Minnesota, Part II: Quintessentially Minnesota

Once we arrived in the Twin Cities, we were greeted by one of my favorite people in the entire world, Ehlan. Lola and I stayed with Ehlan and her family for an entire week, and what an adventure-filled week it was.

See, because I don't get to visit Minnesota as often as I would like, every time I come, I want to do all the classic Minnesota stuff. This trip was, of course, a little different since I was toting an infant along and Ehlan has both an infant AND a toddler, so this time we skipped the local college bars and stuck to more family-orientated activities.

Like, going to the grocery store.

[Insert Sarah Palin-esque *wink*].

Actually, going to Lunds is one of my favorite Minnesota activities because it always conjures up memories of Ehlan and I generously taste-testing the Lunds olive bar.

So, we made a small field trip to the Lunds in Highland Park and forced Lola and Aidan to share a cart. As you can see, they weren't thrilled about sharing such small quarters with each other.

My favorite is still the green olive stuffed with blue cheese.

We also ate lunch at Perkins.

For the non-Minnesota informed, Perkins is essentially Coco's, BUT (and this is a big BUT), they have the most amazing muffins. Like, every type of muffin you can imagine. The option of having a muffin comes with every meal. Ordering eggs benedict? Add a muffin. BLT? Add a muffin.

Off the top of my head, I can't remember what I ordered for lunch. But, I do remember this: I had a pumpkin muffin with cream cheese frosting. It was delicious.

I was impressed with the level of kid-friendliness of Perkins. Although, I suppose, small children and loud obnoxious college students are kind of in the same category.

And then, STAND BACK, I saw a million apples be transformed into cider. Well, maybe not a million, but a lot of apples. While this isn't a Minnesota thing, per se, it is definitely NOT a California thing.

For the first few days of my visit, Ehlan's husband kept talking about how he was going to get apples from their neighbor's tree and bring them to his family's apple-cider-making-party-event-thingy. I was like, "Oh, that's cool, apple cider." Then, Ryan showed me one of the apples off his neighbor's tree. It was, seriously, the biggest apple I have ever seen in my life. Like, if it didn't look like an apple, I would have thought it was a grapefruit, or a pomegranate, or a SMALL WATERMELON. It was huge.

Then, Ryan went off to the neighbors and picked a million apples. His family members did the same, and then on a Saturday morning, they all met up at one of the cousin's barns/shops/shed/garage things (I don't know what they are called, but they are everywhere in Minnesota), and pressed them with this thing:

Ehlan and I conveniently arrived midway through the cider party,

and they were ONLY halfway done.

I believe it is safe to say that the cider we drank that night was the freshest cider I had ever drank. It was delicious. It was so good that I almost called Josh and said, "We're moving to small town Minnesota!" But then I remembered that I am only licensed in California and as such, I will be subject to buying my pre-made pastuerized cider at Trader Joe's for eternity. But that's OK, I'll just have to visit Ehlan again sometime soon. :)