Security

Many American families we have encountered since moving here are dual-income families. And I'm convinced that, the vast majority of the time, it is not because they're greedy. It's not because they're materialistic. It's not because they don't want to spend time with their kids.

It's because the American dream is so insecure.

Things can go wrong, and frequently do. And when they do, there is comparatively minimal government support. So American residents feel the need to have a back-up source of income, in case one of them loses their job. This could also explain why Americans seem to work so much harder and longer than Australians; they are trying to make themselves indispensable to their employer.

American readers, do you think my interpretations are accurate?

Weird Foods IV: Speculoos Crunchy Cookie Butter

We probably never would have tried this stuff, but we were house- and dog-sitting for some of our American friends and they had some. It is very hard to describe; the jar says so. Allegedly it tastes a little like gingerbread with crushed biscuits. They recommend putting it on pancakes.

I tried it on bread. It was pleasant, but to me it just tasted like sweet semi-crunchy peanut butter.

Weird Foods III: Alpine Spiced Apple Cider

This product is a perfect example of the numerous seasonal treats available around this time of year. That's something I really like about the US. There is much more seasonal variation in the products available at the grocery store. And I'm not just talking about produce; I mean the packaged, non-perishable goods as well. This happens a bit in Aus (say, around Easter or Christmas), but the extent here is much greater.

Anyway, Spiced Apple Cider is purchased as a powder. It's mainly sugar, malic acid (a natural component of apples) and apple juice solids.

 

The powder resembles Ovaltine.

And when you dissolve it in boiling water, it makes a delicious hot apple cider.

 It's hard to find this kind of thing in Australia, which is sad, because I'm quite a fan of it.

Two Minnesotan Ecotypes

I have observed two distinct Minnesotan 'ecotypes'.

First there is the Hibernating Minnesotan. This type of Minnesotan lives for the warmer months (June-October this year) and spends the remaining months avoiding the outside world as much as possible. For this ecotype, winter consists largely of moving as quickly as possible between sources of warmth. Winter is something to be avoided and endured until Spring returns.

The second ecotype is the Psychrophilic Minnesotan. This Minnesotan embraces the cold, the snow, the ice and everything that goes along with them. For this ecotype, the cold months, particularly the middle of winter, are the perfect time to get outdoors. They love to get out their thick coat that is rated down to -40. Common activities include ice-fishing, skiing, hunting, ice-skating, and riding snow mobiles. The committed Psychrophilic Minnesotan will even construct an ice-house in the middle of frozen lakes, so they can spend as much time as possible away from their homes.

I'm yet to decide which ecotype I'm going to be.

Zoo Boo!

Today we attended a Halloween celebration, called Zoo Boo, at Como Zoo. Micah went as a pumpkin. We went as the parents of a pumpkin. Sadly our camera's batteries died and we didn't get any photos. But I'll try to describe it to you. There were a great many volunteers, dressed in costumes ranging from tigers, monkeys and cats, to Darth Vader and Batman, stationed all throughout the zoo. As we moved through the zoo, we were given various treats (healthy as well as not-so-healthy). Micah had a great time. And I had a bearable time. However, the thing that amazed me was the fact that all the people in costumes were volunteers. That's something I love about Americans; their enthusiasm for festivity. I get the feeling it would be very hard to convince many Australians to participate in such an event for nothing.

My New Favourite Season

I like autumn in Minnesota. The name 'fall' seems quite appropriate over here. All the leaves change colour and start to fall; it's all very pretty. But it's more than just a pretty sight; supermarket shelves become laden with pumpkin-flavoured and caramel-coated delights; so far we have tried pumpkin pie yoghurt, pumpkin spice bagels, pumpkin bread and caramel apples. I'm still hoping to try the pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks. There are also numerous festivals around this time of year.

Yesterday one of my work colleagues and his wife took us on a fall-themed adventure. First we tried to go apple picking at an orchard. Apparently, this is a really popular fall activity in the mid-west. I was just expecting an apple orchard with a person selling bags to put your apples in; I had forgotten that this is America. It was a real event, including goats, hay-rides, toy tractors for kids to ride, a train pulled by a tractor and heaps of apple-themed products for sale. Here, we tried kettle corn for the first time. I was pleasantly surprised at how tasty it was.

