What to Eat Up North
Plus oopsie I took a month off!
OMG hi! I missed you all! Did you miss me? What started as a tiny bit of overwhelm at the beginning of May turned into one of the busiest months in recent memory! It was my birthday and Mother’s Day season so the cookbook shop was busy with pop-ups nearly every weekend day. At some point in the middle of that busy season I realized there would be 16 days without a single day off. I was either working my day job or had a pop-up, and writing a newsletter was just not in the cards for me. Thanks for sticking around!
It was my most successful month in business ever, and I got a lot of energy and joy from connecting with people about food, home cooking, and the future of the shop. I was surprised that I was not super exhausted, just a little exhausted. That makes me excited about what my future could be as a small business owner, and was just what I needed before summer break from my education job. Over the next couple of months, I’ll be able to focus on what the business needs in its second year, and I’ve got a lot of ideas cooking (😉). If you want to keep up on all things Audrey’s Cookbooks, you can always check out our website or Instagram. There are lots of exciting things coming soon!
Recovery Vacay
To recover from the packed schedule of May, my husband and I did a relaxing style of trip up on the North Shore of Minnesota. We usually don’t relax on a trip. Most of the time, we are doing a lot and seeing a lot, and we like it that way! But I needed to not be in the house staring at all the unfinished projects that have been on pause and the visible consequences of my exhaustion. My husband does most of the chores (thank goodness for him), but there are piles of my own stuff that needed to be dealt with. I simply could not sit in the house looking at all of it and truly recover from working a full time job and another job on the weekends.
I think of “vacation” as laying around, reading, smooching, drinking and eating at leisure, playing games, going on walks, and napping. To me a “trip” is packed with sightseeing, itineraries, museums, restaurant reservations, souvenirs, power walking to the next place, and getting it all in so you can really see a place. My husband and I love a trip. Even when we head to a rural place or a place surrounded by nature like the North Shore, our time is usually packed. When we get up to Duluth, we grab lunch, do a hike, jump in Lake Superior to quell the sore muscles and bug bites, shop around at local stores and coffee shops, get a drink, and then do it all again the next day.
But this time I needed to get up to my soul centering place, and for once have a true “vacation.” We sprung for a room at Bluefin Bay in Tofte, MN, an hour and a half north of Duluth and about a half hour south of Grand Marais. It was a nearly perfect weekend. We did the sauna every morning, cooked meals for ourselves, walked the property, sat outside knitting for hours, made a wood fire in the fireplace in our room every night, did sea kayaking (our one “activity”), read, played games, and drank coffee. We snuggled and dreamed about our future together, watched Legally Blonde and Stranger Than Fiction, and had cake and decaf coffee after dinner. It’s not the kind of getaway I want to do all the time, and most of the time I can feel rejuvenated by being at home, but it was an excellent change up.
Meals and Eating on Vacay
As I was planning our meals we were going to make, I found myself thinking about the cabin culture of the upper Midwest, a direct carryover from so many of our Nordic ancestors. So many people prepare food and ingredients to bring “Up North” for a weekend at a smaller home on a lake and/or in the woods. Moms and aunts grocery shop to get snacks and desserts, and hotdogs, Whirley Pops, and cases of soda are loaded into the trunk of the family car for a weekend away.
I knew from the Bluefin Bay website that the kitchens were “fully furnished” but I had no idea what that meant. Would there be spices or spatulas? Would there be a toaster or a chef’s knife? I watched their Instagram videos, hoping for some indication of what “fully furnished” meant. My husband called to ask and all they said was that they had “all the basics, like pans and stuff.” This all was not nearly enough information for me, and so I went to the internet for ideas for what to bring and eat.
I consulted Dan Pelosi’s Guide to Being a Vacation House Mom and Reddit posts about what to bring to a vacation rental home when you plan to cook there. I didn’t grow up going to a cabin on the weekends with my family, and on most trips away, we budget to eat out as part of the trip. I learned that you should probably bring more than one cooler, stuff for making coffee the way you like it (especially if you’re picky about coffee, which I am), a container of the salt you use regularly, and one knife that can kind of do everything just in case the knives suck at the house. Other “hacks” included:
Bring a frozen lasagna that can thaw in a cooler on the way so by the time you get there, you can pop it in the oven to cook for an hour while everything gets unpacked. Then there’s an easy dinner.
Get a veggie tray for easy snacking and then there’s less pressure to eat a veg around mealtime. We did this and highly recommend!
Buy a rotisserie chicken which you can reheat in the oven, or shred for chicken sandwiches, salads, or for BBQ chicken sliders. We did this too!
If you’re going somewhere where it might be cool and/or rainy one day, bring cans for a quick chili. If you don’t need to make it, the cans will keep! All it takes is a can of black beans, two cans of crushed tomatoes, a can of corn, a can or two of canned chili (this is what you’re zhuzhing up!).
