I've been gone for a long time.

I've been scared for almost as long.

What if I start blogging with gusto again and there is some awful event and Blogger fails and takes my work with it?

I can't have that happen again.

So...

I'm going to find a few older blogs, post them and update you, (the Gentle Reader) as well.

Below you'll find a post from December of '08.

Currently "Contractor Doug" is working on our basement.

We reconfigured the stairs to allow "real" furniture to go down there.
(After discovering that the "refinished" basement that "The Fella's" did was in fact, a "cut-corner job".)

All the sheet-rock has to come down as there is no vapor barrier and the work itself was rather...
"Hacky".

So, Doug and I are still finding places to have lunch.

CG

Lunch Redux

My Lunch With Doug.
posted 12/07/08
It's been a flurry of window installation this week. We're close to the end now but it was going pretty slowly when we started because the first window is the "learnin' winda". It took about about three hours to go from start to finish on this the First Window. (The second one did go a little faster.) Now realize that Doug lives about 50 minutes from here so if we start before 8:00am, he's already been up and dropped a child at daycare and has fought the early part of rush hour just to get here. Which means he's ready for lunch at 11 am.
So, after the first window was completed Doug said: "Let's go get lunch."
"But we're only one window in! Let's use this momentum and get the next one done and then go to lunch!" I pleaded.

The "lunch at eleven" logic was then explained to me. He then promised a demonstration of the "lunch at eleven" theorem.
We went to lunch.

Now I will explain to you where CGG and I reside by revealing our restaurants.

Within Walking Distance: (in no particular order)
Turtle Bread Co., Adrian's, Michael's, (formerly the Chicago Ave. Deli) Pumphouse Creamery, Sushi Bagu, Pizza Biga, Pepitos, Uncommon Grounds, Levain, Star Moon, Ken and Norm's Liquors and a Pizza Hut.

Within A Short Drive: (in no particular order)
All Fast Food, (from Arby's to White Castle), Sea Salt (seasonal), Buster's on 28TH, Huey's Chow Mein, First Course, Fat Lorenzo's, The 5-8 Club, Matt's Bar, Jakeeno's, Midtown Global Market, Citizen Cafe, Colossal Cafe, Chatterbox Pub, Victor's 1959 Cafe, Grand Cafe, Corner Table, Anodyne, most of Eat Street, Gigi's Cafe, Rustica Bakery, Hot Plate, El Meson, and even downtown.
(And you can bet this list is incomplete. I'm simply working off of memory here!)

As you can tell, we have a "Target Rich Environment" in our little corner of the world.

Given the variety of possible lunch locations I left the decision up to Doug. He suggested a "Juicy Lucy" at The 5-8 Club. I thought it was a brilliant idea so I countered with a "Jucy Lucy" at Matt's Bar because I had never been there. Doug thought that too was a brilliant idea so we were off to Matt's Bar and seated at the bar in less than ten minutes.

I commented to the bartender that I'd never been in for a Jucy Lucy though I was familiar with the controversy. He countered with the fact that they had been making it for the last 45 years and he thought it was about time I had made it in for one.

I'll be as brief as possible here for those of you that don't know "The Story".

(In a nutshell)
The Burger: Your choice of cheese, (American being the classic) stuffed inside the burger prior to cooking.
The Players:
Matt's Bar "Home of the Jucy Lucy" (3500 Cedar Ave.)
The 5-8 Club "Home of the Juicy Lucy" (5800 Cedar Ave.)

Both have awards for their efforts in cheese-infused-burger technology, both have been around for almost forever.
And both claim to be the Original.
And both are close by!

There is however a Third Player.
They do not claim to have the Original.
They have not been around for almost forever.
They are not close by.

Always order a side of fries with a cheese-infused burger. No matter where you are. If you find a place in... Granite Falls... that serves a similar cheese-infused burger you'll want the side of fries. Or onion rings. You need to have something to eat while you look at your burger expectantly knowing that to bite into it now would be not only disastrous but quite painful as well.
I encourage patience and Belgian style french fries.

I had the fries and the patience. Too bad that I simply forgot what I was biting into. In retrospect, I think I saw a small edge of raw onion and wanted to make sure I got that little bit of extra onion in this bite and simply forgot that I was also biting into a burger filled with lava.

A surprisingly large glob squirted onto my left hand. Just beyond where the thumb and forefinger meet, sorta' beyond and below my first knuckle on the back of my hand. I figure it was more than four inches from the edge of the burger to this particular spot on my hand.
Have you seen the scene in Fight Club when Mr. Pitt shakes the acid onto the back of Mr. Norton's hand?

It was nothing like that.
My patience had been rewarded and the lava was really more like hot gravy and I quickly swooped down and slurped it off. And waited for inevitable burning sensation to follow. And waited.

-In the instant this had occurred I noticed the cheese had a slightly pinkish hue and I thought "Hmm, wonder why it's pink? Is there some type of tomato product in there? A bit of ketchup? Maybe it's a salsa like thing... Maybe it's beefy juice mingling with melty cheese. I wonder where the pink comes from?
Why is my left hand hot?
And wet?"

The good news is that I was perfectly safe and free from harm. The bad news was that my burger now lacked a good portion of its original cheese-infused goodness. We both suffered that loss. The burger had lost some of its glory and charm and jucy-ness. Sure, there was still some in there but it wasn't going to be what it was supposed to be. I finished it and it was certainly tasty but I think I'm going to have to have another before making any type of ruling on which is better.
And I'll be completely ignoring the "Originality" issue.