Next we headed to Stillwater, a small town about 30 km (18.6 miles) from St Paul. This is a lovely town with all of Amy's favourite specialty shops: chocolate, spices, tea, and wool. There also happened to be an autumn festival underway when we visited. The over-sized vegetables are truly a sight to behold!

We also saw Wisconsin across the St Croix river.

We went to Nacho Mama for lunch and, since I had never had them before, I ordered the Baconated Jalapeno Poppers stuffed with cream cheese. They were one of the spiciest things I have ever eaten; but they were delicious.

 Our last stop before heading home was at one of the state parks. I forget which one. Unlike the national parks, the state parks are not affected by the non-functional Federal Government. We took a short walk around one of the lakes and it was beautiful. There's not much more I can say about it.

The Minnesota State Fair

A little over a month ago Amy, Micah and I attended the Minnesota state fair. It was huge. We were there for the whole day and there were still parts we didn't see. For my followers from Tassie, it was like a combination of Agfest, the Hobart Show and the Deloraine Craft Fair, except there were no show bags; that was probably a good thing though. We started our day viewing the old tractors (right).

Then we moved onto the Little Farm Hands Exhibit: an excellent exhibit designed to teach children about farming and where food comes from. After Micah had collected, among other things, a fake egg from the chicken coop, wool from the wooden sheep, a plastic apple from the wooden apple trees, and an empty milk carton from the cow, he took their 'produce' to 'market' and got 'paid' '$1' which he could then spend at the 'grocery store' on ice-cream, fruit juice, or a real apple. Micah chose the apple; although perhaps this was because the other items were too high up for him to see.









However, what the State Fair is really famous for, is its food. Most of it deep fried and on a stick. We tried deep fried cheese curds (see right), Big Fat Bacon (see below left), cannoli, snow cones, fudge, and a Hawiian Pretzel. We also took advantage of 'All the Milk You Can Drink for $1' (below right) and combined it with a cone of Sweet Martha's Cookies.

The most amusing thing we found was Australian Battered Potatoes. 'Authentically' served with sweet chilli and sour cream or ranch and cheese. Let it be known that I have never seen potato cakes served with ranch and cheese in Australia. Still, the proprietors had the Wiggles and Slim Dusty playing, which was authentic.

We also saw butter sculptures (left), a parade, complete with marching bands and giant cows (below), and Micah and I went up a tall tower and saw the fair from above.

Just before we left, we came across a stand called 'Walkabout Hats'. There was a sign encouraging people to drop in and say 'g'day'. So we did. We expected to find Americans selling hats made in China, so we were pleasantly surprised to find a South African man selling hats made in Australia and the US.

Jerry the Wise

My boss, Jerry, is a highly intelligent man. But he is also very practical. And, unlike so many other highly intelligent people, he is incredibly nice. He's a rare combination, and I just wanted to share something he has taught me recently.

There have been a number of annoying hurdles I've had to overcome during my time in the USA. The most recent was changing our visa status from J to H. What we didn't realise was, while our we have H status, we still have J visas. So, if we were to leave the country, we would have to apply and get H visas before re-entering the US. There has got to be a better system than this. Anyway, we'll probably do that when we visit Australia early next year. In my normal fashion, I started overthinking this situation and worrying about it; imagining the worse possible scenarios. But when I told Jerry, he barely bat an eye-lid. He told me that there are some things you just have to do in order to do the things you want to do, and stressing about it is not going to help. I wish I could have this attitude about all of my life.

Likes and Dislikes II

My previous 'Likes and Dislikes' post was after six weeks of living in Minnesota, so it seems appropriate that, after being in the Minnesota for nearly nearly six months, here a few more likes a dislikes.

Likes:

Right turn on red. This is an excellent law, and really helps keep traffic flowing. The law is that you can make a right turn on a red light, provided you come to a complete stop first and yield to any oncoming traffic.

S'mores (see right). These things are awesome. Graham crackers, marshmallows and chocolate.

Saint Paul Gym family swim day. Amy, Micah and I have been enjoying this for several weeks now. As a member of the gym, my family get free access on Sundays from 1 til 3 on Sundays. This has provided many good times.

Bird songs. Bird songs in Australia are, umm, unpleasant, to say the least. In contrast, the morning bird song in Minnesota is a joy to wake up to.










Lakes. Minnesota's tagline is '10,000 Lakes'. They're not kidding. Even in the cities, they are quite picturesque.

