Tag Archives: Featured

2026, Business, Family, Food, Travel

Grasso Plaza

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Oft times I feel as if my world is fairly small.  494 to the south, Highway 100 to the west, 35W to the east and Franklin to the north.  Obviously I do travel outside of my “zone” but overwhelmingly, my life and errands are within.  So it isn’t odd to me that my mother also had a fairly constricted range.  It was brought home to me last week when YA and I were in St. Louis that Grasso Plaza is basically a catch-all for just about everything.

Grasso Plaza is about 5 minutes from my mom’s house, up on Gravois Road, which is a major thoroughfare in the southwestern suburbs.  It’s basically just two strip malls across Gravois from each other with five lanes of traffic in between.  (One of these lanes is what St. Louisans call the “suicide lane”, in which you can basically go either direction – insanity.)  The parking lots on both sides were clearly designed by an idiot who had been drinking heavily.  I can’t believe that the insurance companies haven’t banded together to force the Plaza to have them both re-done; I’ve witnessed two accidents myself in my visits to Nonny.

Anyway, here are all the places in Grasso Plaza that we went to in our three full days:

  • Schnucks.  This is one of the grocery store chains in St. Louis; I am not making this up.  We got a few snacks and some beverages to keep in the condo while we were there.
  • St. Louis Bread Company. SLBC was bought by AuBon Pain in 1993 and everywhere else except St. Louis, the name was changed to Panera.  I assume some lawsuit or contractual thing was involved.  On the outside the sign says St. Louis Bread Company, on the inside, everything says Panera, including how your receipt prints out.  We had two meals there.
  • Walgreens.  Of all the things that Nonny didn’t have in her condo was lotion!
  • Southern Bank. Nonny’s bank – we had to deposit a check of hers.
  • Post Office. We had to send the equipment back to MobileHelp (Nonny’s “help I’ve fallen and can’t get up” service).  Very very friendly and chatty clerks – good thing no one was waiting behind me.
  • Cotton’s Ace Hardware. I’ve been here many times over the years but this trip it was to drop off the last of Nonny’s canned goods/cereals.  Cotton’s has a collection barrel for the Affton Christian Food Pantry.
  • Dollar Tree. Just a quick stop for some plastic drinking cups for the condo since there were so many folks working on the cleaning out.
  • H&R Block. Stopped by to ask one tax question concerning Nonny’s taxes.  They weren’t helpful.  I should have just texted Linda.  Ended up getting better info from AARP.

These weren’t the only errands we ran, but it was most of them and I was happy to put Grasso Plaza behind us.  Even though it was handy, I don’t want to mess with those parking lots and that suicide lane ever again!

Do you have any favorite/usual shopping spots?

2026, home, Travel, Uncategorized

Palm To Pine

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Highway 75 runs north and south through Luverne. It is a major highway in the region. Many years of my life were spent along this road. My first house as an infant and young child was right along the road. My parents built a house along 75 south of town when I was17. My undergrad college in Moorhead was along 75. The University of Manitoba was right along 75, as was my first Winnipeg apartment, although it was called Pembina Highway north of the border. It was called the Palm to Pine Highway, as I think it started in Texas.

On April 15, Highway 75 through the center of Luverne will be closed for several months for resurfacing and new sewer pipes. This is described as progress. They culled 100 year old trees for the project. The MN road department has assured residents that homes and businesses along the route will not be hemmed in. We shall see. It will be huge problem for the marching band festival in September. Much of the diverted traffic will go on the Blue Mound Avenue, just off our street. I know this needs to be done, but what a huge pain to live through.

Any annoying road conconstruction by you this summer? What are your most sentimental highways?

2026, Family, Food, Gatherings, Uncategorized

Easter Dinner Disaster

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Our Easter menu consisted of scalloped potatoes, roasted butternut squash with apples, raspberry cream pie, and smoked farmer’s ham with a plum glaze.

Since we had to sing in the choir at both services on Sunday, I decided to make the potatoes and the pie on Saturday. I got the pie crust made and the pie assembled, and then started on the scalloped potatoes. I used Julia’s recipe, which she describes as “ambrosia”. It consists of two cups of heavy cream and two cups of half and half, bay leaf, salt and pepper in which you simmer on the stove two pounds of very thinly sliced Yukon Gold potatoes. They simmer for 90 minutes, and then you put them in a gratin dish. They can be made ahead of time to this point, then baked the next day in the oven for 20 minutes after you sprinkle them with grated Gruyere cheese.

I put the simmered potatoes in the 14 × 9 ceramic Le Creuset gratin dish to cool down preparatory to putting them in the fridge for the night. Husband was looking for ingredients for a cucumber salad in the cupboard just above the gratin dish when he accidentally knocked a bottle of avocado oil off the shelf. It landed in on the potatoes, and the gratin dish shattered into about eight pieces.

