Mill Valley Kitchen
The latest in a long line of new restaurants to hit the Minneapolis dining scene is Mill Valley Kitchen on the corner of Excelsior and France Avenue in St. Louis Park. They’ve been open just over a month and I’ve tried the place out twice. It’s a very nice restaurant and there are three things that I really appreciate about the place: they list the calories and nutritional breakdown of their menu items including designations for vegan and gluten-free, they use local/sustainable ingredients in most of their food, and contrary to most restaurants, when you look around the room everyone seems to have nutritious, “real” food on their plates.
This is not a place for people who like large portions and the feeling of getting good value for their money. I think you do get very good value for your buck here, but it’s more in the way of eating nutrient dense food that tastes good in the right sized portion than in the traditional there is a crap-load of food on my plate and it only cost me $9.95.
They have a kid menu and I was impressed with the food they serve the kiddies. The mac and cheese was homemade and yummy. The chicken fingers were real, moist pieces of chicken breast, panko-breaded and baked. The real test is the kids and they both chowed down. Kid’s meals are served with edamame and fruit; what’s not to love.
Prices are reasonable with most menu items around $10 and most entrees between $15-$20. This is a place where you can enjoy your meal and feel good about enjoying your meal. Both times I left pleasantly full, enjoyed my food, and didn’t feel guilty about indulging with either portion size or food selection.
Speaking of indulging, dessert is another nice twist, with desserts served in a shot glass. Perfect for an individual and at $2.50, not a big ding on the pocket book. I found service both times to be warm, knowledgeable, attentive, and not over-bearing.
My only complaint about this place isn’t really fair, but it’s my complaint so I’m going to lodge it. The place is just too perfect. Everything is pretty and safe and nice and all of the people are the same way; it’s missing an edge. It feels very suburban, which isn’t inherently bad, but it’s not a place I could fall in love with. So, I’m very much in like with the Mill Valley Kitchen and I’ll be back, but until things aren’t so pretty and perfect I won’t be able to give it my heart.
Why A yBike?
It’s now been a full week living with the yBike Pewi and a great week it has been. If you live with or know a one or two-year-old, read this and then head to the nearest yBike retailer. This thing is that good…
- The bike is cute. It looks like a smiley face on wheels.
- It’s small. We have a smaller house and it’s the first large toy we’ve owned that doesn’t take up much space.
- It’s light. When it needs to be moved, it’s easy for anyone to move it.
- Your kid will look cute riding the thing. Sure, your kid’s cute now, but wait till you see him/her on a yBike.
- Your kid will spend at least an hour a day riding the thing. That’s an hour a day not spent trying to kill him/herself.
- Your kid will spend another hour a day pushing or carrying the bike. Your child will beam with pride at the accomplishment and you will marvel at your excellent purchasing skills.
- Your kid can multi-task while yBiking. Who says you can’t talk on a pretend remote control phone while riding a big red smiley face?
- Your older child/children will delight in riding it when the younger one is asleep. You will smartly make a rule that the yBike is reserved for the little one while he/she is awake and remind the older one/ones of the many hours of toddler-free Y bike fun he/she/they will have when the little one is sleeping.
- The yBike works well on rugs and hardwood and it’s easy to get from one to the other. He/she will again smile at the accomplishment.
- The yBike has 4 casters that swivel 360 degrees for easy movement. Your kid doesn’t get frustrated and can easily move around obstacles.
I know what the cousin is getting for his one-year-old birthday. Go Pewi!
Smaller Than A Large Vegetarian
Welcome to installment 2 of my Let’s-Eat-Better-Plan. Installment 1 was the first step, admitting the problem. With step 2 I want to start work on the solution. I’ve been thinking about how I want to eat and how I want to feed my family, and I feel a general philosophy beginning to form. I’ve read a few books on vegetarian and vegan lifestyles and about the respective nutrition of both. I’ve read many books about general nutrition, animal welfare, farming, and the well-being of this planet we all share. My reading has left me to conclude that in a perfect world I would be vegan. Alas, this is not a perfect world and it’s not a choice I’m willing to make.