I was ready for my next Jucy Lucy when we left Matt's Bar.
Doug pointed out the line of people waiting to get in.
It was 11:40 am.
He had indeed demonstrated the "Lunch At Eleven Theorem"


Of course we went to the 5-8 Club the next day...

CG

CG killed the radio star....

He did it again.  For the third time.

Nothing bad-- in fact I am terribly proud of him.  His third television appearance on Twin Cities Live.  He talked about "Heart Healthy Cheeses," and was wonderful-- feel free to comment on it here.

I do wish, however, that he would blog more... so more people could know how funny he is.  He in not too comfortable tooting his own horn.

I guess everyone will have to settle for me tooting it for him.

CGG

The Restaurants of 2008

I'm one lucky guy.

Sometimes I get to join my wife (CGG) when she travels.

We had the "Best Meal Ever" at Tru in Chicago when she was there last January on business.

Since it's January, it must mean she'll need to go back to Chicago on business...

The reservation is all set for Alinea. Friday night next week.

When we went to Tru we were truly blown away. We've had some rather extraordinary meals before, but nothing like this. I think it was really the service that set the experience over the top for us. A small upholstered box for her purse, synchronized water pouring, all diners being served at one time. And I do not mean a server with multiple plates up their arm, placing one and moving to the next... I mean four servers walking out with plates and all at once with flourish; everyone is served. Voila!

Impressive.
Impressive indeed.

We went on a three week trip to Europe recently. We wrote about it in our other blog which has now vanished in a puff of logic. We are trying to recover what we can from Journalspace and will be posting our trip here when we do.

Nonetheless, from my waning memory I can tell you that 2008 was our best restaurant year yet!

On New Year's Eve we dined at Cosmos at the Graves 601 Hotel in Minneapolis.
Then we dined at Tru in Chicago.

Then the James Beard Best Chef Midwest 2008 nominees were announced.

We ate at La Belle Vie in Minneapolis.
We ate at 112 Eatery in Minneapolis.
We ate at Restaurant Alma in Minneapolis.
We drove to Kansas City in order to eat at Bluestem.
(And then, the next day for lunch at Arthur Bryant's)
We visited friends in order to eat at Bartolotta's Lake Park Bistro in Milwaukee.

We finished the JB '08 Finalists just before the winner was announced.
(Congratulations to Adam Seigel of Lake Park Bistro and yes, it was fabulous!)

We ate at Osteria in Philadelphia.
We ate at Incanto in San Francisco.
We ate at the River Cafe in London.
We ate at Tour d' Argent in Paris. (Duck No. 1,073,116)

I ate the best Hot Dog I ever had in Paris.
We ate at Quatre Gats in Barcelona.  (Get the Fideoa!)
We ate at Set Portes in Barcelona.
We ate at Ponterossa in Bologna.
Then we discovered the Carpaccio at Saffron upon our return to the Twin Cities.

And soon we will go back again to our favorite neighborhood bistros Levain and Corner Table.

2008 was a very good year indeed!

CG

Cheese Guy, Part Deux

I, too, am a Journalspace refugee. I worked really hard on my husband's website. I am still in a bit of shock over the loss... and we have been lucky to have a few friends email us cached copies of old entries (Much thanks to Jordan, Class-Factotum, and Chowhound's MplsM ary).

Now the putzing begins. Like I have nothing better to do than copy all the old text into Word, reformat, and repost here. Adding photos. Redoing the template of the blog into something actually interesting. For me this is hard work, because to quote Bones, "I'm a doctor, Jim, not a computer programmer!" Anything you saw on CG's old blog was the result of quite a bit of trial-and-error on my part. I didn't really understand that we needed to back up our blog (or how to do so). The irony is that I spend a good bit of my time helping other doctors adopt new technology.

Where's a ten year old when you need them? I think my DVD player has a blinking clock....

Sigh.

CGG (Cheeseguysgirl)

Wait! Here I Am!!

My name is Cheese Guy and I'm a Journalspace Refugee.

It's been a little while now, but the loss of all the writing I did concerning the tasty goodness we ate while on our belated honeymoon in Europe still weighs heavily on me.

But only when I think about it.

I have never been a refugee before.

Wait. Perhaps I have been...

I once worked at a restaurant that closed after a "protracted illness" of about 6 months.
A lot of us from the kitchen went about 5 miles west and got jobs at an about-to-open-Italian-place. I think there were about four or five of us.

The place was called "East Side Mario's". It was based in London, Ontario.
Some of the menu iems were made in Ontario and arrived pre-portioned and ready for service at our outpost in the Twin Cities. It was some of the most unappetizing food I have ever tasted. I, however was fortunate to land in the pizza kitchen, a wood-fired oven to boot! Soon I learned to make quality pizza dough and hand stretch it as well.
A former Kitchen Manager now slinging pizza for a Canada-based coorperation.

I was a refugee indeed.

My name is Cheese Guy and I am a refugee.
I will use this place to muse about most things...
I will use this place to write about my experiences in cheese.
I will use this place to tell you about the foods we eat.

My name is Cheese Guy and I am a refugee from Journalspace.

CG