The pieces seemed pretty intact, and after we had scraped all the potatoes into another gratin dish we reassembled the busted dish in the sink to see if we could salvage the potatoes and serve them on Sunday. We were able to account for all but a quarter inch piece of ceramics.

I was really torn about what to do. Should we serve the potatoes and warn our guest about the possibility of a ceramic fragment? Should I throw it out and make it again on Sunday? I decided to decide in the morning.

The chance of our guest breaking a tooth or swallowing a sharp glass fragment was too great for me to deal with, so I tossed the potatoes and made more after church. They were ambrosial. I remembered a conversation I once had with the wife of one of our ND psychiatrists. She admitted that when her husband was in his residency in Texas she invited several people over for dinner. She really wanted to impress, and wanted to serve liver pate. They were quite poor at the time, so she bought a can of liver cat food and served it with crackers. No one was any the wiser, and her guests liked the “pate”. Well, we certainly could afford more cream and potatoes, and I am glad I threw the first batch of potatoes away.

What kitchen disasters have you had? Ever served a dish that you knew had something wrong with it?

2026, Family, Food, Uncategorized

Tea Time

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I don’t know if it is the increased humidity and cold and storms here, but Husband and I have been drinking much more tea than we did in ND. Husband is a great tea maker and we have nice teapots and infusers.

If all goes well, we will have an order of a variety of teas delivered today. I particularly like fruit teas like Rote Grutze, a North German tea with hibiscus and dried fruit. I also like East Friesien tea you must have with cream and rock sugar. The cream is poured in a specific way to make it look like eruptions. Husband prefers strong black teas like those from Scotland and Ireland.

I never had much tea before I went to England as a college junior, and had tea in a tea shop. I tried to sweeten my tea with what looked like sugar, but turned out to be coarse salt. My, did I get odd looks from the servers! I like lemon in my black tea, but the salt was really awful! They gave me a new pot of tea.

What is your favorite tea? Sweetened or lemon? Tea cakes?

2026, animals, chickens, crops, Farming Update, History, Nature, pets, Science, Theatre, Travel, Uncategorized

HONK HONK

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This weeks Farming Update from Ben

It’s angry goose season at the College again. Caution tape and cones have been put up and emails have been sent out warning us of the danger. The first day as I passed the pair in the parking lot, the male goose just opened his mouth at me. Didn’t even hiss, but he was warning me off in no uncertain terms.



Last Friday Kelly and daughter and I drove to Alexandria. I went to pick up the Track Wacker for use this spring. We took Highway 14, stopped in Mankato for a bathroom break and filled the truck with diesel fuel. $132 later we headed for New Ulm where we stopped to see Hermann the German. I’m pretty sure I was there with my parents when I was a kid. Really didn’t remember anything about it, and on Friday it was 30° and windy and we didn’t linger very long. He’s closed for renovation anyway.


Two lane roads the rest of the way to Alexandria and a very nice drive. We got adjoining rooms at the hotel so daughter could have one room and Kelly and I could have the other. It was a pretty slick way to do it, and I would sure try it again in the future.
I got up early the next morning, had a mediocre breakfast at the hotel with French toast sticks so tough I couldn’t chew through the crust on the bottom, but the sausage patties were good and I headed half an hour northwest to Millerville to pick up the Track Wacker. I knew it would fit in the back of the pickup. Then for good measure, I bought a fire ring as well.


I got back to the hotel just as the other two finished breakfast and we packed up and were back on the road. Drove to see Theater L’Homme Dieu where I spent a few days with a show back in 2010. Again, quiet two lane roads home, probably didn’t have any traffic for 20 or 30 miles. Saw some really long trains. I couldn’t get over how long some of them were.
Being a sucker for a historic roadside marker I had looked up a few before leaving. A few miles outside of Grove City we stopped at the Acton State Monument. The battle of Acton, the Acton incident, and the Ness Cemetery. They mark the beginning of the U.S. – Dakota War of 1862. You know, it’s one thing to read about it in the books, it’s another to stand there and realize it happen RIGHT HERE.

And then to the Ness Cemetery and see the monument: one of Minnesota’s oldest monuments (Dedicated September 13, 1878) marking the burial of those first victims. It was a very deeply moving experience for us.

Twelve hours of driving and about 600 miles. We got home about six in the evening. A couple neighbors had come over to feed the dogs and collect eggs. They call the dogs their “dog grandchildren” and gave Bailey extra food “because we love her“. Sure is nice to have neighbors like that.

Sunday I unloaded the truck, took the rear blade off the tractor, hauled the snowblower out, I even got the lawnmower out and mowed down some grass and weeds before I put the snowblower in its summer parking spot. Daughter and I picked up driveway markers, (but I haven’t taken the snow fence down yet, I don’t wanna jump the gun too fast), and I got the four wheeler running and drove that around a while. Drove down in the pasture to check things out after winter.

