Krik's Picks

I'm writing this during teacher appreciation week. People are supposed to use social media to recognize teachers who made a difference in their lives. I'm already at an age when most of the teachers who made a difference in my education are dead. But if you can consider a band director as a 'teacher,' then I'd like to recognize Fred Nyline who is still alive and who was the associate director of  bands when I was in the University of Minnesota Football Marching Band . I certainly learned more about leadership from being in the Marching Band than I did in any of my academic classes. Just in general, the Marching Band was a very important part of my college experience. I grew up on a farm in southern Minnesota and attended Albert Lea Senior High . Albert Lea was a decent size town. But Minneapolis was definitely 'the big city' and student enrollment at The U was twice the size of the whole town of Albert Lea. The band was my niche that gave me a way to co...

I always said that while Krik’s Picks is mostly about food, it also would include thoughts about other things, such as music and politics. (And lately, cars too.) But this post ties together several different strands. Kinda what makes life interesting. So let’s start with music – Edina Bands . You may know about Next Door , the online social network for neighborhoods across the nation? My neighborhood, Parkwood Knolls, participates in Next Door. One day in early August, I got an email alert from Next Door about a kid selling peaches as a fundraiser because he was going into the Edina Marching Band in the fall. Ok, as a band kid myself (Albert Lea High School band, 1968-70; University of Minnesota Marching Band, 1970-74) I was sympathetic to his appeal. My own children graduated from Edina High School, but they weren’t band kids. But the clincher (and segue to the next strand) – I saw that he’s the grandson of a former Member of Congress who I knew fairly well – David Minge . I had...

I love doughnuts. I have a particular happy memory about doughnuts. When I was in the University of Minnesota Marching Band (oh so many years ago) we had a couple of food rituals. One was apples. We always got apples in the stands after the halftime show. The other was doughnuts. After the game, we’d march back to Northrup Auditorium (the band office was in Northrup in those days) and there’d be boxes of doughnuts (and apple cider) for us in our main rehearsal room. (I think it was Room 5, if I remember correctly.) I have no idea where the doughnuts came from. I particularly liked the cream-filled ones, either the vanilla cream or the chocolate cream. I didn’t particularly like the lemon filled doughnuts, which perhaps should be more properly called a Bismarck or Berliner. (Check the definitions from Serious Eats: Click here .) Any of my old band mates who happen to read this post are welcome to fill in the blanks or correct my memories. But, I loved the marching band, and I lo...

I think it’s been about 25 years since I successfully grew tomatoes in my garden. I used to have great success with tomatoes as well as zucchini, snap peas, string beans, even one year Brussels sprouts. And roses, too. I grew beautiful roses. That was in our first house in Minneapolis on Vincent Ave. I had a great garden then. I think that’s at least partially why my son has become an enthusiastic gardener. It reminds him of his childhood when he would go down to the garden and pick fresh vegetables. Now his kids do the same thing. (A short anecdote: I also had a lot of success growing peppers, especially jalapenos. Our neighbor to the south was a very nice man, I suppose about the age of my parents. He was nice but a bit of a curmudgeon. In one of the houses abutting our backyard was a nice young family, just a little older than us. One of their kids was a bit of a rascal; nothing really bad, just noisy and rambunctious. One day the curmudgeon slyly picked a jalapeno and gave it t...

I had two trips to northern California this fall, one in October and one in November. On both trips, I had some business and on both trips, my wife and I spent some additional time on our own. I’ll be posting information on some of the great restaurants we ate at. But this post is about where we stayed, because we stayed at four very different styles of lodging. Here’s the list. Read on for my review of each: Ritz Carlton , Half Moon Bay Inn at Occidental (CA) Vintner’s Inn , Santa Rosa Prescott Hotel , San Francisco I was at the Ritz for a meeting. Half Moon Bay is a small, artsy, and intensely organic agricultural town. A long time ago (1975), when my wife and I lived in San Francisco for a year, we drove down to Half Moon Bay (about 45 minutes) not really knowing what it expect. It was late October, and we discovered that they have a pumpkin festival. Well since then, the Half Moon Bay pumpkin festival has become a BIG deal. The cars are backed up for miles ma...

I came across a blog post for The Daily Meal’s list of the 101 best restaurants in America. I couldn’t help looking at the list and checking how many I’d eaten at and how many I’ve reviewed on Krik’s Picks. Turns out not a lot. There are only two, actually, that I’ve posted on this blog. No. 65 on the Daily Meal’s list is minibar in DC. I went there in early 2010. I might argue that it should be higher on the list, but I certainly agree that it belongs there. The second restaurant on the list that I’ve reviewed on Krik’s Picks is Bouchon in the Napa Valley, CA. Then, there a couple of close calls. The Daily Meal’s list has Frontera Grill in Chicago. I don’t have a review of Frontera, but I do have a review of Topolobompo , which is Rick Bayless’s sister restaurant to Frontera. In fact, I kind of had the impression that Topo is supposed to be superior to Frontera. But I can’t say from experience. Then the list has Jaleo in Las Vega. I’ve reviewed Jaleo in Washington, DC. I can’t...

