A Mellow Weekend!

Just a quick note to say that it's been a LOVELY, mellow weekend (which is good...the next TWO involve driving to southern Iowa for various graduation events...FIVE children of cousins (my 2nd cousins?) graduating from high school in the same two week period...CRAZY!).

It started Friday night when I pulled my old cassette recorder out of the storage unit, and dragged out some old accompaniment tracks, and some old music to listen to. I found the demo tape I made while I was living in Japan, and some old concert tapes from my days as an Old Gold Singer at the University of Iowa...what a hoot (and cd's are SO much better...one of the concert tapes is warped beyond repair...I'm going to check into transferring cassettes to cd's this week, and am also going to try to contact the U of I school of music to see if they archive those old concerts...it would be great to actually hear the concert when it DOESN'T sound like it was recorded by muppets on drugs!).

Yesterday, Duane and I drove down to Rochester to check out the Gold Rush Antique Show/Flea Market at the fairgrounds. It was COLD, and CLOUDY, and even RAINED at the end, but there was a lot of stuff to look at. LUCKILY, I contained myself, and limited my purchases to a couple of vintage Iowa postcards, and a TON of junk food (curly fries with mexican beef and cheese, and a chili dog with cheese). I also found a cinnamon roasted almond vendor...yum!

After a couple of hours at the Gold Rush, we found a Hy-Vee (I LOVE that place!). There are only about SEVEN of them in the entire state of Minnesota, and I grew up shopping for groceries there, so when we find one, we go a little crazy (this is another reason that I KNOW Duane and I are meant for each other...we BOTH have a WEIRD desire to check out grocery stores...in other towns...on vacation...when we're bored...??!! It's a COOL way to discover new products (or in foreign countries to check out the local cuisine!), and we've both been "grocery store afficionados" from the beginning...).

I found PB 2, which is a powdered peanut butter that I read about on the Weight Watchers "boards" about a year ago, but just wasn't brave enough to go through the "online ordering process". I haven't tried it yet, but, at 75% fewer calories and about the same less fat, it can taste like tree sap, and I'll be good to go (hey...I like retsina, right, and that's basically Greek tree sap wine!). They also had True Lemon, which is a powdered chrystallized lemon powder, which is AWESOME in water and iced tea (and which I found on a grocery store spree in San Diego a few months ago...I LOVE HY-VEE (and am rather lame...I admit it...!).

After Rochester, we came back to the cities and had dinner at a GREAT local Mexican place called El Loro. I had the "taco loco"...a taco salad with beef AND chicken (I'm SO off my diet this weekend...I'm SO not going to be able to button my pants for work tomorrow)(I know...TMI!!!).

Today we got around and headed to downtown Minneapolis for the farmer's market. It was FREEZING, and REALLY WINDY, but I needed to stock up on herbs at the Dehn's Herb Garden stand. The poor things were wilting and dying in droves with the cold wind, but I DID find some terragon that looked good. I also found some pineapple sage, oregano, basil, and regular sage to put in the trough on my deck. They were out of cinnamon basil, but I found some at an herb stall across the aisle from Dehns, so I'm good to go, and the apricot/cinnamon basil pesto production can continue for another year (AMAZING on chicken breasts!). We got to meet "Mama Dehn" today...she's a hoot!

My deck herb garden last year

We were also able to get our first breakfast sausage of the season at our meat vendor...have NO idea what the name of the people is, but we've been getting the breakfast sausages since we started going to the farmer's market YEARS ago...they are AMAZING! Would have been GREAT if I hadn't dripped mustard and pickle relish down the front of my jacket, but, that's what Spray and Wash is for...right??!!

After the Farmer's Market, we went to A Baker's Wife for pastries and coffee (Duane had the cherry danish, and I had the peach Buckle...yum), then headed over to Minnehaha Falls to see how full the creek was (and, as a result how thunderous the falls are right now). It was AWESOME....TONS of water crashing over the falls into the creek below. Duane got a new digital camera, so it was a GREAT opportunity to test it out. If he burns a disk for me, I'll add some to this post.

Now it's Sunday afternoon, and I'm going to try to catch up on the FIVE cassettes of stuff I've taped in the last several months from television to watch...mostly a BBC series called "As Time Goes By" with Judi Dench, and episodes of "Cold Case". I MIGHT even get a little laundry done...the fun NEVER stops!!

Hope YOUR weekend has been good, and that YOU'VE been able to enjoy some "mellow" too!