Vegetarianism would be a much easier switch to make and maintain, but if I’m honest with myself, it’s not a change that I’m willing to make either, at least not at this point. For me the main focus of this new eating philosophy will be limiting dairy and eggs, and severely limiting meat. My secondary focus will be to rid our house of over-processed food, reduce the amount of refined grain and sugar that we consume, and increase the variety of whole grains, veggies, fruit and beans. No one food or food group will be off limits, but I want most of what enters our house to be whole food with its nutrients intact.
Finally, I don’t want anyone of us becoming so consumed with eating “right” that we lose sight of the big picture. We can still have cake, candy, cheeseburgers, pizza and stuff like that now and then. It’s more about reforming the everyday than limiting the once in a while. Judging by the lot of us, I don’t foresee this being a problem, but sometimes funny things happen.
That’s the gist of what I’m thinking, now it’s time to put the plan into action. Stay tuned for the next installment…
Larger Than A Banana-Shaped Candy
I distinctly remember my grade school lunches. Mom would give me money to buy hot lunch, I would pocket the money, and choose cash over food. In middle school I switched to a private school and along with the regular hot lunch, they also served an àla carte style lunch. What started as a pretzel and string cheese a day, quickly morphed into a 2 or 3 pretzel a day lunch, where I brought my own money to supplement the money my mom gave me.
Turns out it wasn’t the cash I wanted so much as the ability to eat what I wanted. Once the opportunity to eat something I really liked arrived and I didn’t have a mom around to monitor my actions, I jumped on it and quickly did so to excess.
Mazie is a child much like I was. She will forgo a meal without a second thought if she deems it not to her liking, and she will eat like a large adult male if there is something that she loves up for grabs.
I’d really like to keep her from trekking down my same food path as I don’t think it’s a very good one, but figuring out how to transform her into a person that likes lots of stuff and knows how to stop eating when she’s full, seems a daunting task.
My latest plan involves candy. I know, I know, it doesn’t sound good, but so far it’s working and the trade-off seems worth it. I have high hopes that in a year or two she might genuinely like more foods and if not, well at least she’ll have better nutrition in the meantime.
I think a lot of the battle with kids like Mazie who are really picky, but don’t have a true food aversion, is getting them to eat stuff that they don’t like more than once. It’s been shown that if a person eats a food they don’t like, many times after eating that food 10-15 times they will either develop a taste for it or at least find it okay. Since I can’t open Mazie’s mouth and shove the food in, and simple tactics that might work with less picky children don’t work with her, I’m sticking with the candy.
She got a bottle of assorted fruit-shaped candy for her birthday. Each piece of candy is small and the candy is reserved only for ’earning for eating’. When a meal is served I tell her how many bites of something (usually 3 or 4) she doesn’t like she needs to eat to earn a piece of candy. Once she earns a piece of candy she gets it right then and there. There is no candy offered for foods that I know she doesn’t have a problem eating.
A couple of nights ago she had a child-sized portion of salad and ate it all. The salad wasn’t just some lettuce thrown into a bowl; it was chock-full of nutritious stuff. This type of thing has never happened before. The best we’ve done up to this point is getting her to eat a bite or two of something she doesn’t like. Now she is eating 10-20 decent sized bites of stuff she wouldn’t have touched before.
It’s made dinner fun instead of something she dreads, and watching her eat things willingly, without complaint, is a magical thing for me. You can call me a bad mother and I won’t even mind. I’ll be watching my six-year-old eat salad.
Music To My Ears
My husband is a pretty cool guy. Turns out he has some pretty cool ideas in his head as well. He told me several years ago that the best way to change something you don’t like or push for something you do like is to vote with your dollars. Good advice. He also encouraged me to branch out musically and stop listening to “old” music as a mainstay and instead investigate what’s out there now. More good advice.
For me the music of my youth is more powerful than the music of maturity. I don’t think music today is any less awesome than it was in my teens and twenties, it could easily be better, but my ability to connect to it isn’t as strong. Angst is worth a certain something and most of my angst has left the building.
