What is a Scotch Egg?

What do the following foods have in common:  15" corn dog, pot stickers, spaghetti and meatball dinner, scotch eggs, s'mores, and pizza?  They're all foods you can buy on a stick at the Minnesota State Fair!

In 1854 the Minnesota Territory held a territory fair.  They've held the state fair annually since 1859 (one year after becoming a state.)  That means that the Minnesota State Fair is older than the state itself.  On Friday, Isaac skipped class and we spent the whole day there.  There were so many people.  This fair gets about 1.8 million visitors every year over the twelve days it's open.  That makes it the highest daily attendance of any fair in the country.  The Puyallup Fair, also one of the five biggest, gets 1.1 million visitors a year and is open for 17 days (in the fall).  This leads to a very crowded fairgrounds.

The crowds on one of the main streets in the fair

Kim with a deep fried Snickers

As with every fair, there were lots of interesting foods.  We couldn't try everything, but everything looked great!  They serve almost anything you can think of on a stick so you can keep walking around while you eat!  There was one place that sold buckets of fresh baked cookies.  We saw everyone walking around with them.  They would've been great to take to the all you can drink milk stand!  The common corn dog at the Minnesota fair is called the Pronto Pup.  And instead of giving you ketchup and mustard to dip it in, they ask what you want, and then just brush it on the dog before giving it to you.  We saw a booth that was selling scotch eggs on a stick, and we'd never heard of scotch eggs before.  A scotch egg is a hard boiled egg wrapped in sausage, battered, and deep fried.  We didn't try it at the fair, but we might try it at home sometime, because it looked so good!  The fair's deep fried candy bars are legend around here, so we had to try those.  We got a Snickers and Reese's.  They were both good.

They had a lot of shows to go see. There was a reptile show, and a butterfly room.  We went to a dog show, where the dogs did lots of cool tricks. They also had dog diving, which was really cool!  We also went to a lumberjack show.  The two teams competed against each other to complete tasks like sawing through a log the fastest.  It was really fun to watch!

Joslyn liked the piglets

Of course, there were tons of animals to see.  The very first barn we went to was the Miracle of Birth Center.  Inside were all the pregnant animals at the fair, and they had a bunch of newly born animals too! Joslyn got to pet a lamb that was 4 days old, a bunny that was 2 days old, and a piglet that was born that morning!  We also went into the regular animal barns and saw all the cows, sheep and pigs.  Joslyn's favorite was the sheep.  While at the fair she associated for the first time sheep with 'baaa'!

Joslyn petting a two day old bunny

Each week we're trying to share one fun adventure we went on and one delicious food or drink we made.  This week we had a dish called omu-rice ("omu" is short for omelet).  This is a meal that Isaac had in Japan.  He had never made it in Japan, or seen a recipe.  So, he just kind of made it up after he got back based on what he remembered.  It may not resemble the actual Japanese dish called omu-rice.

Might need more ketchup!

1. Fry up some chicken and vegetables.  Popular choices include carrots, onions, bell peppers, corn, and green onions.  Season with garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and brown sugar.
2. Add an egg and mix it up.
3. When the egg is mostly cooked but not completely done, add fully cooked rice.  Stir in some more garlic, and soy sauce.  Add some water and put a lid on the pan so it can steam cook a little.
4.  Mix up an egg or two in a bowl.  Try to fry the mixed egg as thin as possible.
5. Put the rice stuff on a plate in a mound shape.  Put the thin egg blanket on top.  Cover in ketchup and enjoy.

Kim and I like it a lot.  Joslyn just thinks it's ok.  Let us know if you try it out and what you think!  We'll post again next week!

Mall of America

This week we went to visit the Mall of America.  It's about a 15-20 minute drive from our house.  We spent nearly the whole day there and had a lot of fun.  It's the largest mall in the United States by area, and it's the largest in the world by number of visitors annually.  I was worried about the crowds, but it really wasn't that bad.  There was plenty of free parking.  There are several large parking garages that are connected to the mall.

In the middle of the mall there is an amusement park that used to be called "Camp Snoopy" when I was little.  Now it is "Nickelodeon Universe".  All the rides are Spongebob, Dora, TMNT, or Rugrats themed.   We didn't go on any of them, but they looked really fun.  There was a roller coaster where the car has only four people in it and it spins around while you're going along the tracks.  We'll have to try it out next time.

It had nearly every store you could think of.  Kim liked the American Girl store, where she found a doll that looked just like Joslyn, and the store Peeps and Company.  The candy store was pretty fun.  They had more Peeps and Mike and Ikes products than I've ever seen before.  There was even a scented Peeps pillow.  It smelled wonderful.  The free samples were also very nice.

