foodtruck | Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog

The day in shopping: ugh turned into ahhh

November 25, 2012

It’s not that I’m into Black Friday shopping, or even shopping, but I needed a new sleeping bag winter coat and today was the day I had the time and cash flow to take care of it. So I set off.

Workout

The first stop was at my new workout place. A couple of years ago I wrote about how I loved going to Curves and how I was feeling the most fit I ever have. But that location closed so I transferred to the next closest one which no longer was conveniently on the way home from work, so I didn’t go much. But then that one closed as well, and for the last seven months I’ve been clubless which didn’t really matter since I wasn’t going regularly anyway.

A month ago, I got off my sorry backside and signed up at a different brand of gym that once again is convenient to on the way home from work. I don’t like it nearly as well as Curves except for the part where something is better than nothing, so I like a lot because I’m working out again and that feels good. Because I’m just easing into it again, I haven’t initially been diligent about pacing myself to get my health insurance-reimbursable twelve workouts in for the month.

But I find myself close enough that I can still make it if I’m diligent for the next seven days, so I stopped there first this noon, even though my hair was still wet from my refreshing morning shower at home. It’s cold so I was wearing a hat anyway today so the wet ponytail part didn’t really matter, and I set myself up with some positive energy for the ugh part of the day, shopping.

I did a little shopping practice run by popping into the bike-slash-coffee shop a couple doors down from the gym to get coffee, and decided to support Small Business Saturday and purchase one of those under-the-helmet hood/face mask things as well. I’ll go back there for lunch pretty soon, too, because the Foursquare tips all say this place has the best soup and sandwich in the neighborhood. But I digress.

Shopping

MicroCenter. Lucky for me, MicroCenter and Burlington Coat Factory are in the same strip mall. I popped into MicroCenter to get an HDMI iPad cable. Last weekend I discovered (belatedly) the joy of Netflix online. Happy day! Unfortunately though, the G4ness of my old PowerMac that I have hooked up to my TV isn’t acceptable to Netflix. Then I thought, well, I can hook up my iPad.

I found the cable, then found the iPad external keyboards and was dazzled by instant gratification. Had I been paying better attention, I would have comprehended the ramifications of the one I got (Kensington) being just the stand version, not the case version. But I am sitting here at the bar typing this and the keyboard feels great! I am incredibly faster than I have been with the on-screen keyboard, and because a) half the screen is no longer taken up by keyboard and b) I can turn the iPad vertical, c) I can see about four times as much of my pithy prose with the external keyboard, and that also speeds me up and makes it all easier in general. But I think I will trade for the case version of the keyboard. Must look into this online.

Though I didn’t pay attention to stand versus case, I did realize that I was cutting into my coat budget by buying the keyboard in addition to the HDMI cable. But I did it anyway because I was excited to finally get a keyboard for the iPad because (as I think I’ve mentioned here, but maybe not) now that my ancient laptop is on the fritz I’ve been hoping that iPad+keyboard would be an adequate replacement and it looks like it will be.

So I merrily skipped up to the front of the store where I was greeted by reality—the checkout line. But to MicroCenter’s credit, they were ready. All of the regular registers were in operation, and they had three additional, temporary ones going as well. The line that looked like it would take half an hour only took five or six minutes. I stashed my bag in my trunk/boot and walked over to my main objective.

Burlington Coat Factory. A few years ago, I got the best winter supply I’ve ever acquired—my sleeping bag coat. For those of you unfamiliar with “sleeping bag coat” because you live in tropical Silicon Valley or dreary-but-not-frigid England, this is a coat that is puffy and down-filled and which reaches to your knees or below, and has the shape of a potato sack. It is perfect for one such as myself who walks in the winter. My torso is warm enough because I wear multiple shirt layers, and my calves are warm enough because they’re lean, mean, muscle machines. But my thighs, where the flab is thick and the jeans tight, need extra protection.

My existing big coat gave out at the end of last season when the zipper broke. The tailor said it would cost more to repair than to buy a new one, so today, my goal was a new one.

