The Possum’s Window to ’68
If My Heart Had WindowsArtist: George JonesLabel/Year: Musicor Records, 1968 I’m not sure what was my earliest introduction to George Jones. Probably at the Court ‘n House bar in Eau Claire, Wis., where 25-plus years…
Joseph Anton: A Memoir
Author: Salman RushdiePublished: 2012, Random House I will admit it took me a while to get through this book, for all the usual reasons (work, child-rearing, house maintenance, sleep-deprivation). But there’s also this fact: this…
Survey to impact coffee habit
Our land-line phone rang Tuesday night. Yeah, we have one of those. Call us luddites, but you just wait, cord-cutters. Your houses will float away like pilotless zeppelins. In addition to being a tether, the…
Dapper Brass on the Street
Think positive. Think positive. That can be a tough chore if one digests news these days, but there are humans who walk the earth that manage to do more of that positive thinking than its…
On Mpls-St. Paul Mag’s Manly March Chef Cover
For all the hubbub the Mpls.St.Paul Magazine cover is causing, the issue might have been one to get buried under the pile, what with all the usual, recognizable chefs on the cover. I didn’t look…
Baking with “barm” an old option for bread
When it comes to experimenting with unfamiliar ingredients, I’ve never been much of an incrementalist. Even if something is good on the first try, I move from there quite broadly to establish the ends of…
To bake despite reasons not to
I’ve been baking bread. Not a shocker, coming from a guy who works at a bakery—one that specializes in bread—for the last 10 months, and who ran a restaurant magazine for the decade previous to…
Budget Casualty No. 1: Dining Out
If one is searching for personal enlightenment, forget yoga, meditation surrounded by crystals, sweat lodges or religious conversion. Merely itemize—honestly—your monthly expenses. You’ll likely find an assortment of surprises and embarrassments fueled by inattentiveness—or, at…
The Entrepreneurial Leap
Is it really the dream of every line cook to open their own restaurant? That was among the first questions posed by moderator Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl at the Mpls.-St. Paul Magazine Tastemakers event on Wednesday,…
The Farm Bill: gerrymandered for failure
The U.S. House of Representatives took up rancorous debate and passed yesterday its version of the Farm Bill (which is actually the Food, Conservation and Energy Act), that gargantuan piece of legislation renewed every five…