Chocolate And Other Amazing Food

Earlier I wrote about my adventures last weekend, and besides what I already wrote about, I also ventured with a few friends to Gail Ambrosius. Gail Ambrosius is a truly delightful chocolate shop in the Atwood neighborhood of Madison. You can watch the chocolates being hand made through a window into the back room and they have a wide variety of chocolates. Everything ranging from rose to classic vanilla and lemongrass ginger. I loved the chocolates so much that I had to visit her website. There I discovered that Gail Ambrosius is the chocolatier's name and she was raised on a Wisconsin dairy farm. On the website, she talks about how being raised on a dairy farm shaped her and how that never leaves you, includes how it taught her to care for the land. She visits many of the cacao farms that her chocolate comes from and ensures that they meet her standards. It's always nice to see how growing up on a farm influences others.

Though I do most of my shopping at regular grocery stores, I love small, specialty shops like the one I was at last weekend. When I was in Kansas City, Glace Artisan became my favorite ice cream as soon as I tried it. It's a small shop owned by a chocolatier in the area who ventured into ice cream. The flavors are pretty unique but intense, rich and amazing.

This weekend I attended the Isthmus Beer & Cheese Fest, which featured many small breweries and cheesemakers. While I had tried some of the beer & cheese at the festival before, most were completely new to me and I wouldn't be able to find in a typical grocery store. One of my favorite cheeses was a smoked butterkase cheese, similar to smoke gouda, but I enjoyed every single beer and cheese that I tried there. I'll always be a Minnesotan, but that festival was so classic Wisconsin.

Video Killed the Radio Star

I was at an 80s "New Wave Rave" this weekend, and "Video Killed The Radio Star" played. 80s night was surprisingly awesome for someone who wasn't even alive in the 80s. All my coworkers think I'm crazy young since I was born in the 90s. At least I can appreciate how great 80s music was despite being young.

In other events from this weekend, I toured Capital Brewery and the National Mustard Museum. Yes, the National Mustard Museum exists and it's in Middleton, a Madison suburb. One guy decided to collect all kinds of mustard and there's now a museum dedicated to it. The place has mustard from every state and many countries. They have cheddar ale mustard, pumpkin mustard, cranberry mustard, banana mustard, etc. My favorite though wasn't even mustard - it was the cow shaped cookie cutter that I found at the museum store.

Capital Brewery provided a great tour and, naturally, free samples. Their Supper Club beer is brewed with corn, which was actually pretty good. I was with a group of almost 50, but was still able to hear and see everything well. Capital Brewery only fills the kegs at the location that we visited and a different brewery fills the bottles for them. They're a German style brewery that abides by the German Purity Laws as much as possible.

The cow I gave as a 1st birthday present in on the right. 

We got to see their raw ingredient storage, which included malt from Belgium in a bag that said Cargill. I'm known for liking cows and knowing about ag in my group of friends in Madison, which of course came up again when I saw the Cargill bags of malt. Just to be even more predicable, I attended a 1st birthday party for the daughter of one of my friends and gave her a stuffed cow in a cow gift bag.

It's Been a While

Ah, old county music. The 90s were probably my favorite decade for country music, though I admit I was only born in 1990. Pandora will always be great, but right now I'm loving Spotify for it's ability to play "The Bluest Eyes in Texas" from my carefully crafted playlist when that song is stuck in my head at work, as it definitely was today. These are the lyrics to the song I'm listening to now from the same playlist:

It's good to see your face again 
It's been a while 
How am I doing? 
Well I get by somehow

It's Tracy Lawrency's "I See It Now", and well it's been a while since I've posted so it's rather fitting. There's just not much more comforting and calming than this playlist of "90's & Older Country". It's fun to find older songs that I know and love, but don't get to hear often on the radio, and add them to the playlist. I even get to listen to entire albums so I find songs I hadn't even thought of adding or didn't remember the name of.

This playlist reminds me of home because my dad always has the radio set to country in the barn. His favorite band is Alabama and when I was little we saw them in concert at the Minnesota State Fair when they came every four years. Alabama is now one of my favorite's, and one of my younger brother's as well. I mean, this is just such a great song and it is so fitting. 

I've always loved different kinds of music, and was in band and choir in high school and briefly in college. Since I live alone, I'm listening to music quite often as I generally don't like a quiet apartment. I don't know how people can even study when it's dead silent sometimes. Just don't get it. Music keeps me going. 

Amtrak Trip To MN

This Amtrak train I'm on right now is going rather slowly for the time being and I'm listening to a 90s country station on Slacker radio, which is fabulous, en route to St. Cloud, Minnesota.  We're meandering through Minneapolis and I won't reach my destination for a couple hours. Last time I took Amtrak I was on my high school senior class trip to Washington D.C. This is a much shorter trip at about 7 hours.

It's my turn to visit the boyfriend so I'm headed back to MN to visit him on his family's dairy farm. Seeing him will of course be nice, but I'm also very excited to be back on a farm for the weekend. Madison is a great town and I'm getting more used to it. Once in a while though, I need to be in a rural area surrounded by fields and petting cows. I often miss the farm when I'm Madison partly because it's home but also because it's a rural farm.

While I am listening to music now, earlier I got to talking to the lady who sat next to me for a bit. Her daughter has been out of college a couple years and we talked about the economy,  job searching and, of course for two people from MN and WI,  football. Eventually I mentioned where I was going and why and she mentioned that her grandpa and 5 of her uncles farmed and how she loved to visit the farms. We even talked about robotic milkers, which spurned from discussion of how hard it is for dairy farmers to get off the farm.

Had I decided to drive the 7 1/2 hours instead of taking the train, I may have saved a little bit of money, though not much, but I wouldn't have gotten to have conversations with others or do a little reading. I'm excited to be back in Minnesota briefly. I'll probably be even more excited to go home over Thanksgiving as I haven't been home since July. My rabbits are still there and it will be nice to see them again in a few weeks.