When I was shopping for the old coat fiveish years ago, I was utterly mortified that the one that had the best combination of fit and unsacklikeness was “by” Jennifer Lopez. Well, whatever. There was a little bit of form with the function. It took me an hour to find that one.

Today, I walked in, found my size, and found a coat in a matter of minutes. There were two coats. One was longer and by some “designer” that I’d never heard of, not that that means anything. One was not as long and by Calvin Klein, not that that means anything. The first one, though longer and probably somewhat more preferable in that regard, looked like fat-drapery. The Calvin Klein coat, though only just to my knees, actually had some tailoring, and I figured it was probably made in China a little bit better than the other one was. It was cut well and had comfortable room for my currently expanded torso regions (beer belly and beer boobs, sad but true). I chose it.

Unfortunately, due to my iPad keyboard transgression at MicroCenter, I had to settle with putting the coat on layaway until next weekend after I’ve received another paycheck. But at least I don’t have to think about shopping anymore. And, as at MicroCenter, Burlington Coat Factory was geared up for business with competent employees and it was all-in-all also an alright experience.

The Four Firkins. If you’ve been reading for any length of time, you know that I love beer. If you’re a local friend, you will be horrified to learn that today was the first time that I have been to the new Four Firkins. By “new,” I mean they’ve been open at their different, larger store for over a year. Their former location was kitty-corner from one of my bowling alleys so it was less inconvenient to my usual activities to go there. Anyway, MicroCenter and Burlington Coat Factory are across the street, so today, finally, I stopped in to see Alvey and his awesome crew in their awesome store. Just fantastic. I mixed and matched a six-pack of beers I haven’t had, except for the Fuller’s ESB. I’ve had that. I love Fuller’s.

Eating

This is what the day boiled down to, besides getting (putting on layaway) my coat. I learned last night that the new restaurant of one of my favorite food trucks, World Street Kitchen, was soft-opening this weekend, so stopping there on my way home from horrible shopping was to be my reward. Only the shopping wasn’t so horrible, so really, it was just the frosting on the cake. The menu is expanded from the truck plus they have adult beverages.

I was tickled that both brothers Wadi, Saed and Sameh, excitedly greeted me. I had the shrimp po’ boy, which is new to the truck menu, and crispy chick peas and a Summit Säga, and then a second Summit Säga. Bonus, 25% off for opening weekend. I felt loved.

Drinking/Blogging

So here I am, testing my new iPad keyboard at the bar. I can confidently say that it has allowed me to write with more pace and accuracy than the on-screen keyboard did, despite the beers I’ve been trying (and I’ve tried all new ones here at Acadia). The external keyboard is definitely the way to go with an iPad, and once I get the case version I think the set-up will take over nicely from a small laptop such as my (once again) G4 iBook, as I had hoped, and that’s a good thing.

Conclusion

It is not lost on me that any one of these sections is long enough to have been an entry in its own right. Thanks for hanging with me if you did. Now I shall try out the iPad HDMI on a movie called “The Christmas Bunny.” You read that right.

Posted by kellydna
Filed in Uncategorized
Tags: acadiacafe, beer, foodtruck, ipad, shopping, thedayin???, worldstreetkitchen, writing

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5 random things about me

July 24, 2012

If you already know me, then these things are not so random. They should be fairly well-known facts. But if you have only just come across this blog, to quote NBC’s slogan from many summers ago, it’s new to you.

Tomatoes

I love tomatoes. I learned how much during my first trip to Europe in 1989. My parents and I traveled the summer the iron curtain came down. We visited Germany, Austria, and Hungary. It was at our hotel restaurant in Budapest that my life was changed by the sweetest, most flavorful, excellently textured tomatoes I had ever eaten—and I’m quite sure have ever eaten to this day, twenty-three years later.

It has been a minor quest to find tomatoes in my everyday life that measure up. I know the best way to satisfy this search would be to grow them myself but being an apartment- and now condo-dweller, I don’t have the real estate to make a real stab. Every summer since I’ve moved to my condo which has a bit of yard that I can make use of, I’ve dutifully grown tomato plants in large pots. Every summer, squirrels have predictably decimated my meager crop and I feel fortunate to harvest two or three workable tomatoes. In fact, it’s about time this summer for the squirrels to spring into action because the fruit on this summer’s plant are just beginning to ripen. Any day, I will come home from work to find several quarter-eaten fledgling tomatoes scattered about the yard. The squirrels are not courteous enough to eat all of one tomato. They eat part of many.

