Harry Hutchins Gift Suggestions

Harry Hutchins gives us his gift suggestions this holiday season.

1. The Better World Shopping Guide by Ellis Jones

2. Don't Forget the Duct Tape: Tips and Tricks for Repairing Outdoor & Travel Gear by Kristin Hostetter -How to fix your outdoor gear in the field

3. National Geographic 5th Edition Field Guide to Birds of North America. Much updated with many new paintings, maps and all US birds. Birding hotspots also included.

4. Midwest Skiing - A Glance Back
A great set of pictures from Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois skiers.

5. Momentum: Chasing the Olympic Dream by Pete Vordenberg . Autobiography by former US ski team member and current head coach of his experinces from age 10 to present day. It is funny, a lot of UP stories and a great read.

6. 50 lbs of birdseed

7. Shopping bag - can be found at Ogle's in Grand Rapids, 2 for $3

What gifts do you recommend this holiday season?

Local Christmas presents

Thanks to Maggie, we're all thinking a little bit more about where it is we get our food from, and where we spend our money. Even if you aren't going to overhaul your diet completely or buy only locally produced products, I think everyone agrees that buying from local businesses and local producers is a good thing to do for our community.

Here's some ideas for MN Christmas presents:

CHEESE
We just sampled some smoked Gouda cheese from Green Pastures Dairy in Carlton, Minnesota. It was great! Green Pastures Dairy is a family-owned, grass-based farm producing "naturally healthy" Minnesota Farmstead™ cheeses. They milk in the spring, summer, and fall, using intensive rotational grazing, which means their cows are moved to fresh green pastures daily.

WINE
Forestedge Winery is located in LaPorte, Minnesota and produces 7 to 8 thousand gallons of wine in small batches every year. Their signature wine is their rhubarb wine which has won many international awards as well as the 2005 Best Minnesota Fruit Wine.

Minnestalgia wine is produced in McGregor, Minnesota. They also sell locally produced jellies, jams, syrups, honey and other products.

CLOTHING
Wintergreen Northern Wear of Ely produces outdoor clothing. They are one of the largest private employers in a small remote town where jobs are scarce but garment-making talents and pride in workmanship are in abundance. They are one of the last full-line outdoor clothing makers in the U.S.

Bemidji Woolen Mills produces a line of woolen clothing and blankets. Since 1920 they have been producing clothing for life in the cold north. Bill and Bob Batchelder are 4th generation owners/operators who continue in their great grandfather's footsteps. The Batchelders set out to produce the highest quality, authentic outdoor woolen apparel for the early logging era in Minnesota and surrounding states. They are known for their Paul Bunyan style authentic plaid.


Caleigh Capes are custom crafted wool capes made in Bemidji. They recently made capes for the Team USA Women's Curling team.


LOCAL ARTISTS
MacRostie Art Center in Grand Rapids has a December marketplace selling the artwork of local talent in media as diverse as birchbark, jewelry, soaps, pottery, cards, photography and paintings.

Jacques Art Center in Aitkin has their annual holiday marketplace with a wine and cheese tasting fundraising event on Thursday December 6th from 5-8pm.

The Franklin Art Center in Brainerd is a renovated high school that houses artist studios. You can walk in anytime or go to their community open house the second Saturday of every month from 10am-4pm.

Bemidji Community Art Center is a member supported art center with three galleries. They also sponsor the First Friday Art Walk in Bemidji.

KAXE PRODUCTS
We've got the 2008 Phenology calendar for sale ($20), live Bill Miller CDS for ($10), KAXE t-shirts, mugs and waterbottles. Call us for more information! 218-326-1234.

Books are always a great gift - check out this list from KAXE callers to Between You and Me for children's book ideas.

Do you have ideas on holiday presents that support the community? Email us!

Moravian Spice Cookies from the KAXE Kitchen

Penny and Dan were in for Between You and Me on Saturday and made Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookies and Moravian Spice Cookies. Penny got the recipe from The Food Network and passed it on....

1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon finely ground white pepper
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard powder
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 large egg yolk
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
Whisk the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, pepper and mustard together in a medium bowl.

Beat the butter and sugar together in a large bowl with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until just combined and lightly fluffy. Beat in the molasses and egg yolk. Gradually add the dry ingredients and mix together on low speed until dough is just combined and still crumbly, about 3 minutes. Give dough a few turns with a spatula to bring together.