I can still sit back and belt my heart out to the Indigo Girls, Pink Floyd, The Cure or Trip Shakespeare, and all of the old feelings come flooding back. It’s reassuring, powerful and easy to get stuck there instead of foraging ahead. We have some friends in NYC who are a few years older than us and they are constantly on the look out for new music. They see live music 4 or 5 times a week. Their love of music blows me away. I’m inspired by them to keep appreciating the new instead of holing away with my past. The past is a nice place to visit, but it’s not the place I want to live.
I prefer concerts in places where you get a comfy chair and maybe a nice meal. A venue where you sit back and take in the music in a relaxed sort of way. Maybe at the very end you stand up for one song and do a little light dancing. It’s all very civil and nice and proper. The band performs for you and you listen and appreciate. But, every once in awhile I head out to First Avenue or a similar venue to remind myself of what music is like when it’s one of the most important things in your life. It’s not comfortable, quiet, or relaxed, but for me it’s a bigger, brighter and more participatory experience. It’s still not something I’m up for very often, but getting in touch with that sort of feeling is the best way for me to remember the past and live in the present.
Snippets From A Friday
8:30am - Tyler finds a magnetic paper doll in his closet. He calls it baby (uttering his first two-syllable word ever!), gives it a kiss, and plays the first cute card of the day.
9:00am - We load into the van to find cheese! We take cheese very seriously in this family. Jamie says our grocery bill is usually half the Organic Valley mexican cheese blend that I and the kids adore, and half some other stuff. He’s not far off. Something to be worked on in the new eating program for sure. When we grocery shopped yesterday, Whole Foods was out of most of their cheese due to a refrigerator malfunction, so today we hit the Linden Hills Food Co-op. Mazie and I had stopped by the co-op last night at 9:30pm because we take cheese so seriously, but they were already closed. Today we were not to be denied. I’m happy to report that four bags of lovely Organic Valley mexican cheese blend are now chilling in our refrigerator. We sang songs of cheese, really bad songs, and generally cheesed it up for awhile in honor of our favorite cheese finally being back where it belongs.
10:00am - A stop at Creative Kidstuff to pick up a “y” pewi bike for Tyler (sent from another store in the color of choice) that we bought last week when we were there to return something else, almost results in the purchase of another Tyler item. Tyler + Creative Kidstuff can get expensive quick. 
He plays his second cute card in hopes of securing another toy for the home front. You’ll notice he was blazing his own trail riding the middle of the toddler see-saw instead of resting on the more conventional see-saw seat.
10:30am - Mazie has a play-date at a friend’s house. I hang around for an hour until she feels comfortable, then take my super-sleepy toddler to Target for a quick shopping run. He falls asleep on the way back to pick her up, but she’s in a great mood so I feel better about the Tyler neglect…and I just got him a “y” bike, so what’s he complaining about.
1:00pm - Tyler finally gets lunch. He’s very nice about his lunch being delayed an hour and a half. Do I smell another cute card or is it a poopy diaper?
1:30pm - Tyler gets a fresh diaper. It was smelling pretty stinky down there. Tyler sneezes, I say, “Bless You”. Tyler says, “Ah-goo”, as in “Achoo”. This is his second, two-syllable word of the day. He’s played his third cute card , but it’s not going to save him from his much needed nap.
2:00pm - My mom picks up Mazie for a sleep-over and Tyler is asleep.
2:30pm - The “y” bike has been assembled, Tyler’s still asleep and lots of cheese is in the refrigerator. Gotta love it here in Tammy land.
Smaller Than A Grass-Fed Cow
I’ve thought a lot about what I put in my mouth over the last 20 years, but all of that thinking hasn’t resulted in much change. I’ve read a few books over the years that have altered certain aspects of my eating, but I still eat the same basic diet that I’ve been eating since I was a kid.
I’m picky, don’t care much for fruit and veggies, and have a general love of dairy and white flour. Add to that my near sugar addiction that started when I was pregnant with Mazie, and the result is an unhealthy diet.
I’m also overweight. Not scary, life threatening overweight, more the annoying 10-20 pounds overweight that is a constant monkey on my back. Part of my I’m forty now and I’m ready to take charge of my life plan is to get a handle on what I put in my mouth both for the sake of my health and waist line, and also for the sake of everyone else. The better I eat, the better off the planet is. Be the change you want to see in the world and all of that.
