Very Prairie Pie-on-a-Stick

When bone-chilling, spit-freezing winter starts on Halloween and continues til Easter, as it often does in the northern reaches of the Upper Midwest, who could blame Minnesotans for going a little crazy when summer comes? Hibernating like bears (if bears had hockey, beer, and NPR) for six months of the year, Minnesotans follow their Scandinavian forebearers and swim, run, dance, bike, party, picnic, dine, and promenade like mad during their precious summer months, soaking up day after sunny, scorching day and basking through bath-warm twilights that linger long past dinnertime.

According to my 11-year-old niece, who has lived in a suburb of Minneapolis since 2006, "everyone" has a cabin on a lake, or at least a townhouse or condo-share with lake-splashing, dock-sunning privileges. Still, it seems like plenty of people have stuck around during this Fourth of July week in the Twin Cities, where I've been having a long-overdue family visit with my sister Amy and my nephew and nieces. I pick up a copy of Minnesota Monthly magazine at the Linden Hills Co-Op, a kind of miniaturized Berkeley Bowl of the prairie, where we go to pump our own Minnesota maple syrup out of a tall stainless-steel vat and pick up a few glass bottles of Cedar Summit's organic, pastured milk. Not surprisingly, the magazine's cover story is a round-up of the best in local foods, 146 of them, in fact, from Kalona sour cream and Birch Berry Wild Rice to Surly's Darkness Stout, along with dozens of other pickles, relishes, jams, butters, chocolates, yogurt, breads, syrups, meats, and beers chosen by longtime Minneapolis writer Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl. Elsewhere in the magazine, local NPR personality and Splendid Table host Lynne Rossetto Kasper writes with pride that in her opinion, only California can compete with Minnesota when it comes to making and supporting high-quality, locally-sourced and -inspired food and drink.

My nephew, age 13, is a big fan of the octopus and frogs' legs at the tiny, quirky, molecular-gastronomy-influenced Travail Kitchen and Amusements, run by the kind of mustachioed, nose-ringed cool kids you'd see behind the bar at Alembic or in the kitchen at Nopa. Alas, it must be that all the cool kids have cabins, too, because Travail has shut down for the entire month of July, presumably for some lakeside R&R. (The fact that the un-air-conditioned restaurant is mostly a counter facing an open kitchen may have also encouraged a summertime shutdown.)

So my sister and I head to the more traditional Meritage (rhymes with heritage) in St. Paul, a spacious French brasserie with a white-tiled oyster bar (still a bit of a novelty in a city ringed with lakes but far, far away from any salt water) on one side and a crepe cart out front. We take a table on the sidewalk, the better to listen to the live music drifting over from a nearby plaza, where couples in everything from cowboy boots to flip-flops are dipping and two-stepping to Kevin Anthony and the Twin City Playboys, part of the Ordway Summer Dance series.

Our server, with a lavishly waxed and twirled mustache straight off the sign at Tommy's Joynt, hands us a stack of menus: cocktail and beer list, wine list, bar menu, dinner menu. At the top of the dinner menu are a handful of two-bite, $3 starters, including a demitasse of excellent chilled gazpacho, crunchy with minutely diced raw onion and peppers; a wee fresh-tuna taco; and a pyramid of "compressed watermelon," vividly pink, which turns out to have been cryovaced to reduce its volume by two-thirds, condensing its cool, sweet wateriness into the essence of what Henry James called the two most beautiful words in the English language, summer afternoon.

We follow our gazpacho with a martini glass of cool, jellied lobster consomme studded with a few chunks of lobster, veiled with a creamy layer of corn puree, and topped with a boutonniere of tiny basil leaves. Corn, lobster, basil: if I weren't already sitting outside, sipping white wine in a shoulder-baring sundress, one taste of these flavors would leave me no doubt that summer's in full swing. Peach and arugula salad sounds pleasant but predictable--what California-cuisine menu doesn't have a stone-fruit salad on offer right now?--but the execution is a delicious surprise. The peach slices, thin as coins and round as the moon, have been cooked sous-vide with vanilla and Muscat to a melting tenderness that would be heaven in a peach Melba with vanilla ice cream and a drizzle of raspberry coulis. But they're pretty fantastic just like this, under a tangle of snappy arugula scattered with toasted pistachios and shards of Parmesan.