Lay out wax paper on a clean work surface and put about 1/3 of the batter on top. Lightly press down and top with another sheet of wax paper. Using your hands or a rolling pin, gently pat into a rectangle. Roll out with a rolling pin until dough is as thin as possible without breaking, no thicker than 1/16 inch thick. This is the key to these cookies: they really can't be too thin. Gently peel back the layer of waxed paper and then replace it loosely.

Transfer rolled batter to a flat baking sheet and freeze until firm and can easily be peeled away from the waxed paper, about 30 minutes. Repeat with the remaining dough.

Cut dough using a small (2- to 3-inch) fluted round cookie cutter and return to the freezer for 15 minutes to set. Transfer frozen cookies to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake until crisp and lightly, evenly colored (but not brown), about 10 minutes.

Busy baker's tips: Store baked cookies in an airtight container for up to 10 days. The dough can be frozen, between sheets of waxed paper and well-wrapped in plastic wrap, for up to 2 weeks. Baked cookies can be wrapped in plastic wrap then aluminum foil and frozen for up to 1 month.

Cook's note: Don't be intimidated by how many cookies this recipe makes. This dough freezes well, and you can roll out far in advance -- so when you need cookies, you can cut and bake as needed, which is a great holiday timesaver.

Copyright 2007 Television Food Network, G.P. All rights reserved

Add your cookie recipe to the blog, or email us!

Think Healthy this Holiday Season

This email came in from KAXE's girl in the woods, baker and public health advocate, Amber:

I definitely enjoy baking during the winter months, however I usually make yeast breads and lefse, and rather few treats. As for the cookie question, I'm a big fan of spritz cookies with almond extract used as flavoring. Many listeners are probably familiar with these, they are a traditional variety made with chilled dough and the use of a press. It is important to use real butter for these cookies, for the flavor.

I want to remind listeners that while they are making treats this baking season, it's important to take care to use healthy, or healthier oils and fats. Any margarine or vegetable shortenings that contain "hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils" are the worst and should be avoided at all costs. While health experts generally recommend REDUCING saturated fat intake to very small amounts, they also recommend ELIMINATING trans-fats, or those hydrogenated vegetable oils. This is because these fats are made in a lab, and are not found in nature, thus our bodies cannot metabolize them, and they affect our blood and cholesterol in a way much more severe than even animal fats and saturated plant fats (the traditional villains). This is why butter is preferable to margarine. Many recipes that call for margarine can also be made successfully with liquid vegetable oils, such as olive, walnut, grapeseed, canola, soybean, etc. If using olive oil in sweet treats buy a very light colored light flavored variety. There are also non-hydrogenated margarines available, and are generally marketed as such. "Earth balance", and "Smart balance" are two brands I know of. Always always read labels. This goes especially for snack foods.
It's really important to do all that we can to avoid coronary heart disease. Eliminating hydrogenated oils is essential. Remember ANY alternative found in nature is better for you. The holidays are a good excuse to bake some more wholesome homemade treats that are much better for us than those industrial packaged goods that tempt people from grocery store shelves! More information on dietary fats, and specifically hydrogenated oils, can be found on the Harvard School of Public Health Website

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/fats.html

Thanks for listening everybody, take care!

Groceries on a Local Food Diet

One of the questions Dennis and I are asked most often about our local food diet is “How much do you spend on groceries?”

I admit that we haven’t been tracking that very well, but we believe we spend much less for groceries now than we used to. Last summer we probably spent more on food than usual. We bought seeds, bought bushels of tomatoes and other veggies at the farmers’ markets, and wine at Forestedge Winery, among other things. But now that the harvest is in, we’re mostly living off the larder.

This morning I looked through my checkbook for the month of November, trying to get an idea. I write all our debit card purchases in the checkbook as if they were checks, so that’s included, but Dennis may have made some cash purchases (mostly eggs).

I found 6 food-related entries. We spent $47.09 on butter and milk from Dahl’s dairy (this was actually for October and paid on October 31). That was a higher-than-average month for dairy. There was also a $30.67 check to Harmony Food Co-op (mostly for the thanksgiving turkey, but all food-related). Otherwise we spent $18.79 at Lueken’s and $31.61 at Teal’s. Those last two are supermarkets. We buy laundry detergent, fabric softener, dish soap, paper towels, and other non-food items there. I remember buying 2# wild rice at Teal’s and some local onions there. We get cream and milk from Blackstar Dairy at Lueken’s. The bulk of those purchases were non-food items though.

