WE’RE ON A BRIEF ROAD TRIP, visiting Duluth, Minnesota, and then heading on to Minneapolis. Lots of driving and hiking and seeing wonderful things. Like the St. Louis River, tumbling over its slate riverbed and banks in Jay Cooke State Park, about 20 minutes outside Duluth. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has this to say about this stunning place: “The Precambrian Thomson Formation is located within Jay Cooke State Park. The formation is a layer of mud that was compressed and hardened into shale, then compressed further into slate, and finally folded. This formation is about two billion years old.”

Lots of delicious food is being had too, just none of it prepared by us. So no recipe now—but check in next week.

WE’VE DONE A LITTLE TRAVELING OVER THE HOLIDAYS AFTER ALL. A day trip to Milwaukee to see our daughter there and eat delicious takeout from The Vanguard. The Chef-driven bar and restaurant offers “an elevated approach to Milwaukee’s Beer and Brat tradition,” with house-made sausages that range from familiar to adventurous. All with the city’s signature friendliness and lack of attitude. Continue reading “Eating our way through the holidays” →

WE WON’T BE TRAVELING FOR CHRISTMAS, and our kids won’t be coming here. Instead, we’ll be hunkering down. Still. Again. Waiting out the current surge and learning another letter of the Greek alphabet. We know we’re luckier than many others. Everyone is healthy and employed. Our weekly family Zoom dinners and daily phone calls and FaceTime are helping us stay close, feel together. Continue reading “Home for the holidays” →

THE DAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING is not the time to post a new recipe. You either already know what you’re preparing or someone is cooking for you. Either way, we don’t need to give you a reason to run out shopping for more ingredients. We spotted this window the other night, wandering around downtown Chicago with our older daughter, who was in town for a brief visit. While it looks like a mysterious popup restaurant, it is actually part of a now vacant Walgreens. But it does describe how we’ll be celebrating the holiday and the weekend with our younger daughter and her boyfriend, and Marion’s sister. Even if it’s not the usual big, boisterous tableful of everyone at once, we’re thankful to be able to get together with family in batches.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. We hope food + drinks with those you love is part of your plan too.

BLUE KITCHEN TURNED 15 LAST WEEKEND. Yep, we first posted on November 6, 2006. Not sure what the traditional gift for the 15th anniversary is, but we’re giving ourselves the week off. We’ll be back next week with a new recipe (we’re pretty sure). Oh, and the New Perfection above? It’s the kerosene cook stove on the Logsdon Sand and Gravel Co. towboat we saw at the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium in Dubuque, Iowa, a few weeks ago. The stern wheeler towboat was built in 1940. The stove is probably the same vintage—they were made from 1907 up to the 1950s. Who knows how many meals it must have cooked for the crew that took this boat up and down the Mississippi.

Seeing stuff like this is just one of the things that keeps us interested in food—making it, eating it, thinking and talking about it. And writing about it here, even after 15 years. See you next week.

WE ARE ON (AND OFF) THE ROAD RIGHT NOW. We took a week off for not exactly a long road trip, not exactly a staycation. More kind of a nearcation—a series of little adventures in a three-state radius. Visiting a daughter, seeing some museums, riding the world’s steepest funicular (the Fenelon Place Elevator in Dubuque, Iowa). And doing a little antiquing. We saw this kitchen string dispenser in Dyersville, Iowa. My grandmother had one of these on her kitchen wall; if she’d ever kept string in her chef, it was before I met him.

And while we cooked and photographed two dishes that will appear here shortly, we just didn’t have the bandwidth to write about them. Please stop by next week for a recipe. And maybe a story or two from downstate Illinois.

WE ARE BACK HOME NOW after more than a week in Detroit. Finally eating home cooking again, but nothing postworthy—just comfort food we’ve made a million times. Honestly, dinner the first night home was bowls of cereal, absolutely what we needed then. But as happy as we are to be home now, we’re also glad for the time we spent there—helping our daughter with some things, but also just being in the city, being around Detroiters. Because the mural above tells you a lot about the place. Come back next week for a recipe, we hope.

 

WE ARE IN DETROIT THIS WEEK taking care of family stuff. Working hard, staying up late, and eating mostly curbside and drive-thru takeout. All is good, but no recipe this week. See you next week.

WE CELEBRATED A MILESTONE WEDDING ANNIVERSARY this past weekend with a visit to Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. We drove around in the beautiful Midwestern countryside, embracing our Midwesterner histories—our separate upbringings and our long-shared togetherness, more than half of our lives now. We visited numerous antique shops—watch for some finds in future editions of Liz’s Crockery Corner. Our folding kayaks got their maiden voyage on inland canals in the city’s beautiful Lakeside Park; the park’s bandstand is shown above, photographed on an evening drive. And we ate in some of Wisconsin’s ubiquitous supper clubs, glorious throwbacks to ’50s dining. Lots of woodwork, loyal locals crowding the bars, and hefty plates of comfort food. Pan-fried walleye, giant slabs of prime rib (“until we run out”), fried chicken, au gratin potatoes…

What we did not do is cook anything. We’ll be back next week with a recipe.