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Here’s another suggestion for yummy, local eats from Facebook fan Betsy:

Easy snack:
Raw local veggie sticks (think carrots, cucumbers, bell peppers) dipped in Holy Land Tomato, Basil and Garlic Hummus

Make it a meal:
Holy Land Tomato, Basil and Garlic Hummus on a whole wheat tortilla (or a Holy Land pita) with fresh local sprouts, local veggies and Shephard’s Way cheese

P.S. Don’t forget to check out all of the super events and classes we have going on during the Challenge. Hover on “News” above, and click “Eat Local Challenge” on the drop down.

Co-op Owners: We’ve got a surprise for you! Beginning this month, you’ll see many more owner-only sale items, and you’ll be able to find them easily in the new Owner Specials flyer! Each month we’ll post the new flyer here on the website, and we’ll have copies available in the store for you to pick up.

Not an owner yet? Don’t worry! There are plenty of sale items for everyone in our new Co+op Deals flyer, which usually comes out every two weeks and will take the place of the CAP monthly sales flyer. This means more sales items overall for you to choose from each month, but they’re only available for two weeks at a time. There will be only one case order opportunity for each flyer. For the current flyer (dated Sept 1–Sept 14), if you want to order a case and get the case discount in addition to the sale price, you must place your order on or before Thursday, September 9.

Value. Find it at your friendly, locally-owned Co-op.

Last week we finished up our work at the Carleton College art studio building. The owners moved their equipment and materials into the various studio bays. Like a typical move, you wonder if the building is large enough! The faculty will work over the next few weeks and months to organize their studio spaces. I know they are excited about having new bright, clean spaces to create art work.

It was enjoyable working on this art studio facility. We used some materials that we don’t use often, such as the heavy horizontal steel siding. I think the building looks very nice and should serve the faculty well.

Last week we asked our Facebook fans for suggestions of yummy snacks and meals that we could share with you here on our website. This offering from Betsy sounds delicious, and she says that the meal is her kid’s annual “Back to School Breakfast”:

Easy snack:
Local apples and cheese, sliced

Make it a meal:
Homemade whole wheat waffles (Sturdiwheat has a great locally-made mix if you’re short on time), thinly sliced apples from local orchards, and sliced cheese made into a “sandwich”

P.S. Don’t forget to check out all of the super events and classes we have going on during the Challenge. Hover on “News” above, and click “Eat Local Challenge” on the drop down.

We’re lucky to have such a great community of local egg farmers! Today’s ideas are high in protein and flavor:

Easy snack:
Hard boiled eggs
Make it a meal:
Scramble them up instead and add some local veggies to make quiche or an omelet

P.S. Don’t forget to check out all of the super events and classes we have going on during the Challenge. Hover on “News” above, and click “Eat Local Challenge” on the drop down.

Two hard-core surfer brothers helped transform Sheboygan, Wisconsin, into one of the most recognized freshwater surfing spots in the world!

SOME LIKE IT COLD
A Sheboygan Surfin’ Safari
By William Povletich

www.SomeLikeItCold.net

“Some Like It Cold highlights the good-time years of surfing on the Great Lakes of North America. Brothers Williams are true surfers who will suffer through cold water and weather to feel the feeling only a surfer knows. A great read for anybody interested in the lesser-known history of surfing.” –John Lyman, Director, The Huntington Beach International Surfing Museum

“Surfing in Wisconsin?  You bet! Some Like It Cold is a story that screams to be told. The ongoing saga of brothers Larry and Lee Williams documents a near five decades deep impassioned love affair with surfing; all this amidst the uncharted wave fields of an inland ocean. Larry and Lee could have easily pulled up stakes along the way and migrated to the fertile surfing grounds of Southern California & beyond…. but they didn’t. These guys are on to something and they know it in their hearts. Follow the Williams brothers and their surfing sub-culture coterie through episodes of life’s conquests and tragedies played out in America’s Heartland.” –Mark Fragale, Curator, Honolulu Surfing Museum

For the past six decades, twin brothers Lee and Larry Williams have been surfing the gnarliest waves despite living nearly 2,000 miles from any ocean. To overcome the obstacles of being born and raised in Sheboygan, Wis., they brought their dreams and long boards to the shores of Lake Michigan. Some Like It Cold: A Sheboygan Surfin’ Safari (Clerisy Press, May 2010, $14.95) chronicles the lives of two brothers and the evolution of the unique culture they helped build.