 

Really cheap grocery shopping. We got a whole roast chicken for free when doing our grocery shopping yesterday. What's not to love?






Dislikes:

Humidity. Really hot summer days are made even worse by humidity. It's not a nice feeling.

Mosquitoes. I think '10,000 Mosquitoes' would be a more accurate tagline for this state. They are not so bad in the cities, but even on my morning walk, if I don't wear insect repellent I will get bitten at least once.

Tropical storms. Fun when you're inside. Can be annoying if you get caught in them.

The 2nd International Conference on Duckweed Research and Applications: A Review

Sorry if this gets a little philosophical. I've been sitting on this one for a while because I was a little afraid of potential reactions to it. But, screw it, here it is anyway.

The second conference I attended last year was specifically on duckweed. Duckweed is very useful as a model species for a number of reasons that only a few members of my audience will care about, so I won't list them.

In addition to being a good model, duckweed is also useful for cleaning waste-water and producing biofuels. It's almost the perfect system. Duckweed grows on waste-water and absorbs contaminants, such as fertilizer run-off, and in doing so it absorbs carbon dioxide and produces oxygen. The duckweed can then be harvested and turned into biofuel, animal feed or even eaten by humans. It's actually pretty awesome.

However, possibly the weirdest part of the conference, was the 'spiritual fervor' surrounding duckweed. It's hard to describe; there were times when I felt I was being preached to by and evangelist, rather than lectured by a scientist (that's not to say that these two things never overlap). People really believe that this plant can save the world. Don't get me wrong, I think it can certainly help. But there are problems it won't solve.

There were also a number of talks on how this plant can help developing countries. There is a group of duckweed researchers who are trying to set up a duckweed farm in Bangladesh to help those living and working in rubbish dumps. It is clear that these people really care about the planet and future generations; they stand to gain nothing out of the programs they are trying to implement (except, I guess, the satisfaction of a job well done). They are model examples of compassion. But I cannot help wondering why. Why do they care? Why does it matter to them that people are sick, starving and dying? Why are they willing to put their time and effort into such programs, when they could be investigating far more interesting questions, and probably making a larger income? I can't help thinking everyone knows deep down they human beings are more than just rearranged pond scum. Most people believe that humans have intrinsic value. But from a purely naturalistic standpoint, this is illogical. I am sure many of the people at this conference are atheists, who claim to believe that humans are merely a product of time and chance. They believe that humans are just another species. And all individuals of a species have only one goal: passing on their genetic information. The logical conclusion of a naturalistic evolutionary worldview is selfishness. But, as exemplified at this conference, people's lifestyle and their choices betray them; they cannot live out their worldview; they are altruistic, even though they have no basis for it.

Las Vegas and Arizona

A couple of my mates from Australia decided to visit the States. Sadly they couldn't make it to Minnesota to visit us, so last Tuesday I flew to Las Vegas to hang out with them for a couple of days. We spent our first day exploring the Strip, entering as many hotels/casinos as we could find.

It's a very weird place. On the one hand, the buildings are huge and impressive - a testament to the ingenuity and intelligence of humans. But on the other hand these buildings are filled with people engaged in various forms of gambling which are a testament to the immense stupidity of humans. There are so many great shows playing at Las Vegas (e.g. Penn & Teller, David Copperfield, Chris Angel, etc.) but people choose to spend their money on gambling. My Aussie friends have a theory that gambling is a way of flaunting your immense wealth. I think they may be right.

As the day turned into night, the seedier side of Vegas came out. People standing in the street offering flyers for hookers, giant mobile billboards advertising 'Girls Direct to You in 20 Minutes', advertisements for 'Zumanity: the sensual side of Circ De Soleil' and shows described as 'Elegantly seductive; classically topless'. 'Classically topless'? What does that even mean? The female body is heavily exploited in Vegas. Sin City seems like a appropriate nickname.

There were two redeeming feature of Las Vegas at night. The first was the Bellagio fountain show. This is well worth seeing. It plays every 15 min from 7 PM til midnight. The fountain 'dances' in time with various pieces of music. The show we watched was to 'One' from A Chorus Line. This video gives you some idea of what it was like. The second was the collection of theme park rides on top of our hotel!

Our second day was spent visiting the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon. The Hoover Dam is one colossal structure and is even more impressive when you consider it was constructed in the 1920's. Many men lost their lives in the construction of this dam.