CSA

My desire for delicious tomatoes was a large part of the reason why I bought into a CSA this summer (Community Supported Agriculture). While I patiently await the appearance in my box of lovingly homegrown, organic heirloom tomatoes, I have tried new edibles such as kale and kohlrabi, and discovered that roasted radishes are a wondrous thing. I sauté weirdo greens, like radish, collard, and kale, in olive oil and garlic. A fabulous supper is topping a premium frozen cheese pizza with sliced radishes, chopped kale, and sliced onions.

I am also embracing the notion of “know your farmer,” which extends beyond the CSA farmers to joining the neighborhood grocery co-op to frequenting farmers markets, where I can learn the names of the goats that made the feta cheese I’m buying or marvel that guerrilla farmers have turned metro parking lots into farms of raised beds that produce produce that’s as delicious as anything grown in a wide-open field.

Food trucks

I love getting lunch at one of the numerous food trucks that populate the streets of downtown Minneapolis (and Saint Paul). They make innovative dishes with fresh ingredients whose names you recognize. Very many of them take pride in sourcing their ingredients from local farmers, the same ones whose CSA I joined or whose goats tweet lame jokes like, ‘Keeping it ALL in perspective: One of the goats just said, “Meh…”’ Sorry, but that cracks me up. Chain/franchise restaurants don’t stand a chance.

Enjoying free time

I don’t make the most productive use of my free time. But these days you will find me experiencing contentment when I am sitting outside, likely with a beer, perhaps with a book or something on the iPad, in the shade, in my eight-inch high lawn chair. It’s low to the ground and the perfect height to stretch out my legs and still have a fairly level lap for supporting my reading material. Or I might draw my legs in to make a reading stand. Either way, it’s a comfortable chair with a back to lean against and it only cost $2.49 plus tax. I have two. One is a bright blue that almost matches the painted wooden stairs of my building. The other is my favorite green color. I seem to love anything in the fluorescent green to lime green range. I didn’t set out to like that color, it just sort of crept up on me. It can be a little self-conscious-inducing when I find myself sitting in the green chair in my lime green sweatpants and a green T-shirt with my green-covered iPad. Oh well.

Beverages

Usually at some point while sitting outside, I will have enjoyed enough beer that I won’t really care if people are judging me for all my green. And if I’m lucky, passersby won’t even notice me because I just blend into the chair. I probably also have my green Nalgene water bottle out there with me, too, because I am fanatical, religious, dedicated about drinking plenty of water throughout the day.

I should be less dedicated about the amount of coffee I drink. I used to only consume decaf, but in the last couple or three years I’ve embraced regular coffee with gusto. Consequently, most Saturday evenings I begin to go through the caffeine withdrawal headache. If I’m lucky, it’s not too severe and I can time it so that it mostly happens while I’m asleep. I’m weird. I drink coffee during the week at my desk, frequently very enthusiastically, but at home on the weekend it doesn’t occur to me to make any. And that’s okay. I guess I’d rather have a weekly mild headache than get to the point where I have a daily nagging headache and greater dependency.

I have a love-should relationship with both beer and coffee.

– – – – – – – – – – –

This just scratches the surface. I was challenged on Instagram to share five random things about myself, so I looked backwards in my stream and grabbed the first five photos that caught my eye as revealing something about me personally. There are many other photos that reveal things, too.

Posted by kellydna
Filed in Uncategorized
Tags: beer, coffee, csa, foodtruck, green, personal, relax, roundup, tomatoes, vegetables, water

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Landlocked lobster love

July 17, 2012

We Minnesotans may be landlubbers but one thing is for certain—we have good food. I know there are many excellent restaurants around the area, but my personal focus on eating out for two and a half summers has been with our new industry of (mostly) high-end food trucks. Two summers ago there were just a handful on our streets. Last summer there were a few more. This summer there has an explosion of new food trucks, and I don’t mean in the combustible sense.

