The Sweatshop of Love Blog

Upon arriving in Minnesota Thursday afternoon and entering PT’s mom’s adorable little house, I was greeted with this:

“Aw PT! You were so cute!”

“Yeah that is my senior picture.”

“THAT is your SENIOR PICTURE? I was going to guess 8th grade.”

PT was anxious to take me on a grand tour of St Paul, where he grew up, and Minneapolis, which is like a whole other world according to PT’s mom.

St Paul has about 300,000 people and Minneapolis has about 400,000, and St Paul is known as the small, quaint city, and Minneapolis as the big city.

I didn’t, and still kind of don’t, understand why they are two cities. Wouldn’t it just be easier to have one big city separated by the Mississippi River, instead of two cities that are just like one big city anyway?

It’s like the sharks and the jets, so I probably shouldn’t have even said that while still in Minnesota.

In any case, both cities are beautiful; full of parks and old buildings and tree lined boulevards. Our first stop was in Minneapolis, just over the river, to Minnehaha Falls. See? Lovely waterfall inside the city limits!

I had forgotten that F Scott Fitzgerald grew up in St Paul, but PT was on it and took me to see his house. I love him, and I love Zelda, and I really love Ernest Hemingway who grew up in Oak Park but whose house I still haven’t seen, shamefully.

We had lunch on the banks of the Mississippi River, which I can safely say I’ve never done before.

PT’s favorite sandwich place in St Paul is called Acme Deli, where you fill out a sheet of options, hand in your worksheet, and get a sandwich. I got a tuna with lots of veggies, cheese, and horseradish, and it was awesome.

PT got the turkey breast with olives, of course.

Where we stopped for lunch also had a waterfall called Hidden Falls; less hard core falls than Minnehaha and much more mosquito filled, but still! Lunch+Mississippi River+waterfalls? This place is great!

And we got some ice cream for the trip to Minneapolis! PT worked at Izzy’s for a summer, so it was part of the PT life tour. At least I can justify going the first time that way, anyway. The second time, this time, I was just being a fatty. But, I mean, salted caramel ice cream? With a little taste of whatever other ice cream flavor you want? It’s a good thing I don’t live here.

We stopped at Lake Calhoun, one of the many lakes in Minneapolis, and walked on the path around it. There were lots of people out biking and jogging the paths, enjoying the beautiful afternoon.

We stopped at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden that I loved.

‘I don’t get it,’ I said.

‘What’s to get? It’s a cherry and a spoon.’

PT sees things pretty clearly.

PT never asks to get his picture taken. I take pictures like a crazy and PT puts up with it like a champ, but this moment was a big moment in PT’s life. He was riding the light rail to the Metrodome for his last Twins game at that hell hole. So many people were riding that thing to the game! He was a very happy boy.

Or I thought he was a happy boy, but in comparison to how happy he was to see the new Target Field where, in a matter of months, his beloved Twins will play, outside, like baseball should be played, he was catatonic on the light rail.

I didn’t understand exactly what a big deal this was. The Tigers got a new stadium a few years ago and it was a big deal but I wasn’t losing my shit over it. But then I went into the Metrodome to watch a baseball game.

Entering the Metrodome, sitting down, and realizing you are about to watch baseball was kind of like seeing my best friend get punched in the face. Like, they took baseball, something I love so much, and dropped it into the shittiest place on earth. I was pissed! How could they do that? How could they stick BASEBALL in there?

But they were giving away Joe Mauer on a stick, which was fun. I don’t know why they didn’t throw some makeup on him and pluck his eyebrows down a little before blowing up his face that big, but it’s Minnesota. He might need those brows for warmth.

Besides the location, it was the perfect night. PT’s last Twins game in the Metrodome was a win, the Tigers won, the White Sox lost, and we light railed it back home.

Day Two? STATE FAIR! EVERYTHING DEEP FRIED AND ON A STICK!

I’ve got to charge my camera batteries.

In an attempt to ease The Sweatshop’s ever-increasing holiday workload, today’s blog entry has been outsourced to the Web’s foremost kind-of blogger/twitter-lover, PT.

Prior to Allyson and I dating, my dietary habits were not exactly spectacular. I wasn’t ExtraValuin’, DoubleCheesin’ and TripleThickMilkshakin’ myself to an early, artery-clogged grave by any means. But I definitely did not always chose the most practical or most imaginative option when it came to feeding myself. Since I graduated from college and started working full-time, I purchased every single lunch from one of many of the Loop’s various eateries. While I would always try to be as health-conscious as possible with my lunch choices, I was spending bundle on my mid-day meals. To look back and do the math, to think about the amount of money spent over the years on eating meals out every day is both alarming and embarrassing. I justified doing this because A) I wanted to sleep in as much as humanly possible in the morning B) I felt I deserved a treat for working a job I didn’t like, and C) I couldn’t possibly make a delicious lunch for myself in the time between waking up and leaving for work.

