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Lost

When’s the last time you’ve been lost? Really, truly lost?

I’ve always been prone to getting lost. To this day I have no sense of direction.

Back when I learned how to drive, we relied on maps. We had to.

My parents and grandparents always had maps laying around – AAA maps and giant Rand McNally maps that unfolded into a million squares and were impossible to put back together.

Eventually the internet brought us Mapquest. You could simply type in two destinations and it would give you a route. My generation’s car floors were carpeted with Taco Bell and Mapquest directions.

Sometimes the instructions were wrong or you missed a step.

Boom, you were lost!

When I was a new driver, I got lost on the way home from a friend’s house. They thought it was funny when I called them crying asking, “WHERE AM I?!”

Without smart phones, a common thing to do when you got lost was pull into a gas station and ask for help. I haven’t had to do this for decades.

Smartphones were the best thing to ever happen to me. 

I haven’t been lost since. Well, until last week.

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Summer update + Two Patios I Like

A quick summer update. . .

Baby’s actually sleeping well! Work is stressful, but you can’t say they aren’t giving me learning opportunities. I haven’t gotten to watch anything good on TV but I did read Killers of the Flower Moon in a single weekend because I couldn’t put it down.

The toddler is as busy as ever. Last night she ate half my bowl of spicy Desert Fire from Green Mill. I was too impressed to be mad.

We’ve been eating out less and grilling more.

I made this Spicy Pork Bulgogi marinade and it was fantastic –  worth the work. I bought most of the ingredients from Seoul Foods in Fridley.

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Why You Should Cook Your Own Crab Legs At Home

Crab legs are the fanciest, most low-effort food to prepare at home.

They’re so easy to prepare, it’s almost stupid.

Before the pandemic, I remember paying $30+ at a restaurant for a steam pot meal that included a cluster of snow crab legs and lots of other things that weren’t snow crab legs.

Just the other week, I was craving a big all-you-can-eat crab leg meal. All I wanted was for someone to watch my kids so we could go pig-out on crab. Continue reading

AYO West African Frozen Meals: Taste Test

AYO Frozen Meals caught my eye at Target. I have never seen West African food in the frozen food section of the grocery store before and was excited to try them.

I recognized Top Chef finalist’s Eric Adjepong’s face on one of the boxes.

Fred and Perteet Spencer started the AYO Foods brand in Chicago. Naomi Waxman’s Eater profile from June 2022 shares their story. You can find them at the following stores listed on this page (Whole Foods and Target in the Twin Cities). In this article, Pertit Spencer mentions that her father’s stews could take six hours to cook. Part of their goal was to make their favorite meals more readily available in minutes.

At our local Target, they cost around $5.60 each. Today, I found them on sale at Target for 2/$9.

We tried the four meals available at our Target: Jollof Rice with Chicken, Groundnut Stew with Chicken,  Waakye Beans and Rice, and Chicken Yassa. 

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But is this the best banh mi? Gion.

You know how sometimes someone you know will claim something is the *best* restaurant or food and you know it’s probably not?

At my previous job, I worked with two women who would bicker all of the time. They would turn staff meetings into Dwight Schrute vs. Dwight Schrute pissing contests.

Even though I’ve attended culinary school, worked in restaurants, and dedicated most of my life to trying and writing about food, they acted completed disinterested and dismissive about anything I said about cooking or dining.

One in particular would lecture me on how I could prepare very simple dishes.

I started to play it off and pretend I was actually really bad at cooking.

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