Have several bagged salads for a quick side.
Make sure to not forget bread for sandwiches and toast, and buns for hamburgers and/or hotdogs.
A head of cabbage can get you far! It can be shredded for coleslaw, added to tacos or fajitas for a crunch, a salad for crunch, and it grills well as a side for meat.
Get a bag of those small potatoes since they are so versatile. They can be grilled up in a foil packet or be roasted up for breakfast potatoes.
With this knowledge and a couple of coolers, here’s what we ate on our vacation “Up North”:
Friday dinner: @ Northern Waters Smokehaus. My favorite sandwich shop in the world. I got the Pastrami Mommy sandwich, my favorite there lately.
Breakfasts: Yogurt, granola, raspberries and coffee out of our Aeropress which is the easiest way for us to make espresso when we are not at home.
Saturday lunch: Chicken sandwiches (sliced chicken breasts from the rotisserie chicken I got, with lettuce, mayo, and horseradish).* We also got a variety pack of Miss Vickie’s chips at Costco so we had a bag of those too! While getting the sandwiches ready, we snacked on veggies from the veggie tray we also snagged at Costco. I made a rhubarb cardamom simple syrup ahead of time that we poured in a glass along with a bubble water for homemade sodas.
Saturday dinner: We ate at one of the restaurants at the resort! Our one eating out expense! After starting a wood fire, we shared a bunch of Oreos on the couch.
Sunday lunch: Chicken caesar salad wraps! We just mixed up a caesar salad kit and added chicken from the rotisserie chicken! The veggie tray, chips, and homemade soda were repeats from the day before.
Saturday dinner: We cooked up some hotdogs and enjoyed them with our usual sides we’d been having. The variety pack of chips honestly kept things fresh, as did the variety of veggies. Afterward we walked to the closest cafe and got a couple pieces of cake and a mug of watery decaf coffee that felt like home. We enjoyed them sitting on a patio looking at Lake Superior through the birch trees. It was perfect.
*My husband went to our local grocery store and got us ketchup, mustard, mayo, and horseradish packets.
What I’d change for next time: I’d bring up a few more snacks and side options. I’m thinking a potato salad, fruit snacks, pasta salad (also would be great with some chicken on top!), a dip for the chips, and some cream cheese for toast - a real Nordic girl move. If there were more people with us, I’d also bring more dessert options (frozen pies that can thaw on the drive in the cooler), more protein options, and more drink choices!
I’d do this vacation again in a heartbeat with my husband, with my best friends, with my family, with a bunch of strangers who just want to cook together and enjoy the North Shore (any takers?). The food was so fun to plan for, and it was a nice balance to the more expensive accommodation, and then save a little money by bringing food and cooking.
To all of you who are heading north next weekend or later in the summer, enjoy every moment of respite. I’ll be living off of my moments for many weeks to come.
Things I Like
This is a longer than normal list because it’s been so long since the last newsletter!
A morning sauna to start the day! I did this last weekend for three days in a row: sauna, pool dip, repeat three times. My skin looked amazing and my mood was stellar. My Nordic roots are felt in the steamy calm of a cedar room staring out at a tiny window at a bunch of trees. If you haven’t ever tried this, give it a go next time you have access to a sauna.
An Arnold Palmer continues to be the drink of the early summer and will likely be my afternoon go-to during my summer break.
Beck’s Books is a pop-up bookstore in the Twin Cities that is gearing up to open a brick and mortar by next summer! Check out their GoFundMe and shell out a few dollars for a community-centered bookstore that will add so much to our cities. Beck and Ty are pop-up bookshop buds of mine and their store will be one I’ll visit again and again.
Butter is a novel I’ve been listening to for the last week and I really like it so far. It’s inspired by a true story - about a gourmet cook and serial killer who cooked for and then killed lonely businessmen. A journalist interviews her in prison and the journalist herself ends up changing because of the time spent with the killer. Buy it from my shop!
Labubus! Are they frivolous fun? YES! I do not have one because I’m in my mid 30s and almost middle aged (or am I already middle aged?) but maybe my mid-life crisis is getting into these lil guys.
Leaning into underconsumption core this summer and buying only one fresh white tee for the season and maybe a skort. Otherwise, find me in my regular oversized t-shirts and bike shorts!
Local yarn shops for advice and materials on my knitting journey. Not only are the people at Dandelion and The Yarnery super patient and helpful with recommendations, they keep a log of what yarn and doo dads I buy so when I want to get the same kind of yarn I used for X project, they can look it up for me!
First knitting project completed last night! My love for tiny spoons continues. These are recently saved on my Pinterest. Yes, I still use Pinterest.
tiny weird spoons are my favorite This post from Beyond Beurre Blanc on Substack. I highly encourage you to take a read if you have ever eaten at a restaurant, know someone who is sober or sober curious, and especially if you work in a kitchen.
May your week be gentle and may you eat well. 🌲🥣