The chefs who run these trucks aren’t afraid to make good food. And I certainly am not afraid to enjoy it. In fact, in the last couple of weeks, I have had the pleasure of consuming three completely different lobster rolls. Yes, you heard me. Lobster rolls. Here in landlocked Minnesota. (I don’t count Lake Superior. There are no lobsters there. Delicious lake trout, yes. Lobsters, no.)

Here, then, is a round-up of the lobster rolls you could have been enjoying had you been around and, if you were around, chosen to eschew skyway chain restaurants and chew on some inspired food.

The original: Smack Shack

Smack Shack was one of the original food trucks in downtown Minneapolis, appearing on the scene that first summer of 2010. Lobster and seafood is what they do. If you observe their truck from above, say, in one of those skyways where you’re trolling for taco Tuesday, you’ll see the giant lobster painted on the top of the truck and perhaps be intrigued enough to leave your comfort zone and treat yourself to a truly spectacular sandwich. I don’t have the links to prove it, but Smack Shack’s lobster roll has been reviewed by many as rivaling anything found on the northeast coast. Chef Josh Thoma tosses globs of succulent lobster in a cucumber tarragon lemon dressing and stuffs it into tender griddled milk break made by local bakery star and bread provider to the food trucks, The Salty Tart. I can also personally attest that The Salty Tart’s beer bread is another amazing creation, especially if you toast it and slather it with fresh, local butter. But I digress.

Next up: Get Sauced

Chef Driven is the umbrella company for a few different food ventures, one of which is the Get Sauced truck. Get Sauced appeared on the scene late last season and made an immediate impact. Their menu is Latin-influenced and features amazing tacos and tortas made with seasonal and sustainable ingredients. Out of the blue last week, a Mexican lobster roll appeared as the special item. This version was a toasted bun (from the Salty Tart as well?) packed with more of a salady filling. There were nice, giant pieces of lobster mixed with shredded meat, sweetcorn kernels, cilantro, and spicy spices. Sweet, succulent, spicy, splendid. Chunky lobster, yes. Succulent, again yes. The same only different, definitely, deliciously!

Newcomers: SushiFix

This summer, 2012, has seen an exponential growth in the number of food trucks on the streets both in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Do I exaggerate about the exponential part? Of course. But as more trucks join the scene, it becomes harder to stand out from the crowd. SushiFix does not have that problem, because they are the first truck to serve fresh, amazing sushi. Or sushi of any kind. And while you’re finishing rolling your eyes about the notion of a mobile food truck serving sushi that’s anything less than disgusting, let me disabuse you of that notion. Food trucks are licensed and inspected like any fixed kitchen and, amazingly, they employ modern techniques such as—wait for it—refrigeration. The proprietor is a well-experienced sushi chef previously of a respected restaurant in town and I’m pretty sure that I read that the fish is overnighted daily from Japan (I’m not doing much research-linking tonight but I’m 97% sure I’ve read these things to which I’m referring). But if you’re still skeptical, hey, go back into the skyway and enjoy that sodium-bomb chemical sub.

Today in the pre-lunch Twittersphere, SushiFix announced that their special was a lobster roll. A sushi lobster roll! I suppose sushi is often made with lobster, but because we were dreading the forecast high temperature of 100°F/38°C, a fresh roll with lobster, tempura shrimp, avocado, and strawberries—strawberries!—seemed like just the thing. And so it was. My only “complaint”? The outer strawberries made the pieces a little slippery to pick up with my chopsticks. First world problem. And for the first time (except maybe that other time I had SushiFix’s spicy tuna roll) I didn’t even think about employing the soy sauce and wasabi. For the record though, I’m pretty sure the soy sauce is homemade or, as is currently the fashionable terminology, house made.

We are not deprived.

Posted by kellydna
Filed in Uncategorized
Tags: chefdriven, downtown, food, foodtruck, getsauced, lobsterroll, minneapolis, roundup, smackshack, streetfood, sushi, sushifix

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I myself step up in tornado relief

May 26, 2011

I’m not trying to make it sound overly grandiose, I was just going for parallel construction with the title from Monday night’s entry because this is a related story. As the big scheme goes, it was only a baby step.