There’s a poster at work (Land O’Lakes) that says January is National Soup Month. OK, so the weather this winter is unusually warm. But soup is still a good idea. In the past I’ve posted two recipes for soup. So in honor of National Soup Month, I’m offering them up again for you to try. The first one goes back to the year I started Krik’s Picks – 2006. I wrote a post about my parents’ garden and the luscious tomatoes they grow and then can for enjoying year ‘round. Then I posted my wife’s favorite recipe for homemade tomato soup. Click here to read it. I posted the next recipe in 2009. I wrote about how my kids used to like having fresh soup and homemade bread on Sunday mornings when they were growing up. Their favorite was a cream of spinach soup. Click here to read it. That cream of spinach soup was a Land O’Lakes recipe. I can’t find it on the web site, but they do have several good soup recipes there. Check them out . Stay warm.

Most of my Kriks Picks posts are not particularly time sensitive. Really the only posts that are time sensitive are ones about restaurants that have since closed. But this one is about a fairly immediate topic. On Jan. 14 and again on Jan. 15, the Food Network is airing a special called The Big Waste. (Click here for details.) It’s about how much food gets wasted in America. I caught most of the special when it aired earlier this week. It’s both fascinating and appalling. The set-up  for the show was interesting. Four chefs compete to prepare a banquet using food that is going to be thrown away. For the most part, the food that they find is perfectly good food that is either unsalable or otherwise rejected because of minor imperfections or excessive variation in size or quality. (Examples: We see a butcher who is going to toss the odd-sized ends of beef short ribs after trimming them all to a uniform size. We see a farmer with a field of pick-your-own sweet corn who can’t se...

When I first launched this blog, one of my first posts was about my parents’ garden. That particular post was about their tomatoes. I said that I’d write later about their apples. So now, five years later, here it is. Mom & Dad have a lot of apple trees on their farm. They always have a lot to harvest. My brothers and my sister always plan trips to the farm in September to help pick apples. We went last Sunday. Actually, my son and his daughter went on Friday. (She’s five years old. I started Krik’s Picks when she was born. She’s my oldest grandchild.) My wife and daughter-in-law came on Sunday with the two grandsons. We picked a lot of apples. They have several different varieties, and we didn’t even take some of each. We mostly took Regent , Prairie Spy , Red Delicious , and a few of a yellow apple variety that dad couldn’t remember the name. On the counters in our kitchen, we now have eight bags of apples. We’ll give some as gifts. I’ll make several batches of applesauc...

I spent two nights in the Bahamas last week. Believe it or not, it was a business trip. Why I only spent two nights is a long story. But the consequence was, I don’t have anything to post on Krik’s Picks about Bahamian food. All of the meals I had during my stay were buffets for the large group I was with. The food was good, but certainly not a memorable dining experience. But I can comment on Bahamian beer. They served Sands beer during the receptions and dinners at the meeting I attended. I thought it was pretty good, and it went well with the food on the buffet. I also had a Kalik Gold beer at the airport while waiting for the plane to board. I liked the Kalik better than the Sands. It had more body and was more like an amber, which I tend to prefer. The label on the Kalik was kind of intriguing. (You probably have to click on the photo and enlarge it to see what I’m referring to.) It has a picture of a very colorful Caribbean costume and it says “Junkanoo 2010” on the botto...

I volunteered at the All the Milk You Can Drink booth at the Minnesota State Fair on Monday, Aug. 30. It’s something I’ve thought about doing for a few years now. Though I used to attend the state fair regularly, I hadn’t been for about 10 years. This seemed like a good excuse to go to the state fair while also helping out the dairy industry. The milk booth is a project of the Midwest Dairy Association . The University of Minnesota Ag Education Club organized the volunteers. In the weeks leading up to the fair, when I would mention that I was volunteering in the milk booth, I was surprised by how many people commented that it  was one of their favorite parts of the fair. It also gets mentioned frequently as one of the best bargains at the fair. When I arrived for my shift, the morning volunteers got our orientation. As you might expect, hygiene and sanitation is a major consideration. The supervisor went through the rules – each customer pays $1 for their first glass of milk....

One of my co-workers celebrated his birthday today (63). To celebrate, he brought in some bakery items from Hi-Quality Bakery in Cannon Falls. It’s a nice local independent bakery. Unbeknownst to Dave, someone else in the department also brought bakery in honor of his birthday. Hers came from Byerly’s , a nice local supermarket. With the unexpected bounty of bakery goods, we joked that one of the boxes was for President Obama who also celebrated his birthday today. Sadly, he spent the day in Chicago and didn’t stop by to claim his donut. So we took an informal poll – which is better? Local independent bakery or local supermarket bakery? Here are a few of the votes: “I vote the (Hi-Quality) bakery. Donuts get hard really quickly, but the bakery donuts were still very soft and fresh. Yum!” “I tried to pick similar donuts and the Hi-Quality Bakery was too greasy and sugary. Byerly's was a smoother texture (popover egg consistency) and frosting was creamy. My vote is f...