Since the Williams brothers rode their first Lake Michigan waves as teenagers, surfing became their life’s ambition. Often braving 35-degree waters and wind-chill temperatures hovering below zero, they quickly realized the “Malibu of the Midwest’s” biggest adversaries weren’t the lack of waves, but rather hypothermia and frostbite. Customizing their wetsuits to allow them to last nearly three hours in the iciest of waters, the brothers helped revolutionize a surfing culture unknown to most.

At the encouragement of friends and family, the Williams brothers organized the first Dairyland Surf Classic in 1988 as an opportunity to meet and compete with those who shared their love of Great Lakes surfing. What began as a humble social gathering of a couple dozen friends now attracts hundreds of surfers and thousands of fans from around the world. The event parallels the Williams’ lifelong mission to ride the ultimate wave while bringing a newfound respect to the sport they love in the place they call home.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Native Wisconsinite William Povletich is the author of Milwaukee Braves: Heroes and Heartbreak and Green Bay Packers: Legends in Green and Gold, as well as numerous magazine articles on sports and entertainment. As an Emmy Award-nominated and Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker, he recently produced Police Women of Broward County for TLC, Beach Patrol for Court TV, and A Braves New World for PBS’ Milwaukee Public Television. Povletich lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife and two sons.

Ah, the weekend. In my house, food making gets a little slower, a little more intentional on the weekend. Here are a couple of ideas to keep your weekend tasty and local:

Easy snack:
Sturdiwheat pancake mix pancakes served with local butter and maple syrup
Make it a meal:
Add local bacon and scrambled eggs for a very hearty meal!

P.S. Don’t forget to check out all of the super events and classes we have going on during the Challenge. Hover on “News” above, and click “Eat Local Challenge” on the drop down.

Did you know that we even carry locally-produced frozen pizza? It’s the perfect easy food to reward yourself with on a Friday night!

Easy snack:
Gourmet Parlor frozen pizza (one of their pizzas even has a gluten-free crust)
Make it a meal:
Get two! Or three!

P.S. Don’t forget to check out all of the super events and classes we have going on during the Challenge. Hover on “News” above, and click “Eat Local Challenge” on the drop down.

An unforgettable novel about love and loyalty, homeland and belonging, and one woman’s courage in the face of the most punishing adversity.

THE PERSONAL HISTORY
OF RACHEL DUPREE
A Novel
Ann Weisgarber

“The Personal History of Rachel DuPree is a wonderful addition to the literature of the Great Plains. Ann Weisgarber not only locates a bright, clear voice in that vast, silent region but does so in a much-neglected part of its population. This is a brave, lovely novel.”  –Larry Watson, author of Montana 1948 and Orchard

Named Best Work of First Fiction by the Texas Institute of Letters and shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers, The Personal History of Rachel DuPree is an American writer’s extraordinary debut novel.  It recallsThe Color Purple in its portrait of a woman who rises above the circumstances keeping her down, and it opens a window onto the little-known history of African American settlers in the West.

It is 1917 in the South Dakota Badlands, and summer has been hard. Fourteen years have passed since Rachel and Isaac DuPree left Chicago to redeem the promise of the Homestead Act by staking a claim in this unforgiving land. Isaac, a former Buffalo Soldier, is fiercely proud: black families are rare in the West, and black ranchers even rarer.

But it hasn’t rained in months—the cattle bellow with thirst, and supplies are dwindling. Pregnant and struggling to feed her family, Rachel is isolated by more than just geography. She is determined to give her surviving children the life they deserve, but she knows that her husband will never leave his ranch: land means a measure of equality with the white man, and Isaac DuPree is not about to give it up just because times are hard. Somehow Rachel must find the strength to stake another, altogether different claim—for herself, and for her children.

Moving and majestic, The Personal History of Rachel DuPree is an unforgettable novel about love and loyalty, homeland and belonging. Above all, it is the story of one woman’s courage in the face of the most punishing adversity.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ANN WEISGARBER was born and raised in Kettering, Ohio. After graduating from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, she was a social worker in a psychiatric hospital before moving to Houston, Texas, with her husband. She earned a Master of Arts in sociology at the University of Houston and taught high school and then sociology at a junior college. She has lived in Boston, Massachusetts, and Des Moines, Iowa, and now divides her time between Sugar Land, Texas, and Galveston, Texas.