The part of the Grand Canyon we visited is on a Native American reservation. And they make plenty of money out of it. Nevertheless, it was an awe-inspiring site. One of the great marvels of God's creation.

My flight home left that night. At 12:10 AM. I thought I might be able to get some sleep. I was wrong. Spirit Airlines have somehow acquired a plane on which it is absolutely impossible to get comfortable. I will not be flying with them again. I don't care how cheap their flights are.

(New Jersey, via) New York

Amy, Micah and I went to New York, New York last week. We flew into LaGuardia Airport, which is almost impossible to say without an American accent. We were actually on our way to New Jersey for the 2nd International Conference on Duckweed Research and Applications (which I will review in full soon). We took the New York Airporter into the city. Driving through the city, I felt a little claustrophobic; everything was so close together, as if it had been crammed in by a toddler who wants to take all his toys on holiday. We also saw eight Starbucks in the space of two blocks, which, considering the working population of NYC, is probably not enough at 11 on a Monday morning.

The first thing that hit us when we stepped off the bus, was the pungent smell of body odor. There were other smells mixed in, but the overwhelming smell was BO. We caught the bus from NYC to New Brunswick, NJ where my conference was to be held. For reasons that sound boring when written down (believe me, I got bored reading the first draft of this), catching the bus was confusing and annoying, but we got to the Hilton in East Brunswick in the end.

Despite what people say, NJ is actually OK. The part we stayed in was certainly less crowded, and a good deal more friendly, than NY. The problem is, it's kind of boring from a tourist's point of view. Not much to see or do. We stood on Wall St. though.





















On the last day after the conference had finished, we went out to dinner at a really good falafel place.

This sign pretty accurately describes what happened when I ate some of their hot sauce on my falafel.

The next day we took the train back to NYC to spend the day there before flying back to St. Paul that evening. We first headed for the Empire State building, carefully avoiding the spruikers and scalpers. One stopped us and tried to sell us VIP tickets to the Empire State building for almost double the normal price. We didn't take his offer. And we got up to the top with very little wait time (less than 15 min from entering the door to reaching the observation deck).

It's an impressive building, and an even more impressive view from the top.

 I got in a bit of trouble for doing this. But Micah enjoyed it while it lasted.

The only problem was that we had all our bags and it was very crowded on the observation deck.

After visiting the Empire State building, we set off down 5th Ave to find Central Park, sans map. How hard could it be? After many hours of walking we admitted defeat. We couldn't find it and one of the wheels on my suitcase broke, making it increasingly difficult to drag along. But on our way we accidentally stumbled across the New York Library, Rockefeller plaza, Hell's Kitchen, Time's Square and Broadway! This more than made up for the constant smell of BO.

Weird Foods II: Kraft Easy Cheese

It's that time again. Time to try a weird American food. This time, we look at Kraft Easy Cheese.

We tried it on crackers. It felt weird spraying cheese onto crackers. Also, the fact it can be stored at room temperature made us wonder about the preservative content.

But, it was actually pretty good. It was quite similar to Kraft plastic cheese. Only more gooey. The cheddar taste was fairly mild, but not unpleasant.

In terms of taste and texture, We give it a solid thumbs up.


But considering the fact that this can cost around $4 and there are a variety of relatively inexpensive and tasty cheeses available, Easy Cheese just seems kind of pointless.

Weird foods: Baker's Treat Apple Pie

America has many weird foods. I think some of them should not even be classified as food (e.g. spray cheese). However, Amy and I plan to sample as many of these as we can during our time here.

For the first installment, we tried Baker's Treat Apple Pie (Single Serving).

It looked kind of nice on the packet. A bit like McDonald's apple pies. But this product is weird in several ways. First of all, there is the fact it is sold in a cardboard box and can be kept unrefrigerated for almost a month. Then, there are the ingredients: Enriched flour, high fructose corn syrup, water, palm oil & fractionated palm oil, sugar, evaporated apples, contains less than 2% of each of the following: food starch modified, salt, preservatives, corn starch, xanthan gum, wheat flour, malted barley flour, cinnamon, dextrose, propylene glycol, calcium carbonate, agar, natural flavors, mono- & diglycerides, sorbitan monostearate and soy lecithin. Flour and HFCS; mmm...sounds delicious.

We put the box in the microwave, as per the instructions.