Tonight, I joined the Smack Shack food truck crew in north Minneapolis and helped dish up free food for tornado survivors for three and a half hours. It was nothing fancy—hotdogs with or without chili, some Hamburger Helper pasta, and ice cream. Chicken nuggets and chicken wings also made brief appearances. But for the neighborhood people, many of whom literally have no roof over their heads, or who asked for extra to take back to the people who had stayed at the house to safeguard it, it was plenty alright.

The important thing here for me is that this was the first volunteering of any kind I’ve ever done in my entire life. For some background on how out of character this is for me, please take a minute to read this recent post, the theme of which was a fortune cookie fortune which read “conscience is a man’s compass” and which involved some self-examination on the topic.

I can’t claim that it was some bolt of lightning striking that got me out there tonight. It’s true that when I see accounts of disasters on the news, I sometimes wish I was in a position to be able to jet off to the location and give some man-hours to clean-up, recovery, whatever. My thinking is usually in terms of physical labor versus interacting with people. I am uncomfortable around people a lot of the time.

My reason was much more mundane and self-serving. Smack Shack is one of my favorites of the food trucks that began appearing in the Twins Cities last summer. As a loyal customer both to the truck and to the bar in whose kitchen they wintered, I have established an acquaintance with the proprietor and chef, Josh Thoma. The trucks fascinate me because all of the chef-proprietors turn out amazing food from a kitchen that fits in the back of a UPS van.

When the tornados hit last Sunday and I watched the live feed from one of the news helicopters, I again had the stirrings of the feeling of wanting to help, and wished I didn’t have a really big project at work that was due yesterday (and which I’ll finally finish tomorrow morning) so that I could take a couple days off for this local disaster. But I did have to go to work, so all I did on Monday was make a donation to the org GiveMN.org.

Then in the afternoon, the tweets started to come through. Several food trucks, including my three favorites, were going to make their ways to the tornado zone to hand out free food. I instinctively thought that offering my labor to one of them would be an easy way to help for a few hours and give me a little brush with food truck fame and allow me to importantly note that I worked side-by-side with Chef in tornado relief. Unfortunately, I was busy Monday night.

Due to not finishing my work project on time I didn’t feel I could go out Tuesday evening either, which I found particularly bothersome after Chef Thoma tweeted for helpers at Smack Shack. Finally tonight, Wednesday, I was available and got myself to the truck right after work.

So that brings me back to what I wondered about at the end of the “conscience” post. My reasons for being this evening’s hotdog bun stager extraordinaire were at least seventy-five percent selfish. But would the people who got some free food and could watch their kids being delighted by a small bowl of ice cream with sprinkles have cared if they knew why I was really there? Isn’t it okay that whatever my motivation, everybody got something out of it?

I can’t say explicitly that it was a life-changing experience and that I’m going to run off and join the Peace Corps or even that I’ll start volunteering at some local soup kitchen. What I can say is that at the moment, I seem to be overcome with an unusual peaceful, semi-fulfilled, extremely mellow feeling.

Photo by Smack Shack

Posted by kellydna
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Tags: 2011, character, charity, donate, foodtruck, minneapolis, personalgrowth, smackshack, tornado, tt

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Food trucks step up in tornado relief

May 24, 2011

As if I didn’t already adore my local food trucks for their amazing culinary delights, today, in the aftermath of yesterday’s tornados in the Twins Cities, one of which tore through the Camden neighborhood in north Minneapolis, several of the mobile kitchens went up to the area to aid in relief food dispensation. I admire them even more. It doesn’t matter that it was mostly hot dogs and bottled water donated by grocery stores. None of them hesitated in committing to the effort.

A photographer named Tony Webster has a gallery on Flickr of shots from around the neighborhood (one of which I linked to above). There wasn’t utter obliteration as in Joplin, Missouri, but the damage was still pretty devastating.