I have certain things going for me. I like water and exercise. I’ve read a crap-load of books on nutrition and food, and I know what I should be doing. I am fortunate to have access to local farms and farmer’s markets, co-ops and neighborhood grocery stores, and the means to pay for the true cost of food when it is sold without subsidy and grown in a responsible manner.
I’m starting a journey and making it public so that I have more incentive to stick it out. I want to change how and what I eat and why I eat and I don’t want my primary motivation to be those 10-20 pounds. Instead I want to focus on how I should be eating and hope that the excess weight leaves in it’s own good time. So, here goes…
Peas And Thank You
I’ve been scared away from blogging lately. I came across Peas and Thank You, a brilliant blog that is very popular and I think, really funny. Mama Pea, as she is known, is a mom of two girls who has transitioned from lawyer to mom and from meat-eater to vegan. She writes about both with wit, humor and way more pizzaz than I could ever hope to muster. At first reading her blog inspired me, but that inspiration quickly turned to defeat.
I’ve been having a hard time writing. I start to write and then after a few less-than-excellent sentences, I give up and think Mama Pea is so much better at this than I am. I’ve never had a problem with people being better at something than I am before. It’s pretty much guaranteed in a world with a gazillion people that lots of people are going to be better at doing ‘whatever’ than you are. For some reason her ability to write has left me feeling like there’s no point to my writing. I think her voice is the voice that I wish I had. That’s the difference. She’s doing “me” better than I could ever hope to do “me”.
But I’m forty now and all grown-up, so I will not give up. I’ll keep writing and hopefully along the way I’ll find the real “me”, not the Mama Pea “me”. So go on over and check out Mama Pea, she really is worth an RSS feed or e-mail subscription, and then come back here and see what I have to say. Peas and Thank You.
The Curious Garden
Last year I bought Mazie a book called The Curious Garden. It’s about a boy who starts a garden on an old abandoned railroad that is elevated above the city. We’ve read the story many times and I’ve always thought it was a cool idea to turn an old railway into a linear garden.
I subscribe to a blog/website, I’m not sure which it really is, called Web Urbanist and every day in my e-mail box I get their daily post. It’s a hodge-podge of cutting edge, modern design. One day it might have twenty pictures of crazy, whacked-out cars and the next day it’s innovative iphone covers or mind-blowing hotels. I usually glance at the e-mail, but every once in a while the e-mail really grabs my attention, just like it did today.
Today the post is all about The High Line. The High Line is an elevated city park in NYC built on an old abandoned railway. Sound familiar? The visual images of the park instantly reminded me of The Curious Garden book. I grabbed the book off of the shelf and read the author’s note. Turns out his book is inspired by the High Line and the wild garden that sprouted there when the railway was left unused.
Cool.
If you live in NYC have you checked this park out? What do you think? Is it as cool as it looks and reads? I spent some time on The High Line’s website learning more about the project and park and I think it’s really inspiring. I’m planning to visit the next time I’m in NYC.
"B" Is For Barn
After having such a great experience staying at a barn last month, it makes me want to try these two barn environments even more. 
I came across Lake Superior Barn a year or two ago, but so far haven't been there. The price seems to go up $100/night every year, so if a group of us don't get there soon, it will be out of my price range for good. I love the contrast of this place. It's über modern and cool, but barn. It's 320 acres of private lakefront living just 30 miles outside of Duluth. I can imagine hanging here for a week in the winter when it's a bit cheaper would be magical. Winter break anyone?
The Barn House a few miles from Dubuque, IA is another place that I would like to check out. This place looks pretty awesome and it's much more affordable than the place on Lake Superior. I tried to book a mid-week stay in August, but the dates were already taken by another lucky party. As a group of 5 or less this place can be rented during the week for only $250/night. Considering the size and fabulous-factor of the place, I think that is a steal. On the weekend the rates go up significantly, but for a group the place would still be pretty doable if you added a Thursday or Sunday night to balance out the higher weekend cost.
Has anyone stayed somewhere recently that they would highly recommend? Fill me in!