I also picked up branches along the road and  Kelly picked up branches in the yard. I think the spring mud is pretty much done. The fields are really drying out, or at least they were before it rained all day Thursday. It could be an early spring here doing fieldwork. If I was a little more prepared I might’ve been able to get out and do a little fieldwork in March. I remember one year doing some on March 31. That doesn’t happen very often.

I spent a few hours in the Shop one night putting a couple new LED lights on the back of the 8200 tractor. Took me an hour to do the first one and five minutes to do the second. Standing on a work platform and reaching over the outside dual tire was another instant of wishing I was 6 inches taller or my arms were 6 inches longer. But I managed. The 6410 tractor that I use for the majority of the work, I’ve replaced a bunch of lights with LED and I have four more to replace and two more to add on the back. It only has two rear work lights at the moment and really could use two additional. It was on my to-do list but apparently will be a summertime project.

Baby chicks arrived on Wednesday morning. I had gotten their pen ready so once they were delivered and we did the usual pictures and videos of them in the box, I could take them right down and dip their beaks in the water and get them all settled in. I ordered 50 this year for $260. Last year I ordered 40 and it was $170. Twenty of the Easter egg blue and green layers, 10 of the Silver Laced Wyandotte,, 10 Lavender Orpington, those gray ones like Mabel from a few weeks ago, and 10 of Hatchery choice. Could be anything.

So far so good on them.

Screenshot


My summer Padawan came to the college a couple of days and helped me paint the set. He tries to educate me on what’s hip these days. When I took him back home he showed me all the different kinds of cologne he has and told me in the winter you wear something warm and spicy and for example he wouldn’t wear this certain cologne at this time of year. I stared at him quizzically. Why not?  And he stared back at me. Like, because everybody knows that. Well, you have to learn that somewhere I said. I mean did he read that in GQ magazine? (He doesn’t read magazines.) Well, just everybody knows that he said. I laughed. Well, I don’t.

HAVE YOU EVER ATTACKED A GOOSE?

WHAT IS THE PROPER NUMBER OF CONES TO PLACE AROUND SOME GEESE?

2026, Family, home, Uncategorized

Quilts

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If the weather improves by Sunday, best friend/boommate will come for Easter dinner. She had been coming down from near Hutchinson almost weekly preparatory to moving in with us in May, bringing things she doesn’t need the moving company to transport.

Friend is a quilter. She has tons of fabric and sewing equipment the movers will load up and put in the very large and sunny room in our basement that will be her quilting headquarters. She has lots of projects underway, including a new quilt for our bed that we commissioned last year. She does really nice work.

I was making one of the beds yesterday and stopped to examine the quilt that I am using on it for warmth under the bedspread. You can see it in the header photo. It was made by my mother and her paternal aunts in the late 1930’s. It was made from any fabric they had on hand as well as worn clothing pieces. There was both machine and hand stitching on them . I wish I knew whose hand stitching it was, my mom’s or either Lena’s , Meta’s, Bertha”s, or Greta’s.

My mother had about four of these quilts and kept them in her cedar chest and never used them. She let me finally start using them about 30 years ago. We have two left. Friend has the opinion that quilts should be used, not stored, and if they wear out, you just make a new one. I agree with her, but it is pretty wonderful to have this 90 year old quilt to still use.

Know any quilters? What special quilts and textiles have you seen? What were your great aunts’ names?

2026, Fantasy, Health, Technology, Uncategorized

AI Ears

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Husband’s hearing aids are the sort that are battery operated. At least once a week he has to replace the batteries, those tiny round ones that come in a round plastic case and that are impossible to remove from their packaging. Husband has very poor fine motor skills at this point, and it has become increasingly difficult to change the batteries. I am always worried he will drop one and a dog will swallow it.

We decided it was time to move up to rechargeable hearing aids. We visited an audiologist last week and ordered these high tech, state of the art hearing aids. They come in a nice red color that are easy to see when not in his ears. They are somehow hooked up to an AI program that causes them to mainly pick up sound from the dominant environmental sound source. They sound so wonderful I almost want to give them names and have a welcome home party. They also cost a bundle, so Husband better not lose them.

I find the emerging AI presence in our world disturbing, but I can see the benefit if used for things like hearing aids. We pick them up next week in Sioux Falls. I hope they live up to their hype.

Thoughts, fears, hopes about AI?

2026, Fantasy, Health, home, News, Uncategorized

Rumours

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I am giggling. On Monday afternoon, Husband was in the driveway seasoning his new automatic charcoal smoker/grill, when the neighbor across the street came over to talk. She is a couple of years older than I am, and I was a high school classmate of her younger sister. Our mothers were in the same sewing club. Her family owned the Old Norwegian Boarding House in Luverne in the early years of the 20th century. Her son recently fixed our tires.