Post-Grad Meals and Food Choices

Making meals post-grad is different. I mentioned on Twitter recently "I've been eating this hamburger, rice and veggie mix for my work lunch for a week and it's still not gone. Need to make smaller meals." For whatever reason, I call the noon meal dinner when I'm back in Minnesota and lunch here, and it's always supper unless I'm going out for dinner. When I lived in Kansas City and decided it was a good idea to make Hamburger Helper, I was eating the same meal for a week. Guess that's what happens when you live alone. In college when I cooked family sized meals, I'd cook for the boyfriend as well but when he's 10 hours away that clearly doesn't happen. 


Going out to eat for lunch at work doesn't tend to happen on a regular basis, because I'm cheap and I often don't mind cooking anyways, so I try to ensure that I have leftovers or something frozen to pop in the microwave at work. Most often it's leftovers, but I do usually keep something frozen on hand just in case I'm not able to have leftovers available. In college, I'd either go back to my apartment for lunch or I'd heat up something up in the microwave near the Crookston Student Association office. Lunch was never a set time.


Recent conversations have me thinking even more about why I eat what I do. I enjoy cooking and especially baking, and I cook a variety of things - including several meals I've found recently on Pinterest. Right now I'm looking for any and all meal suggestions including ground beef, as I have about 8 lbs of it sitting in my freezer from home. My breakfasts usually consist of something that goes in the toaster: bagels with cream cheese, english muffins with peanut butter and sometimes bananas, or homemade waffles that I make for supper and freeze for breakfasts. I'm trying to add fruit or yogurt to my breakfasts as well. Sweets are my absolute weakness and I love some good chocolate, particularly of the European variety like Milka. I try not to buy chocolate as often, but there's currently half a pan of amazing peanut butter bars that I made sitting in my fridge. Sweets are fine, but it would probably be better if I ate them in more moderation. 


As a recent college graduate, I still look for cheap food and I shop at the grocery store in the area known for being the cheapest. Though I like cheap food, I think farmer's markets are awesome and Madison has a particularly good one that I enjoy going to. I've been the farmer's market in every one of the major cities I've lived in; they're a lot of fun and a good way to pick up specialty items. I buy Organic Valley dairy products, which are decidedly not cheap at all, because it's the company my family's milk goes to. Coupons for Organic Valley help a lot to bring the cost to the level more reflective of the other groceries I buy.


If you're a recent college grad, or even just living on your own, how do shop for food? Was it an adjustment to go from the college cheap food lifestyle?

World Dairy Expo: Where the Dairy Industry Meets

Last week was National 4-H Week, and I had been planning to write about last week about how much 4-H impacted me, but last week was also World Dairy Expo (WDE) which made for a very busy week and no time to write any posts.

This was only my second World Dairy Expo; the first being 5 years ago, as I wrote about earlier. My boyfriend's younger twin sisters attended the National Dairy Conference this year. When I moved to Madison, I told my Dad that he should use my move as an excuse to visit WDE for the first time so my parents made the trip to visit me and attend WDE.

World Dairy Expo is a huge event and it truly is "Where the dairy industry meets". It's where the best dairy show cattle are and where people learn of the newest innovations in the dairy industry. Though it's in Madison, dairy enthusiasts from over 80 countries attend the show.

I spend the majority of the show working in the BouMatic booth, but I also helped give milkhouse presentations to 4th grade school groups, attended industry meetings, and reconnected with many of my dairy industry friends. I learned a lot working in the booth as I got to know my coworkers better, including a few from Belgium and other countries, and met with many dairy farmers from across the world. It was particularly interesting to talk to the international visitors and learn about their operations.

The week served as a great reminder of how much I love and appreciate the dairy industry, and just how diverse and exciting the industry is. That diversity is clearly demonstrated by the vast number (810)  of exhibitors at WDE, with products ranging to organic cheese to water beds for cows and herd management software. Seeing the show cows walk across the colored shavings reminds me of the cows back at my family's farm that all have unique personalities and each Red and White Holstein reminds of my favorite cow of all time, Freckles.

Recognizing Positives

Friday night I attended a young adult gathering at a church I started going to nearby, part of a group called TnT - Twenties and Thirties. The last point during discussion was about figuring out what our gifts are, and there was agreement that  it's often a hard thing to do. It's often easier to recognize a positive in someone else than it is to recognize a positive in ourselves. One of the leaders of the group encouraged everyone to point out gifts in people when we see them.

I've had several instances where the group I was part of actively recognized positives. During a mission trip to the Crow Reservation in Montana, each participant had a bag taped along the wall of the church basement we stayed in for the week. Whenever someone did something good that we noticed, the person who noticed wrote down that positive and put it in the other person's bag. The positives ranged from something like mentioning how well the participant worked with kids that day to thanking them for helping with something with a positive attitude. At the end, everyone read the notes in their bags, which were sometimes anonymous and sometimes signed. Reading the notes I got on the mission trip made me happy and inspired me to keep doing whatever it was that others noticed.

Earlier I mentioned how yeah buddies were part of the community service trip I went on during spring break this year. At the end of the trip, everyone wrote a yeah buddy for each person on the bus. Some people wrote short notes, but others went in depth. I still have my bag with my yeah buddies from the end. At different 4-H events, we recognized positives by passing around paper with each person's name for others to write positives on, and by posting folded notes on a mirror.

Thinking back on these times reminded me of how important it is that we recognize the positives in our lives and in each other. Not only does it make the other person feel good, but it can inspire them to keep doing good. While constructive criticism is certainly necessary and helpful at times, it's important that we don't forget to point out positives as well.