Oh, dear. This mouth-watering snack and meal suggestion is 100% local.

Easy snack:
Your favorite local cheese on Flackers Crackers

Make it a meal:
Melt that cheese on top of a grilled Beelers Bratwurst, served in a bun made of a New French breadstick with Angelica’s Garden Sauerkraut on top

P.S. Don’t forget to check out all of the super events and classes we have going on during the Challenge. Hover on “News” above, and click “Eat Local Challenge” on the drop down.

A wry and deeply affecting story of forgiveness, flexibility, happiness, and the art of moving on…

THE BLESSINGS OF THE ANIMALS
A Novel
Katrina Kittle

This is Katrina Kittle’s first paperback original, but her books have performed extremely well in paperback—with The Kindness of Strangers(2007) now topping 95,000 copies sold.

The Blessings of Animals includes a P.S. section featuring essays from the author about her travels and about the inspiration for the novel, as well as an excerpt from her novel The Kindness of Strangers.

Veterinarian Cami Anderson has hit a rough patch in her life. Stymied by her recent divorce, she is on a quest to unravel the secret ingredients of a happy, long-lasting marriage. Are today’s wedding vows realistic, practical, and applicable? Or is the entire institution of marriage outdated and obsolete?

Surrounded by several couples approaching different milestones in their relationships, Cami reflects on the deepest meanings of love and partnership. As her parents prepare to celebrate their 50th anniversary, her brother and his partner find themselves legally blocked from marriage. Her best friend and soon-to-be-ex-sister-in-law have become newly engaged, while her teenaged daughter’s romance begins to develop its own complications. And now Cami’s ex-husband and two other men are becoming tangled in her own post-marriage love life.

Amidst this circus of relationships, Cami begins to make sense of marriage’s great mysteries-and disconnects. Surrounded by a humorous gang of animals-an angry horse, an escape-artist goat, and a three-legged cat-Cami also comes to terms with her own divorce as she learns the lessons of forgiveness, adaptation, and joy that help her master the art of simply moving on.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katrina Kittle is the author of Traveling Light, Two Truths and a Lie, and The Kindness of Strangers, which received the 2006 Great Lakes Book Award for Fiction. She graduated with two degrees from Ohio University—a BA in English and a BS in Education. Kittle helped found the All Children’s Theatre in Washington Township, Ohio, and previously taught theater and English to middle schoolers at the Miami Valley School in Dayton. She has also worked as a veterinary assistant. After a year of traveling, she recently returned to Dayton to begin working full-time on her fifth novel.

Harper Perennial

© Corrie Erickson and Nick Sinclair

There's gonna be a back alley rumble!

The Lowbrow • High-Octane 5 (Car Show+Art Show) will take place this Saturday, August 28th at The Contented Cow from 5 p.m. to midnight.

The event, organized by Corrie Erickson and Nick Sinclair, will be old cars, hot rod art, live music and a free show!

Drive your hot rod on down to the back lot adjacent to The Contented Cow Pub. This year's show will be held in the back lot adjacent to the Contented Cow Pub, right by the Cannon River Walk.

• Classic Cars
• Hot Rod Art
• Live Music by Lusurfer & The Anonymus
• Free Show!

…and more!

Buy a souvenir button for just $3 and get a chance to win a piece of original art by Corrie Erickson or Nick Sinclair!

One of the best parts of the Eat Local Challenge is that you can try new things, like Hawkwinds locally-made mustards. Here’s a yummy snack and a healthy meal idea:

Easy snack:
Local carrot sticks dipped in Hawkwind mustard
Make it a meal:
Serve with soup made with The Secret Garden Soup Mixes

P.S. Don’t forget to check out all of the super events and classes we have going on during the Challenge. Hover on “News” above, and click “Eat Local Challenge” on the drop down.

This week we started a remodeling project for Laura Baker Services Association (LBS) in Northfield. LBS has been in Northfield since its founding in 1897. It provides care and housing for people with developmental disabilities. It is located on a beautiful campus setting on the east side of Northfield.

Our work on this project involves a total remodeling of Elwell House. Elwell is a 3,600 square foot residential building. We will be removing all interior walls, floors, doors, etc. and essentially ‘starting over’ with new construction. The exterior walls are all masonry and are remaining in place. There is a lot of demolition work to do right away.