We had had almost two inches of rain in the previous 36 hours so the ground was saturated. A lot of the damage was caused by entire trees being uprooted and falling over onto structures, rather than simply snapping and not expanding their footprint too much. I’ve seen photos of entire blocks of trees just toppled over on their sides. It weird and sad. And, of course, plenty of roofs were torn off also. That’s odd, too, to see into homes like you were the Jolly Green Giant who just pulled them off to see what’s inside.

Fortunately, unlike in Joplin, there have been “only” two related deaths so far.

If you’d like to donate to a local relief organization, GiveMN.com has a fund. I contributed what I could.

Smack Shack. At one point there was an impromptu prayer session in front of the truck.

World Street Kitchen. The comfort of a hot meal, however simple.

Chef Shack. A worker refuels.

Photos by Tony Webster, Smack Shack, World Street Kitchen, Chef Shack

Posted by kellydna
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Tags: 2011, chefshack, donate, foodtruck, minneapolis, smackshack, tornado, tt, worldstreetkitchen

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Arteaga, Michoac??n, Mexico

January 13, 2011

For today’s fun, I got a randomly generated geographical coordinate and took a closer look in with Streetview. The pin dropped in west-central Mexico, in the state of Michoacán. The nearest settlement was the town of Arteaga, and the main drag did, in fact, have Streetview.

I was looking for an interesting building. Most people would probably look for something architecturally interesting, but in light of my developing food awakening, I decided to look for a place to eat. Google gets credit for taking their Streetview images in the warm season (not as important in Mexico as it is in Minnesota where I live). On the other hand, that means trees are in full leaf and often obscure things you want to look at. I’m sure there were several other eateries that I missed because they were behind beautiful flowering trees. The one that I did find was big and purple, Erika’s Restaurant y Mariscos.

Anything that you can make out on Erika’s menu looks delicious to me. For only having had Spanish classes when I was thirteen and fourteen, I am pleased with how much I remember (which isn’t really much, but enough to get the gist). Nevertheless, I had to look up mariscos. It means seafood. Arteaga is about an hour from the ocean. I bet the seafood is pretty good. I’d probably be up for that, too.

If I gone just one more notch further north, I would have come across the loncheria above, which is the kind of establishment I was really looking for, if you can call it an establishment—it looks pretty temporary, unless you consider that the wheels on the trailer have been removed, then it looks more permanent. But what I’ve learned from Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern is that this is where you will find the best eats. ¡Quiero tortas!

I also noticed there were some hotels in town, so tourists like me would have somewhere to stay.

And incidentally, while I was traveling north on the main road, this backhoe was ahead of the Google car the whole way. I’m glad it finally pulled over!

Map and Streetviews by Google.

Posted by kellydna
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Tags: food, foodtruck, mexico, travel, tt

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The day in bike ride: August 29, 2010, with bonus errands

September 1, 2010

My new big thing is the Chef Shack food truck. It’s two chef gals who make amazing culinary delights. They usually post the menu on Facebook, and Saturday morning they also posted a photo of the charcuterie plate that they had on offer at the Kingfield Market in south Minneapolis.

I didn’t get myself going quickly enough to get down there by the 1:00 end time, so I instead went to the Uptown Market where they also were (I think they have three vehicles—two trucks and one trailer), figuring I’d get it there instead. The round trip to Uptown is about 8 miles; on the way home I jogged down to the store to pick up some necessary items and that added another couple miles.

Photo1: entering the Hiawatha commuter trail.

Photo 2: heading southish on the Hiawatha commuter trail to meet the Midtown Greenway.

Photo 3: heading west on the Midtown Greenway at 11th Avenue.

Photo 4: Midtown Greenway at 4th Avenue. Thanks for the heads-up, sign.

Photo 5: Bryant Avenue South and 29th Street. I lived in this apartment building for 11 years. Three blocks along 29th are where the Uptown Market is on Sundays.

Photos 6: The market, looking west.

Photos 7: The market, looking east. Oh, hello, Chef Shack!

Photo 8: Waiting for my order. It turned out that they didn’t have the charcuterie plate here, so I ordered the bison burger instead.

Photo 9: Bison burger with pepperjack cheese and chips. Dining on the curb in the shade. It was quite hot but not too humid so it was just barely tolerable for the exertion of the bike ride.