes of the year.  Things like butternut squash soup, pumpkin bread and fresh honeycrisp apples are just a couple of my favorite season foods.  The flavors are warmer and more comforting and offer me a sense of nostalgia.  The colors of fall produce are colored as vibrantly as the trees with bright red apples and orange, yellow and green root vegetables like pears, squash and potatoes.  Eating seasonally is a major part of sustainable food and is a great way to eat healthier, eat locally and to eat produce at its peak.  I found a great website that can guide you to know what is season week by week that is called Eat the Seasons.

I want to share with you some recipes I've made and have found to be absolutely delicious and some I can't wait to try.  They showcase the season's flavors and will make your whole house smell like a big fat hug.  So please, enjoy.  Enjoy fall for everything it has to offer and don't be too down about summer ending, too stressed out about back to school or even about the upcoming holidays.  Although, I don't blame you for stressing about Brett Favre because he can do that to ya.
 



I'd love to know...what are some of your favorite fall foods?

Friday, October 1, 2010

Wing Dinged

There are a few (well, many) perks that come along with my parents working in the "biz".  And by "biz" I mean the only biz that might be dying faster than newspapers.  My dad works for Clear Channel, which happens to sponsor a lot of charities and organizations as a copy writer and my mom is a voice talent/radio station manager (KBEM 88.5) who happens to like to talk a lot.  So, combining their radio powers, my dad donates his time to write PSAs for an organization called Tubman Family Alliance and my mom lends her voice for the spots.  The point is, my boyfriend and I got a free night of eating wings and desserts at an event called Wing Ding.

What a concept?  For the 17th time, the Wing Ding brings together local restaurants at the Depot in Downtown Minneapolis to showcase their wings, various rubs, sauces and even homemade blue cheese sauces.  Don't worry ranch lovers, there was plenty of that too.  Throw in some desserts, beer, root beer, a silent auction and live jazz music, and you got yourself a really fun event for a really good cause.


Now, for the wings.  I am not a particularly huge wing person because I don't like to eat food that requires a lot of work and they tend to be messy/sticky/gooey, but these wings were worth it.  There were about 20 or so booths of food and we tried something from just about every one of them.  The wings ranged from Asian sesame to honey barbecue to one so spicy it made my boyfriend cry (well, his eyes were watering).  I leaned toward the less spicy flavors to avoid ruining my tastebuds.

One of my favorites from the event included an absolutely delicious carrot cake muffin (I had two) from Ray-Js.  This little muffin did everything you want a carrot cake to do; creamy, moist, sweet, crunchy, salty and a wonderful bite after a spicy wing.



I also enjoyed a wing that was kind of unique from moto-I.  It was sweeter, and the guy said the sauce had plum in it.  I have wanted to try this restaurant for a while now because they the first place to brew sake outside of Japan.  I thought it was kind of funny that they added a little cilantro to the top of their wing to make it look fancier.  Or something.

The only free non-alcoholic choice, but it was perfect with the wings

Herkimer's offered a nice plate assortment with a spicy wing, a bbq wing, blue cheese and celery


Lyon's Pub uniquely flagged their wings

Green Mill had a Jim Beam wing that actually tasted like Jim Beam
Mini strawberry shortcake from Joe's Garage.

So I overbid on a Minneapolis print (whatever, at least it was for a local artist and good cause), we lost on a bid for 4 VIP tickets to the Daily Show, left completely full of enough wings my stomach could hold, and Tubman raised a lot money.  Can't wait for next year.

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