Virtually Home

Sea Wolf A few years ago I caught Josh Ritter at a sparsely attended Cain's Ballroom show in Tulsa. Instead of the lackluster performance I expected based on the small audience, he and his band put on a stellar performance, and Ritter blew me away with the pure joy he exudes while performing. I was hoping for a similar experience at First Ave in Minneapolis, and I was not disappointed. Sea Wolf opened -- or just Sea Wolf's frontman, Alex Brown Church. I hadn't ever heard his music before. He said he'd planned on playing some low key things, but on taking the stage realized it was more of a rock venue and changed his setlist. It seems like he would have been better served to play the slower ones -- those were the best, as far as I was concerned. His voice was nice, but not remarkable. His guitar sounded pretty good, but wasn't interesting. I didn't really feel strongly about it one way or another. It was music, and so I accepted it. Josh Ritter, early ...

I knew Minnesota winter would be depressing, but I told myself it would only be bad November to February. Here we are on April 22, and it's snowing outside my window. We should have flowers and leaves and thunderstorms this time of year, but we have snow instead.

If you're a fan of A Song of Ice and Fire, or of the show Game of Thrones, you might be interested in this website . They've compiled recipes from all over Westeros and, with a fair amount of research into medieval cooking, put together a cookbook organized by region. You can get lots of their recipes on their site. With our Game of Thrones watch group, we made the honeyed chicken that Jon feeds to his direwolf early in book one. And it was delicious. Other group members made the Salad on the Wall, the blueberries in crème bastard, and an awesome loaf of bread. Many recipes come with medieval versions (often in archaic English or French) and modern versions (with ingredients easier to find at your grocery store). Happy GoT'ing.