Wild sea bass, with a texture caught between ceviche and crudo, is scattered with "essence of celery," diced and juiced, adding a green, woodsy note to the supple fish. The $3 bites return on the dessert menu, and so we sample a macaron of the day, lavender-hued and stuffed with chewy-sweet fig, and a satiny espresso pot de creme topped with Valrhona chocolate-crunch beads and a dab of whipped cream.

The next morning, even with thunderclouds threatening overhead, I can't resist a trip to the Mill City Farmers Market, one of the Twin Cities' largest and most popular open-air markets. As befitting its name, and Minnesota's history as a grain-producing and grain-milling center, there are several producers selling their own locally grown wheat, corn, rye, and oats. I buy a bag of organic, coarse-grained corn grits from Sunrise Flour Mill, then another bag of Prairie Hollow Farm's high-protein whole-wheat bread flour, milled from kulm, a rare heritage strain of wheat. Prairie Hollow's Pam Benike tells me that she farms organically on land that has been cultivated by her family for generations. She raises a little of everything: wheat, dairy cattle, vegetables, fruits, even what you might call gourmet weeds, very popular with her restaurant clients. For $2, I get a big bag of offbeat greens, including nettles, purslane, chickweed, plantain, and lambs' quarters. Nearby, Very Prairie is selling "prairievore" granola, excellent rhubarb ketchup, and a very state-fair-ready treat, pie on a stick.

When you can't start planting until late April, July is still spring, and so despite the 90-degree heat, the produce on offer is mostly still green: lettuce, kale, chard, peas, lots of kohlrabi and tons of garlic scapes, plus new potatoes, beets, and carrots.

Garlic scapes, I'm told by one of the workers at Swede Lake Farms, are the curly shoots and buds of hardneck garlic, which grow best in cold climates, leaving California more prone to the mild-climate softneck types. No plums or peaches yet, but there's plenty of rhubarb for pie, plus raspberries, strawberries, and black caps, similar to black raspberries but seedier and less sweet.

The prepared foods are eclectic: pedal-powered fruit smoothies, made by Erica of Foxy Falafel in a bike-powered blender; herring sandwiches and bacon-beer bratwursts from the Chef Shack truck; Himalayan momo dumplings across from puffy Swedish ebelskiver pancakes. Hmong families set up shop next to Mennonites and tattooed young farmers. Little kids lick ice cream cones from Sonny's (don't miss the black-currant sorbet) and dance to the perky tunes of Potluck and the Hot Dishes. It's all so very Minneapolis.

Chef Shack truck signage

Meritage
Address: 410 St Peter St, St Paul, MN 55102
Phone: (651) 222-5670
Facebook: Meritage St Paul
Twitter: @meritage_stpaul

Mill City Farmers Market
Address: 704 S 2nd St, Minneapolis, MN 55415
Phone (612) 341-7580
Facebook: Mill City Farmers Market
Twitter: @mcfarmersmkt

Today, after the last of the snow in our backyard melted, it snowed again. It has been a long winter -- as it usually is in Minnesota (although I’ve only experienced two). This extended period of long-underwear, wool socks, and root vegetable stews is the reason why more people don’t live here. But as the snow melts and the temperature rises above 32 degrees, there is real joy. It’s not just a nice day for us… it’s excitement, anticipation and even a relaxation (of whatever muscles are used in shivering). And for me, most of all, it’s the search for wild foods that gets me out walking in the woods.

Over the course of the last year making episodes about food in Minnesota, of all the topics, foraging has been the most prominent. I suppose it is so with any subject, but the more you learn, the more wonderful and intriguing it becomes. A walk in the woods is not just beautiful, it is a shopping trip and a treasure hunt. So this time of year is the most exciting of all.

At this point in April when we (Minnesotans) have a few wild edibles popping out of the ground, you (Californians) have been eating them for months. But that doesn't make them any less special. So, this last Saturday we had a pizza party in celebration of Spring. It was quite ironic as the temperature dropped into the 30's that evening. Regardless, that morning we went foraging for the first of spring's offerings. A ritual that I wish was part of every cooking job: first go harvest, then go cook.