This peep rotates so that it is dipped in chocolate!

The huge variety pack of peeps!

All the flavors of Mike and Ikes you can imagine!

Isaac's favorite store was the LEGO Imagination Center.  There was a big open area for people to just play with the LEGOs.  Hanging in the wall were portraits made from flat one by one LEGO pieces.  The best part was that inside and on top of the store were ridiculously big LEGO creations.  There were life sized LEGO sculptures of a Storm Trooper, dragon, helicopter, sabertooth tiger and caveman, explorers, and a robot that is mind blowingly big.  It's 10 meters tall, weighs 6 tons, and was created using 2.8 million LEGO bricks.

This moose is made out of the single square Lego pieces!

They had some pretty good deals for the end of summer.  There was an Apple store and right across from it was a Microsoft store. At the Foreign Exchange everything was at least 70% off. Everything in the store was 20 dollars or less.  And, there is no tax on clothes in Minnesota.

Other notable attractions included Ikea, an aquarium full of manta rays, and a movie theater.   There were quite a few restaurants.  There fast food places like you'd find in a normal mall food court, but also a lot of sit down places.  We ate a the Hard Rock Cafe.  The local legendary burger here has macaroni and cheese on it.  I thought it was pretty good.

This was Joslyn's plate of Mac n Cheese! It was the first time she's ordered off the kid's menu!

Before the mall opened in 1992, there was a stadium there. The Twins and the Vikings played there. When you walk through the mall, they have a gold home plate where the old home plate used to be. The Twins had a hall of famer who hit a super long home run, so they also kept the seat that he hit the ball to. It's way up high, bolted to a wall.

So when we got to the mall, we saw signs everywhere advertising that Carly Rae Jepsen was coming to the mall that night! There was a little meet and greet too, based on a first come first serve basis, so there were lots of people lined up for it all day long. We decided that we wanted to stay for the performance, not because we're big fans, but we just thought it'd be cool. But the performance wasn't very long, and she mashed most of her songs together.

So we want to do a food, drink or recipe we tried each week.  This week, we went to the farmers market, and they had orange and yellow watermelon. We'd never heard of them before, so we got one of each to try. The yellow watermelon was very sweet, but it had a very different flavor from red watermelon. I think the orange is just a cross between the yellow and red kinds, because it had the sweetness of the yellow, but the flavor of the red. They were both very good, though. Anyway, the watermelons were too big for just the three of us to eat before they spoiled, so we cut most of it into cubes and put them in the freezer. They are great to suck on when it gets really hot (especially with no air conditioning!) They were like popsicles, but better! We even used them as ice cubes. We tried them in white grape juice and 7-up. We both really liked it in the grape juice.

Walking with Animals

Exciting news this week.  We finally have a walker.  We tried to get a video of Joslyn walking to us so that we could share it with everyone.  Here's what happened.

She now walks whenever she wants to get to something within five feet.  

We're all enjoying it here in Minnesota.  It's fun to go to new places and get to see new things.  Joslyn loves seeing the new animals around here.  Every time we go on a walk, we see at least a dozen rabbits.  There are so many squirrels that you can't walk two feet without stepping on one.  We've even seen a few cardinals and a couple of great blue herons on our walks.  

People weren't lying when they said how cold it gets.  On our walk the other day we saw this.  

They we're just hanging out on the corner of our street.  Just kidding.  Kim and Joslyn went to the Como Zoo.  There is a huge park near our house called Como Park and in it is a free zoo and conservatory.  There were tons of cool animals. Earlier this year, their orangutans had a baby, and he is sooo cute. His orange hair sticks out in all directions. The gorillas also had a baby in February, but I couldn't get a good look at it because it's mom was holding it and facing away from all the people. I don't think she liked so many people looking at her baby.  We didn't really get to see the polar bears, so we took this photo off the website.  We'll have to go back sometime and try again.  

Moving to Minnesota!

We decided to start this blog so that people (mostly family) can know what we're up to here in Minnesota.

We knew we'd made it when we saw this. 

It was a long trip.  We drove from Spokane, WA to Minneapolis, MN in two days.  We stayed with Sadie in South Dakota for one night.  She lives right by Mt. Rushmore.  So, we were able to drive by and get a picture on the way.

We got settled into our new home, checked out the campus, and went on our first Minnesota adventure already.  There was a huge yellow building on the side of highway 169 claiming to be the biggest candy shop in Minnesota.  We had no choice but to stop.  They had at least seven million flavors of taffy.  

In addition to every candy you can imagine, they had pies, pops, applewood smoked meats, and a lot more candy.  

We're still pretty busy with unpacking and things.  So, we're going to just have a short post this week.  We'll try to post something interesting we've done every week.