It was kind of soggy and did not look appetizing when we removed it.

I managed one bite, which is more than Amy managed. It just tasted like extremely sweet, slimy shortcrust pastry, with a slight cinnamon aftertaste.

I think High Fructose Corn Syrup Pie might be a more accurate description. I only found about five pieces of apple in the whole thing.

Facilities Mismanagement

The University of Minnesota has a lot of turf grass. Actually, they don't just have a lot, they have an awful lot. I don't know numerically how much it is, but just look at this map. Most of what you see in light green is grass. Grass that is perfectly manicured. Grass that I see being tended every day I go to work. Grass that is resown every spring, regularly fertilized, watered and aerated, and mowed at least once a week. This is a very costly waste of time. Especially when there are so many other nice ground covers that don't need so much primping and preening. I can only imagine what else could be done with the money that is used to maintain lawns.

And the worst part is, most students don't arrive until autumn, so all this effort is really only appreciated for a couple of months, before it's covered in snow.

A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to Work Today

Well, it wasn't funny at the time.

I walked out the front door to our apartment complex into the overcast and humid morning. Rain seemed possible, but I was already about 20 metres from the door so I decided not to go back for my umbrella. I caught the bus as I normally do. About 15 minutes into the bus trip more clouds began to appear and in a few minutes it was as dark as night. A few seconds later, it began to rain. Heavily. This was not just a shower. This was movie rain. Complete with thunder. This was The Matrix Revolutions rain. It was so heavy the bus roof began to leak just minutes after it started.

The rain was still pouring down when the bus arrived at my stop. I stepped off the bus onto the footpath, but I may as well have stepped into a swimming pool. I was drenched within 10 seconds. Then the pedestrian crossing light took forever to change. Fortunately there was a nice Minnesotan who let me share his umbrella until the light changed; after which, I tried, unsuccessfully, to leap the small pond that had formed in front of the curb, and ran for it. It was about a 200 metre sprint, with a laptop backpack. It was pretty pointless though; everything was soaked. Dripping, I walked up to my office, praying my computer hadn't got wet. Thankfully it had stayed dry in my backpack.

I, on the other hand, was completely soaked. How was I going to get any work done like this? I was tempted to just leave my computer there, walk out in the pouring rain and wait for then next bus to take me home. But then I had an idea.

I borrowed a co-worker's umbrella and walked down to the gym. I used their swim suit drying machine (read: large mechanical salad spinner) to get rid of the water out of most of my clothes. But my socks were still damp. And so were my shorts. So I took these items back to the lab, and dried them in the lab drying oven.

A Flawed System.

On Wednesday we drove to the supermarket to pick up some milk, flour and coffee. This would not be a blogworthy happening, except we haven't been able to drive for the past four months!

Let me tell you the epic tale of the elusive Minnesota driver's license. I had to take two tests. The written and the road tests. I passed the written test the first time I took it. I somehow got an appointment for the road test two weeks later. I failed. Driving on the right side of the road was just too weird. I still hadn't adjusted in the 3 weeks since we had arrived. We were really wanted to get a car, so we could actually get around; we thought maybe we could just drive using our Australian licenses. Were we in for a shock. While Australian licenses are valid over here (so long as your visa is valid) getting insurance is a pain. There is no MAIB premium included in vehicle registration, and auto insurance is big business. You must have a minimum level of liability cover, which can make the premiums pretty high, but insurance agents offer discounts on your premium for all manner of things: being married, having a PhD, having a less-expensive car; but a foreign license has the opposite effect. We found a car and we were seriously considering buying, so we went to see an insurance agent. He gave us a quote of $200 per month. Not something we could really afford on a postdoc salary. So in mid-April I booked another road test. For May 31st. That was the earliest I could book it. It was such a long way off and life without a car in the Twin Cities is pretty is so annoying that I thought I should just try going without an appointment; people sometimes don't show up or cancel their appointments and I had heard that you can sometimes get in, if you get there early enough. Our friend Chet took me around 10 AM. But upon arrival Chet discovered he didn't have his proof of insurance in his car, so I couldn't take the test that day. The next week My boss's wife, Sue, kindly offered to take me around 9 AM. That wasn't early enough; the 'no-appointment' lane at the DVS was completely full. The next week Chet took me at 6:40 AM (the DVS doesn't open until 8 AM) and we were still 8th in line. We waited. And waited. By 11:30 AM only two of the no-appointment drivers had been tested. We gave up.

