My Little Town

Day 11:

Karen pointed out a local coffee joint called Latte da Espresso so I decided to join my mother- and sister-in-law for the the four mile drive into town. New London is a small town about three streets wide and two streets deep with one of every shop you would need in a town: Auto Parts (I needed new wiper blades), Grocery Store (ATM, Coke Zero, Power Ball Lottery Ticket), car wash (the front of the van is pretty disgusting) and bank. We drove in to pick up pastries for breakfast but we managed to find excuses to hit all the aforementioned shops.

My big surprise was at Latte Da Espresso. First, you have to understand coffee in Minnesota. They drink it all day long and serve it much weaker than I'm used to. It's definitely stronger than tea, but not by a lot. The first thing I do when I walk in is scan the counter for an espresso machine. The fact that "espresso" was in the name of the establishment really made this unnecessary, but I'd wrongly assumed that any place with Coffee in the name served espresso. Who knew what else I would be wrong about? I spied the machine just as I got to the counter. Whew. The first thing the checker does when I ordered my coffee (that's how the Italians who taught refer to what we call espresso) was look up the price! My heart sank. After paying my .48 (forty eight cents!), collecting my coffee and searching for additives, one of the eight people sitting at the group of pushed-together tables invited me to sit and chat. I was there for some time while the others got the pastries. Everyone was so friendly and I had a WONDERFUL time! Add on top of that the fact that the espresso was REALLY GOOD! I may make this a habit while I'm here.

Lunch was more local flavor. I have a feeling that much of the stay in Minnesota will be this way. We went to another small town in the area called Sunburg to hit the local creamery for a Scandinavian dish called klub. It's a boiled potato dumpling filled with ham and served with a good helping of melted butter. If that's not enough, they also toss a few strips of bacon onto the your plate and serve it all with a desert called rommegrot, a custard with cinnamon sprinkled on top. I was skeptical going in, but I really enjoyed them both.

In the afternoon we went swimming at the lake in Sibley State Park which was right around the corner.

Highlights
1. More cool local eateries. I need some marks in the "plus" column after the Cottonwood Restaurant.
2. Another thing checked off my list: I bought a Power Ball Lottery ticket.

Quirks:
1. A bumper sticker at the Creamery: "Lutefisk is Legal in Sunburg, Minnesota"
2. An actual spinning barber pole in Sunburg next to the Norwegian Kultur Hus.
3. I can't seem to take a good picture in Minnesota. I just don't know how to shoot green-on-green.

New Things I've Learned:
1. People around here have winter and summer homes. Not just vacation homes - actual summer homes on the lake from which they commute to work.
2. The difference between feed corn (no rows between), sweet corn (the kind we eat), and seed corn.
3. Teenagers still make money picking strawberries. My mother-in-law used to make money de-tassling corn and thinks that kids still do.
4. There are these little zig-zag strips on the edge of roof lines. These are for melting ice/snow in the winter so you "don't create an ice dam"