The other two entries were from dining out. We ate some pizza on our way home from a day in Brainerd ($22.04) and I bought lunch for myself and some other folks at the Effie Café this week during a work-related trip ($55.74). We also ate out with friends one time when we went to see a concert, but we paid cash that evening (I estimate $60 for the night, including drinks???).

So that’s it!

Eating out for any reason is a big expense, but we still do it from time to time, if we’re away from home, working, or spending time with friends.

Indians, Racism and Sports

a
That's a picture of Charles Bender on the left and Louis Sockalexis on the right. Both of them were Native American ballplayers who played in the major leagues between 1897 and 1915. In the 1890s and early 1900s there were a lot of Indian athletes in college and professional sports. They endured intense racial abuse, most of them were nicknamed "Chief" as in Chief Bender, Chief Meyers and Chief Sockalexis, but unlike blacks, they weren't explicitly banned from the games.

Charlie Bender was an Anishinaabe born and raised in the Brainerd area. He was an outstanding pitcher for the Philadelphia Athletics, helping them win three World series before World War I. Before Dave Winfield in 2001 and Paul Molitor in 2004 were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Bender was the only native born Minnesotan in the Hall of Fame.

Louis Sockalexis had a much shorter major league career. He was born in Maine, a member of the Penobscot tribe there. Sockalexis was a good-hitting, mediocre outfielder who played three years (1897-99) for the Cleveland team, then known as the "Spiders".

Most Indian athletes blend in easily with the multi-ethnic sports scene today. Twenty-two year old Winnebago, Joba Chamberlain (below), made a big splash as a rookie pitcher with the Yankees this summer. But look closely at the pictures of Charles Bender, Louis Sockalexis, and Joba Chamberlain and consider the dominant images of Indians in sports today: the Cleveland Indians and the Washington Redskins.

For seventy years the professional football team in Washington, D.C. has been called the Redskins. I'm amazed this "mascot" identity has lasted that long. There are positive and even noble meanings associated with "Braves" and "Warriors". I've never heard the word "redskin" spoken in way that didn't imply a prejudice toward Indian people. It's a racial slur. As we followed the tragic story about the Washington pro football player who was shot and killed last Monday, I was reminded how comfortable most sports reporters are using the nickname. A "White, Brown or Black-skins" mascot sounds absurd and no doubt would offend a lot of people. Most ethnic slurs common before 1960 would offend today. So why is "redskins" still OK? Certainly it's not OK with a lot of Indian people. The Indian population is relatively small and widely dispersed around rural America. Perhaps offending Indian people isn't bad for business or politics.

Another take on the same subject: When I was growing up in Missouri in the 1950s, the image white America wanted me to have of African Americans was that of a bright-eyed, big-smiling happy people content with their lives of second class status. That image was shattered in the 1960s, but when I recently saw the Cleveland Indians logo on their caps and publicity material, it was the same happy, buck-toothed image in red face instead of black.

We give lipservice to respect and tolerance, but commercial and political consequences are still the most powerful agents of change, and I guess Native Americans don't have enogh clout in either of those spheres. Are sports reporters as naive and clueless as many of the young athletes they cover? Or do many of them feel the same commercial and/or social and political pressure to not make waves about such flagrant symbols of racism in sports?

Prosperity on the Range

The Range is trying to get ready for prosperity. It was really hard to write that sentence with conviction. Over the last 26 years, most of the economic news on the Iron Range has been about how people and communities have struggled to ride out the boom and bust times that have characterized the economy of the Range since World War II. Since the 1980s over ten thousand good paying jobs in the taconite industry have disappeared. Now, during a downturn in the U.S. economy, it appears the world steel markets have created a window of opportunity that may dramatically transform the Iron Range. For the first time since iron ore was discovered on the Range, the new Minnesota Steel facility near Nashwauk will produce steel here, rather than ship processed ore to the blast furnaces in Chicago, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Mesabi Nugget near Hoyt Lakes will produce an enriched steel pellet that opens up new markets for our ore. I still won't say this will happen for sure, but it seems closer than ever.

The challenge for Iron Range communities is to prepare for the influx of new workers. The new prosperity will create challenges that will strain our ability to recruit, house, and educate a whole new workforce. Thousands of people will move here for the jobs. Will we welcome the new arrivals? Or will their arrival cause social, cultural, or even racial tensions? Wayne Nelson has more on the story in the December edition of Business North.