We found garlic mustard, nettles, ramps, daylilies and dandelion greens. The nettles were small and purple in color. They aren't woodsy or bitter at this point, more like spinach. We used these as a base for our pesto. The ramps were still a little young, so we didn't over pick them. If you haven't had a ramp yet, they are garlicky and delicious. I usually use the leaves for pesto while pickling the stems. The daylilies are shooting up all along the edge of my house, if you get them when they are young, they add a nice crunch with a very slight onion flavor. And dandelion greens -- they are bitter of course, but add a taste that connects you to the earth.

Recipe: Ramp Pesto

Ingredients:
• 1 part ramp leaves
• 3 parts nettles
• 1 part garlic mustard
• 1 part dandelion greens
• 1/2 part Extra Virgin Olive oil (more if needed)
• Salt

Instructions:
Blanch the nettles in hot water followed by an ice bath. Wring out the water. Puree all the ingredients together. You can add nuts or Parmesan if you want, but we we're going for more of a sauce type consistency. This could be used in pasta or as a sauce for more full flavored fish or a lighter meat. We used it on pizza, with a few dollops of chevre and cooked it in a wood-fired oven then garnished with some micro greens. A delicious spring.

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Recipe: Pizza Dough

The pizza oven and the levain used in the dough were both created by Lisa Ringer of Two Pony Gardens. She spent the last year collecting large stones from her property to decorate the oven all the while managing her wild yeast "mother." I used her levain to create my pizza dough, no commercial yeast added.

Ingredients:
• 1 Cup levain
• 3 Cups flour
• 1/2 Cup warm water
• 2 Tablespoons EVO
• 2 teaspoons sea salt

Instructions:
Because I was making dough for 150, I mixed the dough in a mixer. But for a small batch, do it in a bowl. Add a little extra water if necessary, you want the dough to be nice and wet. Once the dough is formed (as little mixing as possible, just knead until combined), I let it rise for a couple hours in the kitchen and then overnight in the fridge. The next morning, I divided it into small balls, covered with a damp towel and let it slowly rise again until i was ready to cook the pizzas. In the heat of a wood-fired oven they don't take more than a minute.

A little over a year and a half ago, I moved from New York City back to Minnesota -- the state where I was born (but only lived in until I was four years old). Upon my return, I had hoped to open my own restaurant, educating Midwesterners about good, local and creative food. I quickly came to realize that no educating was needed... except on my end. Taking stock of my skills and offerings, I decided to shift directions and combine my passions into one project. I've been making documentary films and cooking for the last six years, why not bring them together? Thus, The Perennial Plate was born.

For this new endeavor, I gave myself the challenge of creating a short documentary every week for a year about sustainable and adventurous food in Minnesota. The videos would be posted online for free, funding would come from the viewership and I would learn a lot about my home state. Forty-six episodes later, the project has been an inspiring and life changing experience. I've gained friends in the form of farmers, chefs, hunters and foragers and a new found appreciation for all of the work and love that goes into the food we eat.

I'll be heading through the Bay Area this summer to film, but before you get your own local video, I wanted to share a two-part episode that I made a couple weeks back in my home state. To view the whole series, visit theperennialplate.com

A warning to the squeamish viewer. These videos are about rabbits -- not just how cute they are, but how to raise them, how to kill them and how to eat them.

I visited Marshall Farm: a very small family operation that just started its first year of commercial rabbit farming. They are trying to popularize this climate-friendly protein option. As the only rabbit farm in Minnesota, most of their rabbits go to restaurants in the Twin Cities that feature local ingredients and charge a pretty penny.

Will rabbit break out of the fine dining mold and into the mainstream? With its white fur and Easter bunny association, maybe not. Because the rabbits aren't raised by the thousands, it also isn't the cheapest meat, and perhaps that's how it should stay -- as something special to be enjoyed from time to time.

WARNING: Includes graphic footage of a rabbit being slaughtered

At Marshall Farm we killed two bunnies. Scott Marshall butchered the first, and I did the second. From this bounty, I created a terrine. This elegant meatloaf is an easy crowd-pleaser, and a good way to make the most of every bit of the rabbit. Here's the recipe:

Rabbit Terrine Recipe

For this terrine I used rabbit as well as some pork fat, and some pork rillette that I had previously made. The rillette isn't necessary. I wouldn't make it just for this terrine, but if you want to give it a try, follow the example from Wrightfood.

