Intent on making the most of an almost completely free day I wake up at 7am and am out the door by 8. I intentionally don’t have anything to eat before I go, because I have two very simple goals for the morning: To explore St. Cloud and to find Pete’s Place and have some pancakes, which the internet tells me are great.
At 8am the temperature was nice and cool and I got off to a quick start, I wasn’t all that hungry yet so I headed north into the east edge of downtown St. Cloud. As the sun rose it got hotter and hotter up to 30 degrees celcius. I trekked around, getting caught behind closed roads (St. Cloud is undergoing two bridge reconstructions at once, causing some chaos) and for the life of me I couldn’t find Pete’s Place. But I did find myself at one point at the corner of Courthouse Sq and Courthouse Sq. By this time i’m getting pretty hungry so I head east across the Mississippi to where my iPod tells me there is a Starbucks – I figured if all else failed I could partake of that American institution.
Yep, I'm at the Corner of Courthouse Sq and Courthouse Sq
The Mighty Mississippi
Happily Starbucks was not resorted to – not long after crossing the 1st street bridge across the big river I rubbed my eyes at what I thought must be a mirage – a sign reading “Dutch Maid Bakery” – I was saved! I asked in my usual touristy way what the nice woman behind the counter thought was particularly great among the glistening offerings under the glass. I ended up with something called a Caramel Apple Bismark, which in the end turned out to be basically a giant (about 2x tim hortons size) donut, glazed with a caramel glaze and filled with apple pie filling – I have to say – it may have been greasy and I may have been tired from all that walking, but it was delicious. Consider this my first grease injection of the day – again little did I know there was far more to follow.
Sweet salvation - breakfast at last
The Caramel Apple Bismark - Take note Tim Hortons
Providence struck twice along 1st street – a little way down the road on the right stood a mighty factory that proclaimed itself to be the Country Hearth Baking Co – and as luck would have it they had an outlet store. I purchased a few things here – a locally made BBQ sauce that claimed to be the last word in BBQ, a powered black pepper gravy mix (now with sausage flavour!), a cornbread mix and a country biscuit mix – these were to be for Heather. I also continued my breakfast with a tiny cherry pie, about four inches across which turned out to be both inexpensive and worth what I paid.
By this time I was getting quite sunburnt (as usual I had neglected to put any sunscreen on) so I turned south, staunchly refusing to cross back over big muddy by the same bridge I had come over on. I walked down Lincoln Avenue and was able to knock a few more ‘todos’ off my list – I shopped for a while in a Target, purchasing 70spf spray sunblock, some body wash and shampoo (both of which I had intentionally not brought) and some tictacs, a ‘giant size’ package of passion fruit and cherry flavours! After finishing with the target I crossed the street and saw a few more places I had wanted to visit – a liqour store and a grocery. Now I wasn’t about to break the rule at SCSU that alcohol wasn’t allowed, but I also wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to visit a Minnesota liquor store. I was huge, and amazing, and cheap. Not only was the number of products staggering, but the variety of sizes they came in was incredible. As a benchmark I found a 1.75L bottle of Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum and found that it was priced at an incredibly reasonable $25. Quite unexpectedly this particular store turned up another wonderful find – three bottles of Dan Ackroyd’s Crystal Head Vodka – a subject of much mirth and ridicule at our house, this vodka is filtered through diamonds and bottled in a painstakingly crafted crystal skull to more easily resonate with psychic energy – Dan Ackroyd has gone completely ’round the bend.
The grocery store was also pretty amazing, bubba kegs of root beer (think the heinekin ones), as well as one of my Minnesota regional dishes at the hot food counter – a food type known, rather generically, as “hot dish” in this case with chicken and wild rice. I purchased a small container, which I have yet to eat – but will fall victim later thisevening.
St. Cloud was kicking off their big annual city festival today, which included a big deal at the SCSU campus called the Lemonaid Conert and Art fair – so after making my way back to SCSU, which made my whole walk total about 10km I walked out to see what the local artists were selling. Now considering that Saint Cloud is only a city of 59,000 people the number of vendors and members of the public that attended to buy the wares of local artists was impressive – I was more than once tempted by a piece of art or something but had to remind myself that I had more than two weeks and at least two more plane rides left that anything I bought would have to survive.
Just a fraction of the number of booths from the Lemonaid Concert and Art Fair (there were about 250 vendor booths, all local artisans)
My usual pattern when i’m in a foreign city is that there are two criteria to establish that a food must be eaten. These are: 1) If it is a local or regional food, or I have otherwise not heard of it or eaten it and 2) If everyone around seems to be eating one. These rules will generally get you a good feel for the cuisine of the area and by using rule #2 you get to eat what the locals like. So here were my food items of the afternoon and my comments:
- Lemonaid 2 x $4 – now normally lemonaid sold at a fair or event like this out of a giant fibreglass lemon wouldn’t earn itself a second look, until you considered that this particular lemon had a lineup of 20 or 30 people and that the event itself was named after lemonaid. In short it was the best, if not the cheapest lemonaid that I have ever had – served with lots of ice which helped counteract the sweltering temperatures.
- Foot Long Corn Dog $5 – again, a fairly mundane food item, but I watched the people in the booth mixing up the batter themselves and saw a lot of people walking around with these golden brown monstrosities. It was greasy but the cornmeal batter was amazing and crunchy and with my ususal topping of yellow mustard the whole thing was a pretty great entree into what was going to turn out to be an entirely unhealthy dinner.
- Silly Bar $3.50 – Apparently a clone of the Dilly Bar, this product was made by taking ice cream that the vendor made themselves, putting it on a stick and dunking it in chocolate – I didn’t really see how that could go wrong and since the ice cream was a local product I opted to have a S’Mores flavoured Silly bar – which stood up quite well with any other simlar cold-stuff-on-a-stick that i’ve ever had.
- Deep Fried Cheese Curds $5 – I was full, I really didn’t want anymore food. The corn dog and the silly bar had satisfied my hunger and I just wanted to walk around and explore some more – that is until I took a turn that I hadn’t before and was faced with sign and yet another long line of people all ordering deep fried cheese curds. These things were without a doubt the greasiest food I have ever eaten in my life – i’m sure my life expectancy is notably shorter because of their artery clogging punch – they should be made illegal. They were also delicious, crunchy on the outside and melty and cheesy on the inside, to compare them to the cheese sticks we often see in restraunts in Canada is to do a grave injustice to the fryer-weilding dealers of death who cheerfully send me on my way with my mittfull of molten cheese heart explosive.
Now who could resist a sign like that?
100% Pure Artery Clogging Goodness - Deep Fried Cheese Curds
Its now about 8pm and i’m about to head out to see a performance by the Saint Cloud Symphony Orchestra. I haven’t suffered a fatal heart attack yet, but I just found out that Michael Jackson just did – so maybe i’m ok at least for today.
