Krik's Picks

One of the things my wife and I like about travel is tasting (discovering) new foods and food combinations. (Well, new to us anyway.) And it's always gratifying to be able to recreate those items in our kitchen when we return home. The back-story for this recipes starts in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. Earlier in June we were in the City for a few days. (More about our trip later.) One of our favorite things to do in SF is to walk through Haight-Ashbury. Sometimes we shop; sometimes we just enjoy people-watching. (Side note: Now that marijuana is legal in California, I half expected the Haight to be engulfed in a permanent haze of smoke. It wasn't. In fact, I think I smelled more marijuana on the streets before it was legal.) This time, we were there around lunch. So we kept an eye out for a nice place to eat. That's how we happened to wander in to the Sparrow Bar & Kitchen . It was friendly and clean. It had an attractive patio in back, and the...

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...