We have moved on to the final phase of our work at the Prior Lake dental clinic we are working on. The first phase was the addition, the second phase was the construction of the new toilet and administrative areas. This third phase is the removal of the existing toilet and construction of a new entry on the east side of the building. Much of the exterior work on the building has been completed. Steel hand railings will be going in shortly at the new walkway.

The new entry area is framed, the new roof installed and has had the aluminum windows and doors installed. We are finishing insulation and drywall work in this area.

A funny, bittersweet ode to the power of family bonds and the solace of good food.

STARTING FROM SCRATCH
A Novel with Recipes
Susan Gilbert-Collins

“What a wonderful story of familial love, loss, and the healing power of made-from-scratch food. I was completely absorbed by the lives of the Tschetter family, and I very much want to be invited to their house for dinner on a night when Olivia is cooking. Susan Gilbert-Collins has written a fantastic debut novel: warm, witty, and redemptive.”  –Susan Rebecca White, author of A Soft Place to Land

Why is someone who just defended her doctoral dissertation still wasting her time at her childhood home, two months after her mother’s funeral, making coq au vin and osso buco? Olivia Tschetter, the youngest of four high-achieving South Dakotan siblings, is not returning to “normal”—or to graduate school— quickly enough to suit her family. She wants only to bury herself in her mother’s kitchen, finding solace in their shared passion for cooking.

Threatened with grief counseling, Olivia accepts a temporary position at the local Meals on Wheels, where she stumbles upon some unfinished business from her mother’s past—and a dark family secret. Startling announcements from two siblings also challenge the family’s status quo. The last thing she needs is a deepening romantic interest in a close but platonic (she thought) friend.

But while Olivia’s mother is gone, her memory and spirit continue to engage Olivia, who finds herself daring to speak when she would never have spoken before. Told with humor and compassion, Starting from Scratch explores the shifting of family dynamics in the wake of shattering loss and the healing power of cooking.

STARTING FROM SCRATCH not only gives insight into the grieving process itself, but also portrays a complex, realistic family dynamic.  This moving novel resonates with anyone who has dealt or is dealing with loss. But surprisingly, it is also perfect for anyone who has a love and passion for food and family. Olivia uses both to help her cope with the loss of her mother. Whether she is cooking or meddling in family and friends’ lives, there is never a dull moment. From an unplanned pregnancy to a surprise marriage, a childhood secret to an unrequited love – this novel explores the many dimensions of life in a big family.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born and raised in South Dakota,Susan Gilbert-Collins studied English at Oberlin College and holds an M.A. in English as a Second Language from the University of Minnesota. While she enjoyed teaching international students and adult immigrants, she now freelances as a technical writer in order to focus on her first love, fiction. Susan was born and raised in South Dakota and now resides in Rochester, New York with her husband and son. This is her debut novel.

This snack is delish, and the meal is so easy to make:

Easy snack:
Clem’s Popcorn (from Castle Rock!) drizzled with Hope Salted Butter
Make it a meal:
Serve with Split Pea Soup (our bulk split peas are locally grown) made with butter-sautéed local onions

P.S. Don’t forget to check out all of the super events and classes we have going on during the Challenge. Hover on “News” above, and click “Eat Local Challenge” on the drop down.

It’s that time again! Registration is NOW OPEN for 2010-11 Session 1 classes.

Register online or by mail. Find registration brochures at Goodbye Blue Monday, the Community Action Center, and other downtown locations.

See 2010-11 programs and the 2010-11 calendar for more details.

The Session 1 registration deadline is SEPTEMBER 15 (all group lessons & contract practice ice).

Work has moved along well on the addition to a Prairie home that we are building. The workers completed the insulating work as well as the interior drywall hanging. The drywall tapers are finishing up their work, to be followed by prime painting.

The interior ceiling of the upper room has a lowered area around the perimeter. This allows us to install recessed light fixtures without having to penetrate the insulated ceiling plane. It also lines up with the exterior soffits creating a very pleasing relationship between interior and exterior surfaces. The architect used sloped surfaces for the interior soffit which looks very nice.

While interior work is being done our carpenters have moved outside to the deck. The deck is constructed using red cedar. The support beams underneath the deck have some decorative features. We will cap the top of the beam ends with metal flashings.

Friday, Sept. 10th come in and listen to TV and The Bellered Yellers…doors open at 9:00 and there is no cover!

Saturday, Sept. 11th it’s The Big Twang doors open at 7:00 music starts at 8:00, and again there is no cover.