Jovon Everett: Minnesota, Don't 'Che Know?

Tuesday, August 7th

Last Tuesday, I visited the Mill Town Museum in Minneapolis. The museum was constructed in the ruins of the "Washburn A Mill" which, when it was constructed in 1879, was the largest and most technologically advanced flour milling operation in the world. At its peak, the Washburn Mill produced enough flour every day to bake 12 million loaves of bread. The mill drew its power from the St. Anthony Falls in the Mississippi River, and was just one of many water-powered enterprises that fueled the growth of Minneapolis around the turn of the century. (An even larger mill was built for Pillsbury right across the river.) The mill closed in 1965 and burned in 1991, but the Minnesota Historical Society has taken over and reinvented the site.

The Mill City Museum - it still sports the "Gold Medal Flour" sign.

The museum not only explained the flour milling process, it explained the history of Minneapolis, the use of the falls, and of the milling industries. The St. Anthony Falls are a 50' drop in the Mississippi and were used to power saw mills, textile mills, and all other manner of industries, but it was the milling of flour that really put Minneapolis in business. (General Mills is still based in the area.) The centerpiece of the museum is the "Flour Tower". Museum-goers are seated in a big freight elevator and travel up and down the 8 floors of the mill. On each floor, the elevator doors open and a piece of the milling process or a bit of the mill's history is explained. It was a pretty neat presentation. Afterwards, the elevator deposited us on the 9th floor observation deck with an amazing view of the falls and the Mississippi. I really enjoyed the whole place.

Fun Fact: Wheaties were invented in Minneapolis by the Washburn Crosby Company as a way to market the fibrous left-overs from the milling of white flour. Legend says that a clinician was serving hot bran cereal when some of the cereal spilled onto a hot stove and cooked into flakes!

Fun Fact II: Betty Crocker is an entirely fictitious person. She was created as a pseudonym for the home economists at General Mills to answer customers' questions. Later she evolved into the dispenser of recipes and household tips. Her first likeness appeared in 1936 and has been updated several times. Her current look is a computer generated composite of 75 women of diverse backgrounds who work for General Mills.

Right outside the museum, the city of Minneapolis has created the "Mill Ruins Park". The park showcases the excavated remains of several more mills as well as the water-races that serviced them. Right in the middle of the park is the Army Core of Engineers' lock that lifts boats over the falls as well as the Stone Arch Bridge. The bridge was built to carry trains from the mills and curves over the river just below the falls. It has since been recommissioned as a pedestrian bridge and offers tremendous views of the falls, the skyline, boats coming and going from the locks and the ruins. Needless to say I took lots of pictures!

The Mill Ruins. The "tailrace" has been excavated and re-watered with water from the city's waterworks plant (once water-powered) which sits just upstream of the site.

Wednesday, I had an amazing breakfast in Minneapolis at Hell's Kitchen. Another stop on my Roadfood tour of Minnesota, Hell's Kitchen was unlike anything else I've found in Roadfood. While the food is inspired by the diner classics, it tends toward the gourmet. I had the "Classic American Breakfast": two eggs, sausage, toast and hash browns. The toast was homemade multi-grain bread and came with an assortment of condiments: homemade peanut butter, blackberry preserves and marmalade. The hash browns were "Rosti Potatoes": freshly-grated potatoes grilled with sweet cream butter, bacon, sweet onions, chives and scallions. The sausage was a patty of sweet bison sausage. Everything was delicious. I washed it down with a bloody mary made with a local beer (instead of vodka) and garnished with an olive, tomato, pepperoncini and a poached shrimp. The highlight of the meal, however, was the "Mahnomin Porridge". Inspired by the native Indians, the porridge is made with warm, Native-harvested, hand-parched wild rice with dried blueberries, sweetened cranberries and roasted hazelnuts, drizzled with warm maple syrup and cream. The tiny sampler bowl I ordered was a meal unto itself. I left stuffed and happy.

Click here to visit their site!

Thursday I was meant to return to the Metrodome with several members of the Spamily. Four of the guys in the cast were going to sing the National Anthem and "Take Me Out to the Ballgame", but the game was cancelled due to the I-35W bridge collapse on Wednesday night. Fortunately, no one associated with the show (traveling Spamily or local crew) was injured in the disaster. Of course, our locals know some of the people affected, but we were not directly related.

Instead of the ballgame, I took a walk up Cathedral Hill. The Cathedral of Saint Paul stands on the tallest hill in St. Paul (rising above even the nearby State Capitol). Completed in 1915, the Cathedral is an impressive French Renaissance building. An entire neighborhood along Summit Avenue takes its name from the Cathedral. I walked along the tree-lined streets past the St. Paul Curling Club and many cute cafes to have lunch at the Happy Gnome. The Happy Gnome is the sort of pub with an enormous beer list (I enjoyed a Bells Oberon Ale - reminded me of summer in East Lansing) and a creative chef. I sat on the patio and enjoyed a fresh green bean salad and a bratwurst topped with sauerkraut (with flecks of pork and apples) and brown mustard. It made for a truly enjoyable afternoon!

Sheila Marie took this photo of the Cathedral of Saint Paul.

Thursday night/Friday morning, Northwest Airlines delivered my beautiful wife to me. After the delays we've come to expect from airline travel (especially on Northwest), Sheila Marie finally arrived at my Hotel around one in the morning. I couldn't have been happier to see her!