When Allyson caught wind of what I had been doing for lunch for the past few years, she was less than thrilled “Seriously PT? Seriously?“. From there, a challenge was made. For the whole month of February, I didn’t eat out for a single meal. We packed lunches in the morning, and I soon realized how easy and inexpensive it was to put together a great lunch at home. It felt so great to know I was saving upwards of $7/day by brown baggin’ it. Once March 1st hit, Allyson ended our eating-out fast with brunch at Handlebar, and I was successfully deprogrammed of my prior work-lunch habit.

This week I pleasantly surprised to see when Allyson threw together a gigantic batch of these cold Asian noodles with seasonal veggies (yellow squash, green beans, corn, and cucumber). It was enough for her meal that night, and for two lunch-sized portions  for us to eat the next day. We generally used chow-mein noodles when we make this dish, but Allyson substituted whole wheat spaghetti. The summer veggies all tasted so fresh and went so well with the noodle’s sweet and spicy dressing.

Again, to look back at my old lunch habits, a lunch like this– which aside from probably not existing anywhere in the downtown area– would probably cost $6-8 if it were purchased at My Thai or Wow Bao.

Yesterday, with a fresh loaf of bread baked, nothing sounded better to me for lunch than a tuna sandwich.

When I moved out my old apartment a while back, my then-roommate bequeathed to me several cans of hella-fancy white albacore. We were down to our last can, and I couldn’t think of anything better to nosh on at the end of my work week than this sophisticated sandwich.

CUCUMBERS ON TUNA. I cannot endorse this enough. For one reason of another, I was a tad skeptical this combo would be good. My God, I feel so foolish for questioning Allyson’s tuna-related recommendations.

To think that I’d be missing out on meals like this if I were still stuck in my eat-out-every-day rut is sad. Not only saving money, but getting to use your imagination to create an awesome meal for yourself is such a treat. I’ve made it my mission to try and convert many of my co-workers who eat like I once did. I haven’t been as successful as I would hope; but if I can at least annoy and make my co-workers feel bad about the decsions they’re making, I’ll have done my job, right? Right?

…I’m starting to see why I  eat a majority of my homemade lunches alone.

Lunches are only half of my ore-Allyson not-stellar eating habits. I’ve always loved to cook; but I when work would get stressful, and all I wanted to when I came home was kick up my feet and watch It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia on Hulu, I’d keep pre-processed meals on hand to both maximize my lazy time and a minimize any extra ‘work I had to put into my evening. Granted not EVERY meal was this way, but I had two major FoodCrutches I loved to keep on hand for nights like these: Soy Nuggets and frozen pizzas. The former I admittedly still crave from time to time. Soy Nuggets + Sweet and Sour sauce are easy (and somewhat embarrassing) comfort food. Frozen pizzas on the other hand, are totally a thing of the past since Allyson adn I have more or less perfected the art of the homemade pizza.

This week we threw together a yellow squash, caramelized onion, and pineapple pizza. Aside from letting the pizza dough rise, there really isn’t a terrible discrepancy between the time it takes to make a homemade pie vs. a frozen pizza. The taste of every ingredient in this pizza shines, somethinf I could never say about a frozen pizza which, while easy to make, tasted homogenized as F. Side note: I put green olives on my half of this pizza and it was incredible. Olives get a bad rap on this blog; and I want to let all your olive lovers out there know that the green olive/pineapple combo is a match made in HEAVEN. it’s going to be my new go-to, the sweet, salty, briny, combo canNOT be beat.

So last night, it was my night to make dinner for Allyson and me. While looking for a recipe which included several of the veggies Allyson scored in Michigan, I stumbled upon this recipe for a warm lentil salad with roasted beets and goat cheese. I apologize for the above photos not really doing the dish justice, but, this salad was amazing! Allyson had reservations prior to her first bite. I’ll concede that the plate did look a bit like brown mush with these bright beets stacked on top, but the lentils were so flavorful, and both the sherry vinegarette and goat cheese made this salad a bright and satisfying home-cooked triumph.

To wash it all down, we cracked open this bottle of Leelanau Cellars Gerwurztraminer– a gift from Allyson’s mom.  It was exciting because this was a type of wine neither of us had ever heard of (Note: this wine was not chilled prior to us opening it, so please note the ice cubes in our wine glasses. We are officially senior citizens over here.). Gerwurztraminer must be German for Diabetes-enducer, because this was probably the sweetest non-dessert wine I’ve ever had. It was delicious, and went really well with our savory-as-hell lentil salad. The back of the bottle says the contents of this bottle of wine holds the “Taste Northern Michigan”. Who knew record unemployment rates could taste so sweet? AWWWWWW DAAAAAMN! BITING WINE-RELATED SOCIAL COMMENTARY! OH NO I DIDN’T!

In conclusion, some of the best times Allyson and I have had together are while we’re blazing new trails in the kitchen. Not only has our relationship yielded a more hands-on, thrifty way of looking at food for me; but it also given us fond memories and a more-expansive culinary skill set. That being said. I am inviting you all, the entire internet, over to our house for the meal of your choosing. And if you choose soy nuggets, we may be best friends for life.