Twin Cities

It's all about the Twin Cities today. First comment, the baseball team. GO TWINS!! They pulled out the win (the middle innings were making me very nervous ... Twins stopped scoring and the Royals kept scoring!!) And thank you Chi Sox for beating Detroit. Let's keep it up for another day.

Second, Twin Cities Marathon. Good luck to everyone who's running. The weather looks to be perfect. Rain today. Rain Monday. But dry, partly sunny and cool for tomorrow. You couldn't ask for anything better than that. I'll be cheering for you all somewhere between the Cathedral and the finish line after we finish the TC10. I believe the gathering spot for Rochester runners is section 233 upstairs at the dome. Or somewhere close to that. There's always quite a crew and it's fun to see everyone before the race.

As my last workout before Sunday, yesterday I ran my around-the-hill loop. I picked it up for the middle 3 miles, but kept it comfortable. Not tempo run pace. The miles were 7:13, 7:05 and 6:57. A good last workout before the race. Today I'm off. I still have a cold. :-( Coughing and blowing my nose. But it is what it is. I'll take it as easy as I can between now and then.

RHM shirts: OMG. I wanted to beat my head against a wall. I spent Friday evening packaging up the shirts. All 198 of them. Went to bulk mail yesterday with the 93 of them that were for outside Rochester only to be told that I needed a minimum of 200 pieces. Arghhhhhh. I mentioned that I thought that it was 200 pieces or 50 pounds. No comment. So ... I went back home and counted up the Rochester envelopes. Enough to make the count 198. So I packaged up 3 to send to myself to get to 201, 1 over just in case I miscounted. Went back to bulk mail. As she was weighing them, she said that for bulk mail every piece had to have the exact same weight. Well the shirts were 4 different sizes S-M-L-XL and had correspondingly different weights. Arghhhh. I was about to have a meltdown. I said to charge me as if they were all XLs. Whatever. I just had to get these shirts out of my house, out of my sight, and off my mind. She decided to average the weights and I was good to go. Hallelujah. And she said that yes, she had checked I was right about 50 pounds, but I'd only had 43 pounds anyway. Arghhh. I could have gotten by with not having to bulk mail all of them and let some people pick them up at Running Room and saved some $. Arghhhh. Not how I'd wanted to spend my day off as it was now 4:00 PM. But at least it was done. Finally.

Looking forward to having our favorite Norwegian runners back in town for a week or two. Ann-Kristin and Espen Gjertsen will be arriving next week. A-K is running Whistlestop. I look forward to seeing them!! Hei!!

Last night, I made Chicken and Sweet Potato Chowder from the latest Land O'Lakes cookbook,

currently available on newsstands. It starts with sauteeing a leek.

Adding sweet potatoes and chicken.

It's seasoned with thyme and paprika. Next time, I'll cut back the thyme just a bit, but it was quite good. A keeper for sure.

Off-Season Striders get going soon. Here's snippets from John's note: We are starting out the OSS season with a special treat for our first get together October 17th: Renee Saxman has invited us to a breakfast run starting and ending at her house. We run first starting at 7:30 AM and then eat! If you know Renee's culinary skills you will want to be there. Her address is: 2026 Kal Lane SW (map: Renee's house) Contact Renee with questions: rsaxman@charter.net

Pete Martin--the world famous arrow painter for the RAC runs--says he has some leftover clothing from the RAC runs this summer. If you think you may have left a clothing item at a water stop or at the RAC and didn't reclaim it, please get a hold of Pete at petelm@us.ibm.com.

Brand new socializing opportunity for Rochester area runners: Starting this Tuesday (October 6th) there will be a monthly get together every second Tuesday at 6:00 PM at Beetles (on 2nd Street SW) for runners and their friends and family. No running required! Thank you to Renee Saxman for coming up with the idea. Hope to see a lot of you there.

From runner Dawn Beck: Hello friends, faithful supporters and pastry lovers! I am writing to let you know that I am leaving Nosh and will be baking at Dunn Bros on Elton Hills Drive. Currently I am in transition working at both but will be full time at Dunn Bros in a few weeks.

Life is too short (or I'm getting too old) to wait for things to happen, so I am being proactive in advertising the changes you can expect to see at DB. In addition to breathing new life into the pastry case, I will be learning hot food prep and will soon become the breakfast cook. It looks to be a challenging year!

Here is what I have done so far... palmiers (aka krispies), the classic french puff pastry cookie; black bottom cupcakes filled with cream cheese and choc chips and topped with a rich choc glaze; oatmeal raisin choc chip pecan cookies; changing the "doughnut holes" to a brioche type dough; almond biscotti. Soon you can look for pumpkin muffins with a pumpkin seed streusel (no frosting!), oatmeal scotchies and more fall cookies, cakes and scones.

Some long term goals are hot desserts in the evening (we do sell decaf!), baking with more whole grains, allergy friendly pastries and seasonal specials ie... pumpkin brioche french toast! My biggest challenge right now is getting the regular guests to notice the changes. Wouldn't it be great if the pastries sold so fast they wouldn't have to be wrapped in plastic?? I know most of you are already fans of DB so please come in, try new things and spread the word. Ask if I am working and say hello, ask what I have baked today, and ask the staff what they like... get them talking! Also make suggestions!

I'd like to periodically send emails with updates. Consider yourself included in that list. If you'd like to be removed or prefer I use an alternate email let me know. If you know others who would like to be included let me know.

Finally, I'd like to suggest to the owners we put a sandwich board out front... all the cool bakeries have them! Any ideas on where to get one made at a reasonable price?

I look forward to seeing you soon and have a SWEET day!

It's a bit of a story, but on 10/16 the St. John's Cross Country team is stopping in Rochester on their way to a meet and I'll be baking cookies for them. What fun that will be!!

Well, I better get packing. Have a wonderful weekend. I'll have lots to post on Sunday, to be sure!!