Equipment:
Meat Grinder (eg KitchenAid with food grinder attachment)
Terrine mold or loaf pan

Ingredients:

2 rabbits de-boned
3/4 lb pork fat (or 1/3 of the quantity of rabbit)
2 cups pork rillette
1 egg
1 egg yolk
3 slices rye bread without crusts
1/2 cup of whole milk
2 rabbit livers (kidneys and hearts as well)
2 tablespoons of fresh thyme
1 Thai chili, seeds removed
2 tablespoons salt (to taste)
1 cup of dried cranberries
The addition of 2 tablespoons of a liqueur or fortified wine adds depth. I didn't have anything local, so I opted out
Canola oil to coat inside of terrine mold

Cut the rabbit and pork fat into pieces that will fit into your meat grinder. Combine the rabbit, pork, salt, and spice in a bowl. Mix and refrigerate for 2 hours (or more). Separately, put your meat grinder attachment in the freezer (for at least 1 hour).

Meanwhile, soak the bread in the milk and alcohol. Whisk the eggs until combined.

Remove the grinder from the freezer, and grind the salted-meat mixture as well as the soaked the bread. Add the whisked egg to the ground meat, lightly mix together, and then put the combined forcemeat through the grinder again.

Lightly poach or saute a spoonful of your forcemeat and taste for balanced seasoning. Adjust accordingly.

Lightly cover the inside of your terrine mold with canola oil, then press plastic wrap into the mold with plenty extra hanging over to cover the terrine at a later point.

Pour the cranberries into the bottom of the mold, distributing equally. Follow that with a layer of the forcemeat. If you are just using rabbit loins, place them in the center of the terrine and then fill the rest of the mold up with the remaining force meat. If you have the rillette: flatten the rillette onto plastic wrap, place the rabbit loins in the center and then roll the rillette around the loins, making as tight a cylinder as possible. Lay this tube (without the plastic) in the mold and cover with force meat, making sure some is on the sides as well. Use the excess plastic wrap to cover the forcemeat.

Cover the terrine with tinfoil, crimping at the edges to make a lid.
Fill a pan with hot water and set the mold in the water. Cook the terrine in the oven at 300 for an hour to an hour and a half or until the interior temperature reads 150 degrees.

Uncover the terrine and let sit out for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes create a press that can equally distribute weight onto the terrine (another terrine mold works best). Put the terrine in the fridge with weights on top and let it sit overnight.

I served the terrine with a green tomato vinaigrette and micro greens, but it can be served with anything a little sweet and sour. Pickles, mustard, and jams are all great options along with some crusty bread.

The Perennial Plate
Twitter: @perennialplate
Facebook: Perennial Plate

Since I've already admitted that I'm a cocktail snob, it should come as no surprise that I'm also a beer snob, and as a beer snob I've long believed that good American beer doesn't come in cans. (I say "American," because as a beer snob, I adore canned Guinness, Boddingtons, and -- when it was sold here -- Caffrey's.)

But American canned beer? Bah!

Once again, I am so happy to be proven wrong. On every trip home to Minneapolis for the past few years, I have been tempted to tour the Surly Brewing Company in Brooklyn Center, MN. The name of the company alone was enough to intrigue me, but then I got a load of the beer names: Furious, CynicAle, Bitter Brewer, and Bender. Just add Grumpy, Sleepy, and Dopey and they could be the Seven Drunk Dwarfs of beerland.

I figured a company that creative with their names had to produce good stuff, and I was right.

We had our first taste of Furious on tap at Bryant Lake Bowl -- a bowling alley/restaurant known for its bowling, local food, and wide range of beers -- and loved it. It was big and hoppy and reminded us of Racer 5 IPA and is got its name because: "This is the beer that would come to mind while spending the last two years tearing down walls, hanging sheetrock, moving kegs, power washing the ceilings, arguing with various agencies, and cutting the water main."

Next we tried CynicAle, which had been heroically and specially procured for us by my friend's husband in the middle of a dinner party all because my friend knew we were on a Surly hunt.

Described as, "Brewed with Belgian malted barley, this copper hued ale is brewed in the Belgian Saison style. A unique Belgian yeast strain creates the spicy flavor and imported hops lend the apricot/peach aroma...You know summer in Minnesota is here when Cynic is around," CynicAle was another canned winner.

Finally, we grabbed a four-pack of Bender. Bender is made up of five malts -- two of them from Belgium -- which are supplemented by oatmeal "to give it a smooth texture not usually associated with this type of beer." It was lovely; rich, chocolately, Guinness-like but with its own distinctive edge.

