July 12, 2006
Back in the Land
of Comfort Food

Greetings from Minnesota, the land neither time nor Garrison Keillor forgot, and Duluth the city air-conditioned by God. Our geezer group of bikers is in mid-pedal, half way between our starting point on the Canadian border and trips end Ironwood, Michigan.  This summer’s tour is named BALSI (Biking along Lake Superior, Idiot), changed ever so slightly from last year’s RANDI (Riding across North Dakota, Idiot), because while the locations change, the collective IQ remains constant.  While the Wisconsin/ Michigan border is our goal don’t be shocked if half the group winds up five miles short unable to resist the lure of Hurley, Wisconsin and its 25 bars on a three-block Main Street, but that’s a story for another time. 

Today we are in my friend Knute’s hometown of Duluth, pronounced “Duh-loot” here in the frozen tundra.  (Old Minnesota joke, “Driver does this bus go to Duhloot?” “No it goes beep-beep”.) 

It is indeed a thrill to be back in the heartland, the home twenty of “comfort food”.  The menus of Minnesota take me back to another time in life and a daily array of cheese curds, pork tenderloins, beer cheese soup, morel mushrooms, meatloaf and walleye.  Not that the entire local menu has been sampled since I’ve never summoned the nerve necessary to dine on other Midwest gourmet treats like turtle stew or fried gizzards.

But what my palette misses most in the land of Lake Woebegone has yet to be encountered.  A hotdish.  No, not hot dish much to consternation of the I-book’s spell check, Minnesota is home to the all one word, you’ll know it when you see it but first you smell it, hotdish.  I keep telling my fellow geezer’s we need to crash a Lutheran potluck supper (we’re in the Midwest where the grammatical meal progression runs breakfast, dinner and supper) to be able to enjoy the essence of Upper Midwest cuisine, the hotdish.  Be it turkey tetrazini, a tuna noodle casserole, pork chops and Spanish rice or Hungarian goulash, they’re known in the land of the Lutherans as being a hotdish. 

What constitutes a hotdish?  By Minnesota standards it must contain a starch, vegetables, meat, usually hamburger, with the ingredients all tied together by cream of mushroom soup.  In fact, cream of mushroom is so common among the different hotdishes that in Minnesota it’s known as the “Lutheran binder.”

Every Minnesotan worth their salt has a personal hotdish fave.  For me the Lamborghini of hotdishes is the Tater Tot special.  This quick and dirty hotdish is tailored to the “not so discriminating” palette by browning hamburger, combining it with a can of cream of mushroom, mixing in green beans and then layering Tater Tots across the top.  But the best part of the instruction in the Hotdish cookbook is, “cook at 350 till it smells done.”  What are the chances of a Tater Tot special at Grandma’s Bar, located in the heart of the Duluth harbor? 

Tomorrow, hot dish or not, we pedal into Wisconsin and the Apostle Islands, Ashland and infamous Hurley.  On to Wisconsin, “come smell our dairy air”, the home of Liney’s, short for Linenkugel’s beer, brats and frozen custard.  

BALSI rolls on…keeping in mind we’re only in it for the exercise.