Mary asked Husband anxiously how I was doing, as another neighbor, someone we only met once, told her he heard that I had been diagnosed with dementia.

Well, this was quite a surprise! Husband had me come out to reassure Mary that I was fine, and in possession of all my faculties. She gave me an enormous hug, and said she would go have a little talk with the neighbor to let him know he was wrong, and that he had probably mixed me up with another close neighbor who actually has been diagnosed with Alzheimers. We walk our dogs with that woman, whose name is Jeanette. Her husband is a Vietnam Vet with MS and Agent Orange issues.

This is a small town. I am curious if any other residents have heard I have dementia, and how I should address it. Start reciting facts and figures? Wear a sign that says “I am cognitively intact”? Maybe I can act outrageously in public and everyone will forgive me!

How would you manage a situation like this? Ever been the subject of a rumour?

2026, Automotive, books, Family, Mysteries, Travel

Road Trip Reading

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I’m rarely without a book at hand.  I always have a CD in the car, CD player also in my studio.  Libby on my laptop.  Libby on my phone.  STACKS of books in my bedroom (library books in one place, my unread titles in another).  Even when traveling, books come with me; my packing list on the computer has books as a box to tick.

Even though I didn’t think I’d have any time for reading on this trip, I brought books.  No books on CD in the car with YA but I had my laptop with Libby, had my phone.  STILL brought books with me. I did make a conscious effort to bring things on the lighter side…

    • The Mysterious Affair at Styles (CD) by Agatha Christie. I’ve read this before but all my BritBox the past two months stirred up a desire to read a few of her early works again.  I’m actually almost done with this.  Maybe I can do an errand by myself today to finish it up!
    • Serial Killer Support Group (Book) by Saratoga Schaefer. I haven’t started this yet but it’s called a “dark, witty debut” about a young woman trying to solve the mystery of her younger sister’s murder.  Hopefully the “witty” is true.
    • Family of Spies (Libby) by Christine Kuehn. This is non-fiction; written by the author when she discovered her dark family roots. I’m about half way through this one; although it’s not a feel-good subject (spies during WWII), it’s written pretty much as a straight-forward history.  I think the author was putting some emotional distance between herself and the story.
    • Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective (Book) by Leslie Thomas. I also haven’t started this one yet but I have seen the first three episode of the TV series thanks to BritBox.  The TV series was a little on the lighter side so I suppose the book could swing either way.
    • A History of the World in 12 Shipwrecks (Book) by David Gibbins. This is the last of the “listicles” books that I picked up for Blevins Book Club.  I was trying to cram it in two weeks ago and then the snowstorm happened, so I haven’t picked it up since.  I’m about 1/3 of the way through.  It’s not nearly as good as I was hoping.  Writing is a bit dry and I was hoping for much more interesting photographs.

Of course, the chances I’ll finish any of these (well, maybe the Christie) is pretty slim, but where reading is concerned, hope springs eternal.  A bit like the cat and the grocery bag from Duck’s Breath Mystery Theater!

What do you like to read when you’re traveling?

2026, animals, home, Travel, Uncategorized

Road Tripping

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The chances are pretty good that while you are reading this, YA and I are in my car, headed to my mom’s service and to get her condo cleaned up.  I am in charge of the service and also the cleaning up/organizing/donating.  My middle sister has taken over most of the paperwork and financial stuff. 

Initially we had planned to take the dog with us.  With her anxiety/lashing out, there weren’t any boarding places that would take her.  YA had purchased a new collapsible kennel for the trip and we were acclimatizing Guinevere to it.  The neighbors were going to watch the house and come over a couple of times a day to feed the kitty and take down the garbage – all that good neighbor stuff.

After a couple of days of ruminating on it, both YA and I have decided we want to take the cat with us.  She’s a little discombobulated by the dog not being here so leaving her in an empty house seems cruel.  In addition, after both my mom and the dog going so very quickly, we’re just not emotionally ready to not have the cat with us.

So… purchased a new cat carrier as her old one is pretty small (only used for the 2-block trip to the vet every year).  Found a harness that fits her in the “pet drawer” (we have everything from every pet ever in that drawer).  All the travel-with-cats websites say make sure she’s micro-chipped.  Check.  When I was at Petsmart getting a top-off of cat food, I decided to get her a new kitty bed.  She has two on the radiator in my bedroom but one is so horribly scruffy and dirty – it would be too awful to take that with us.  Yes, I know I could probably toss it in the washer but I think the shed kitty fur is the only thing holding it together. 

The list now includes new carrier, new bed, littler box w/ litter, little litter bags, harness, kitty dish & kitty food, kitty treats.  Hopefully we haven’t forgotten anything! 

Wish us luck!

Any good animal road trip stories?