Knowing that beer snobs like me might turn up my nose at cans, Surly has a list of reasons why they can it. My two favorites are, "Cans are cool" and "Throwing them at the band will not hurt them."

However, beer and can defense aside, the best Surly quirk -- and something that gives you a glimpse into how these particular beer mavens think -- is how the company got its name:

"In 2005, Omar & his wife Becca headed out to Portland for a weeklong beer drinking trip. On the flight out, Becca came up with the name Surly. The name was a reaction to the question posed: "How do you feel when you go into a bar and there is no good beer?"

Answer - You Get Surly, and say "Let's go to another bar that cares about decent beer."

Surly: The anger fueled by the inability to find good beer."

We actually had hopes of bringing some warm Surly cans home with us to enjoy in the San Francisco summer months of September and October, but because it's not filtered or pasteurized, Surly must always be kept cold.

I'll tell you this, I'm getting pretty Surly that I can't get me some CynicAle for election night in San Francisco.

When the rain that was roiling menacingly in the bloated clouds over Minneapolis finally let loose and spattered down just as we arrived at the St. Paul Farmers' Market, I was worried. Did I just ask my friends to meet me out in inclement weather? Did we have enough umbrellas? Did we have extra layers, sweaters, or jackets? Would they Camille home, nursing sore throats, coughs, and eventually succumb to an effectively romantic wasting disease complete with lace hankerchiefs?

But when I stepped out into the grey sunlight from the darkness of the minivan, I remembered: summer rain in Minnesota does not mean frigidity! Summer rain in Minnesota means wet warmth! Getting gently spattered, I left my coat and umbrella in the car and set out to enjoy the covered St. Paul Farmers' Market to its fullest.

Nestled among architecturally stunning buildings of downtown St. Paul and a few blocks away from the Mississippi, the Saturday farmers' market was decidedly populated with shoppers without being crowded by wheeled suitcases. In one small area you could get coffee, juice, bagels, and pastries to nourish you while shopping; you could also chose to sit down with your breakfast goodies on benches or at tables.

This bright and springy lettuce was the first thing I saw after walking into the farmers' market. I was not only entranced by the pristinely washed sheaves of green, but also by the adorable red basket.

Almost all the farmers had these awesome retro-looking trucks pulled up to their table of wares. I have a particular love for Big Woods and Nerstrand, MN, since they produce my favorite blue cheese in the country.

Just looking at this corn manages to make me both wistful and happy. In color and in kernel rowing, this maize (or "Indian Corn") is riotously irregular and ready to be twined on someone's lamppost.

Peter Piper picked a peck of peppered pickles. I never had such a canning urge as I did looking at these bushels of green and pimpled cucumbers.

A beautiful reminder that cider and apple-picking season is just around the corner in Minnesota. These sublime specimens have perfect handles for apple ducking.

Never in my five years of living in California have I seen this kind of cherry tomato. They were called Black Russians, and their maroon cheeks were streaked with purple striations. My father, who professes to hate cherry tomatoes, gulped down the gazpacho I squeezed out with these Black Russians and some heavily rooted sweet basil.

I was completely wowed by the herbs from this farmer. I've never seen such ecstatically hearty roots on herbs before.

For two-tone luck.

When I first saw this sign I thought, "Oh, Minnesotans and their FISHING!" but then I realized that wasn't the point of the sign and I admired, "Oh, Minnesotans and their CRAFTINESS!" What a delicious way to get around the illegal cheese issue.

All in all, I was besotted and beguiled by the St. Paul Farmers' Market. The farmers were friendly and sometimes German accented, the patrons were polite and smiling, and the produce was prodigious and irreproachable. Even the typical musical talent that you frequently find at farmers' markets -- a banjo and guitar crew, togged out like the Baudelaire orphans -- distinguished themselves by cracking Sarah Palin jokes as they sawed and sung to their semi-circle of admirers.

I'm a very impatient person, but on this trip to Minneapolis patience and forbearance paid off in spades. That said, St. Paul-based Izzy's Ice Cream was harder to get into than SPQR at 7:00 on a Friday.

Our first attempt was via the web on Saturday morning. Since we were crossing the grand Mississippi to pay a virgin visit to the St. Paul Farmer's Market, we thought we'd drop by for a frozen scoop or two before lunch. The website put Izzy's opening hours at 2:00pm, which rather late for what is still essentially summer, but we decided to swing by anyway. Maybe the website was wrong.