Whew. Six weeks since my last post. You might think, 'Well, nothing much happened.' But you'd be wrong. Actually, April was very busy with lots of travel, both for work and for fun. And we went to lots of really good restaurants. And I was able to keep my Yelp reviews pretty much up to date. I just neglected to update Kriks Picks. So here goes. Next up ... a really great visit to Cafe Atlantico in Washington, DC.

This isn't just a recipe. It's also a gadget review. I got my wife an ice crusher. She wanted one so that we could have crushed ice with cocktails. In the past, we would wrap a couple of ice cubes in a towel and use a hammer to crush them. Not too cool. I looked around and checked online reviews of different styles. It came down to either an expensive electric one or an inexpensive hand crank crusher. The thing that finally sold me was a user review for the hand crank crusher. She said that it was perfect for crushing just a couple of ice cubes for cocktails. It seemed like most of the electric ones were really for crushing lots of ice at a time, like maybe for a party. So I decided to get a Metrokane Retro Ice Crusher. (It's made from stainless steel and is so reflective, you can't hardly see it in the photo. It's to the left of the martini glass.) We got the cocktail recipe from West End Crave in St. Louis Park. You can read my review of the restaurant on my new...

My granddaughter always thinks I'm joking when I say that I don't like chocolate. “Poppy,” she says with an exasperated tone. “Just try it.” Of course, I'm exaggerating a little bit for effect. But the fact is that when it comes to preferred sources of empty calories, chocolate falls pretty far down on my list. That's kind of a roundabout way of explaining why Pearson's Salted Nut Rolls are my favorite candy bar – no chocolate. And that brings me to the real point of this post: Pearson's Candy was founded in St. Paul, MN in 1909, and they are celebrating their 100th anniversary this year. (Click here to see their web site. Lotsa interesting history about the company.) So happy anniversary to Pearson's, a food company neighbor to Land O'Lakes . I wonder if eating Salted Nut Rolls counts as eating local? By the way, even though chocolate isn't my favorite, I do like fudge. And I also like Pearson's Nut Goodie Bars.

Guest post by Lisa Novacek Hertel On a recent vacation, our family stayed at the Hennessy House B&B in Napa, Calif. The experience merits mention given the consistent quality of comfort, hospitality, and yummy provisions we enjoyed. Heath, Lil (our 4-year old) and I arrived early enough on a Thursday afternoon to participate in the complimentary wine and cheese tasting provided to all guests each day. The selection hit the spot, with an array of hearty cheddars and white cheeses to soothe the appetite, fruit to complement the cheeses and satisfy Lillian, and a mix of local wines to sip and savor. We especially enjoyed a Cabernet Sauvignon from a familiar name but one we had not previously associated with wine production -- the Francis Ford Coppola collection. We were very pleased with our discovery (and you can learn more at http://www.franciscoppolawinery.com/ ). The Hennessy House afternoon taste fest managed to tide us over very well until dinner. The B&B is well placed in t...

By Vicki Hicks (Krik's Note: You've seen my friend Vicki Hicks in a previous post. She jets off regularly to Paris and then regales me with tales of her culinary ventures. After our dinner at Founding Fathers earlier this year, I asked her to write a guest post about her visits to Paris chocolate shops. Read on ...) During my most recent trip to Paris in February I was only on the ground for four days. I have visited Paris many times and have hit most of the tourist highlights and a few obscure places as well. What to do with such little time? We decided to take a tour of some of the best chocolate shops Paris has to offer. To begin our search for the ultimate in chocolate decadence, we referred to an article in last December's New York Times. While we did not visit each of the shops mentioned in the Times, we did manage to identify two standouts from our tour. It just happened that our chocolate tour was conducted on Valentine's Day. Our first stop was Patrick Roger...

My sister-in-law and her husband have a lake cabin north of Duluth. It happens to be the cabin that their family had when they were growing up. Every summer, we have a big extended family get-together at the cabin. That started this weekend. Food becomes a big part of the celebration. Nothing fancy, you understand. Actually, this is one of those occasions when the meals get judged on quantity, not necessarily quality. One year, when I burned the chicken almost beyond recognition, the meal was still a success because everyone got enough to eat. Krik’s Picks gets mentioned from time to time. It’s usually in the context of, “Steve, you should write about this in your blog.” That happened on Saturday night. Blake (Linda’s brother) grilled burgers and Cindy (Blake’s wife) made a pasta salad. It was great! By the time the meal was over, people were complimenting the salad and someone said, “Steve, you should write about this on your blog.” As luck would have it, I had my camera. So Cindy and...

I like how the Minneapolis Star Tribune is using social media to complement and supplement its treeware version. I became a fan of Taste on Facebook. Now they've started a food blog . So I'm including it in my blog roll on the left. Check it out.

I added a new blog to my Blog list. It's called matzo&rice . I found it pretty much by accident. I was playing around with Wordpress (another blog publishing site) and saw it listed there. When I checked it out, I kinda liked it. To be honest, I've been feeling bad that I haven't been including many recipes in Krik's Picks. matzo&rice seems to be mostly recipes and homecooking food experiences. So I thought I'd add it as a vicarious source of that kind of content. Anyway, check it out.