I ended up taking my test on May 31st and I passed! I got my temporary license and some of our friends from Church gave us their car (we changed the title over using my temporary license and a few other bits of paperwork). Then I tried to get insurance. After many hours on the internet, many emails and many phone calls, I discovered that it's not possible to get insurance using a temporary license. The insurance companies are very particular about having an actual license number, which was nowhere to be seen on my temporary license. So we waited a further three weeks and my license finally arrived on Tuesday and I bought auto insurance on Wednesday. Then we drove the the supermarket to celebrate.

ASMS 2013: A review

For the past week I have been at the American Society of Mass Spectrometry Annual Conference in Minneapolis. It was held at the Minneapolis Convention Center, which is a very nice location. Minneapolis is actually kind of impressive.

It's not very big though, which I found surprising considering the population.
The conference itself was pretty good. I learned a lot from my weekend short course, entitled 'Mass Analyzers: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know But Didn't Know Who to Ask'.

However, I found the Oral Sessions somewhat frustrating/boring. Most of the presenters at this conference seemed to see mass spectrometers as an end in themselves. Many of the talks followed this format:

1. We got some samples from somewhere. It doesn't really matter where.
2. We analyzed them using a clever mass spec technique or new instrumentation.
3. We got awesome separation and identified lots of metabolites/proteins. We don't care what their functions are.

I only care about mass spectrometry inasmuch as it can answer interesting biological questions. Instrumentation is interesting to a point, but it's just a tool to me.

Nevertheless I learned a lot. And there were quite a few talks that actually applied mass spectrometry to some interesting questions. And many of the posters were actually interesting.

But one of the great things about this conference was all the free stuff. Each evening the mass spectrometry corporations put on 'hospitality suites', which are kind of hard to explain. They were held in the Hilton Hotel and the best way to describe it I think is 'night clubs, with free alcohol and food and mass spectrometers as part of the decor'.

Here are some guys making blueberry martinis through an ice-sculpture.

And Waters Corporation had a game show.

Freebies abounded at all of these events.

All of these corporations also put on free breakfast seminars to tell you about their new technology and why it was the best. And to make you have positive mental associations with their company.

This is what I ended up with.

So now I have a lot of free corporate-branded stuff and a head exploding with mass spectrometry. Awesome.

A Grand Old Weekend

This has been a good weekend. For a start, on Friday I got my Minnesota license! It was actually pretty easy in the end. Plus, some of our friends from church have offered to give us their old car. It's a '91 Toyota and it's pretty rusty, but it will do for the summer, and it's free! We are very grateful for their generosity. It means that we can take a bit more time finding a newer, less rusty, car for the winter months.

On Saturday we visited downtown St. Paul. A few weeks ago we visited downtown Minneapolis. Maybe we just don't get downtown in the US, or maybe we weren't downtown proper, but we were pretty underwhelmed. There wasn't really much to do. Heaps and heaps of pubs, cafes and restaurants, but nothing like cities in Australia, like Melbourne or Sydney, where you can just wander the streets and you're sure to find something interesting. Anyway St. Paul provided a much better experience.

We caught the 9:30 AM bus and started exploring, hoping to find something interesting. Initially it seemed just like Minneapolis: condos, office buildings and not a whole lot going on. Then, when we were waiting at a set of traffic lights, a nice Minnesotan wound down his car window and asked 'Are you looking for the Farmer's Market?' We responded 'Yes! Yes we are. That's exactly what we're looking for.' He gave us directions, which we followed and found the Farmer's market full of fresh produce (a lot of rhubarb), jams, sauces, dips, cheese, eggs, bread and fudge. Most of which we sampled. It was really good, but also priced as such.

Then we went to this Cafe and got a plate of chippies. It was one of the most hipster places I've ever been in. In a good way. And the chips were great.

We were very impressed with the chalk art on the menu.

Then on Sunday, some friends from Church, Jim and Kelly, invited us to the Grand Old Day celebration. On the first Sunday of summer, most of Grand Ave, St. Paul, is closed off and taken over by a market/fair type thing. It was very enjoyable. We ate roasted sweet corn, deep fried cream cheese wontons, an egg roll and a corndog. Cheese curds will have to wait until the State Fair.

 

Authentic New Zealand pies. Made and served by Americans.