We got Izzy's, which was clearly closed, and looked at the hours painted on the glass door. They stated they opened at 12:00pm. It was 11:00am. Without anything left to do in the capital city, we went back to Minneapolis to lunch at Bryant Lake Bowl. (This was a happy side trip because we had our first taste of Surly beer, but more on that later.) At 12:30 we headed back across the river. Izzy's was still not open. This time we found a red sign stating that their "fall" opening hours (valid only for September and October because true Minnesotans know that November is not fall but winter) was 2:00 pm. Lord.

Frustrated and yearning for the elusive salted caramel I had sampled over a year ago, we trudged to Kowalski's on Lake Street. We knew they carried Izzy's but sadly, not one pint of salted caramel could be found. I didn't want to be mad at Izzy's -- after all, they were (by their calculations) the first shop in the nation to be run by solar power! Also, I really wanted to get my husband in on that salted caramel because the lines at Bi-Rite have been Bi-Ridiculous.

Our third and final attempt on Monday afternoon actually got us in the open door, but as we scanned the list of ice creams, we saw no Salted Caramel. We looked in the pint freezer. No salted caramel.

We sighed sadly and made other delicious choices -- sampling an incredible pink grapefruit sorbet before settling on seasonal pumpkin and coffee -- but when I mentioned to the girl helping me that I had been hoping for the mythical salted caramel, she said, "We're making it right now. We'll have it tomorrow." I said, "Oh, I'm leaving town tomorrow..." She said, "We'll have it for you when you get back." "No, I live in San Francisco," I mourned. "Hang on," she said. She went next door -- TO WHERE THEY WERE MAKING THE ICE CREAM -- and came pack with a fresh pint. "We haven't blast-chilled it yet, so it's more like soft serve consistency," she told me apologetically.

Did I care? I would have taken it if it was fully liquid! (Also, since my father has this odd habit of microwaving his ice cream to make ice cream soup, this would be better for him.) It was served that night after dinner and received rave reviews from the whole family.

Sweet was the long-sought taste of salted caramel, but sweeter was the way we got it.

I've just booked a trip that ensures that in less than a month, I'll be happily winging off to my home state of Minnesota. Minneapolis is where I grew up as the pickiest of eaters, eschewing nearly every vegetable aside from corn and artichokes. (Don't ask where my mother got artichokes in Minneapolis in the 70s and 80s. Or Pomegranates and avocados for that matter, but my mother was born and bred in Glendale, CA and she knew what she liked and she made sure she found it for us.)

However, on this next trip home, I will finally (FINALLY) visit the St. Paul's Farmers' Market, the jewel in Minnesota's market crown. I've done Mill City and the older Minneapolis Farmers' Market. I've also done the tiny Thursday stalls along Nicollet Avenue back when I worked downtown at my dad's law firm. Now, it's time for St. Paul, the city on the other side of the river. Capitol twin to my beloved Minneapolis.

Befitting a hardworking Midwestern state, the SPFM is only open from April 26th to November 15th. Those dates are certainly significant to any Minnesotan, because we all know that snow is no stranger to May, and I fondly remember a historic Halloween my senior year in high school when we got 33 inches of nice fluffy white stuff between 9 PM and 5 AM.

It was the first actual Snow Day of my memory. (See, we went to school even when the power went out at Jefferson Elementary and when the busses stalled. In the former, we just wore our snowsuits and in the latter, other busses came to get us.) However, Minnesota being what it is, in 1992 the roads were plowed and my dad was on his way to work by noon.

A farmers' market of some fashion has been operating in St. Paul since 1852. Back then, fresh produce was -- as it is now -- only available during the feverish and fecund summer months. However, throughout the year and even during the glacial, killing months, they had dairy, flour, cakes, and candies. Now, they also have local baked goods, cheese, poultry, buffalo, venison, beef, pork, lamb, maple syrup, eggs, honey, organic produce, flowers, plants, and shrubs.

Living in the (comparatively) warm Bay Area has definitely softened my Midwestern hide and it's also babied my palate and kitchen. I'm excited about checking out and cooking the fruits and vegetables I would have despised in my callow youth and remembering, celebrating my sturdy roots.