MN and the Art of Deep Fat Fryer Maintenanceby Bryan Boyce While many of my college classmates spent summers working publishing internships in Manhattan or fighting fires in the Sierra Nevadas, I—a comparative homebody—spent the brunt of my wandering youth doing what my Mom likes to refer to as “pushing the boundaries of the Midwest.” In that time, I’ve come to take a certain pride in realizing that this region—too often beleaguered as flyover country—exhibits a distinct if subtle diversity of both cultural and physical geography. And has some really damn good food. Below are a few dishes that I feel showcase this regional nuance, as you’ll be hard pressed to find any featured item (at least at the same quality) elsewhere, even in neighboring Midwestern states. Please do save the crumbs.

Buffalo Burger & Onion Petals - The Chute II * Mission, SD

You’re in Cowboy and Indian country once you cross the Missouri, home of that Great American Thing that is Ranch. Dressing. On everything. So though they’re quite good per se, the onion petals (deep fried) are really just a conduit in this meal (testament: I was repulsed by Ranch off-salad for years, and this is what converted me). Buffalo is the traditional food of both the Lakota people and

pro wrestler Diamond Dallas Page. Leaner, healthier, and tastier than beef when done right. And these guys do it right.

Wild Rice Porridge - Hell’s Kitchen * Minneapolis, MN

When I first had this breakfast in high school I

really couldn’t believe the good fortune of my life. It’s just as tasty years later. Something like hazelnuts, cranberries, wild rice, and maple syrup in cream —cream is the kicker. Al Franken serves it at his weekly meet and greets with Minnesotans in DC. A little yuppie, but for the taste I’m happy to claim it as our provincial export.

Breaded Pork Tenderloin & Corn Nuggets - Dari Barn * Grinnell, IA

There are six pigs for every person in Iowa. I don’t know how many of them end up crisply breaded and splayed to double the size of a hamburger bun, but make sure yours is. (Note: using the adjective breaded is necessary when ordering to avoid a vastly inferior product.) Corn nuggets—representing another of the state’s agricultural staples—are basically deep fried gobs of creamed corn, recalling a fresher version of Green Giant’s unfortunately short-lived frozen veggie nuggets circa the mid-90s.

Fresh Cheese Curds - Farmers’ Market * Madison, WI Everyone in Minnesota thinks they know cheese curds—either the deep fried or refrigerated variety. But there is absolutely nothing that can compare with or describe eating them fresh, which is less like either of the above and more like cheese straight out of the cloth. Whether they still squeak is the litmus. Just trust me on this one.

Elotes & Chili Mango - Street Vendors * Chicago, IL

Chicago, boasting the Midwest’s most densely concentrated Latino population (citation needed), is naturally the place to go for Mexican street food. (You generally have to get into the neighborhoods a ways, though.) I was introduced to elotes through the gorgeous cinematography of Nacho Libre. It’s just Spanish for corn (I don’t know what else to call it) but comes served on a stick and doused in butter, mayonnaise, parmesan cheese, chili powder, and lime juice. And costs a buck. Sin mayonesa makes for a bit lighter load. The mango is the same idea, sans dairy products, and is what both taught me to love the fruit and helped affirm my belief that the best food in the world comes from carts.

Bryan Boyce teaches high school English on the Rosebud Lakota Reservation in South Dakota. He can be reached at

boycebry@gmail.com.

Photos: Above: “Greenvee” by Bryan Boyce

Below: “Paradise By The Dashboard Light” by Ashley Birk

The Three Tiers of Ethnic Foodby Bryan Boyce

I live in South Dakota. And while the endless plains, blinding snowstorms, and antiquated drive-ins of this fair state offer more than their share of intractable beauty, I’ve also learned over years here that there’s just some things you ain’t goin a get but for you go far far away. Chiefly: independent films, a double digits per square mile population density, and good ethnic food. So when I traveled to Washington DC last spring, it was with an express aim to take full advantage of everything the city offers that the prairie does not. On a relative scale, I didn’t disappoint. Friends and I lapped up labneh at a Middle Eastern restaurant in the suburbs, shared a steaming bowl of pho on a back porch in the city, ate injera with saffron-soaked leftovers in little Ethiopia. This is improbable food for my usual day-to-day. Why then, did it leave me feeling just somehow slightly unfulfilled? No, I’m not that world-weary. After a few days back it hit me. I’d gone ethnic, but not as far as I could have. That West African restaurant down the street I couldn’t find anyone to say good things about, the Malaysian diner in my travel guide? These were what DC could truly lord over not only rural but much else of urban America. I had missed out by setting the bar too low. It was after this trip that I developed a way of articulating such differences among ethnic foods—for you and me both—to avoid ever making such a catastrophic underuse of setting again. Observe, The Three Tiers of Ethnic Food.

Tier 1

Food so commonplace in America you hardly consider it ethnic. For example: Mexican, Chinese, Italian. Easy to find even in small towns.

Nonetheless ethnic, because some more corn-fed strains of the country may reject and I still have to drive at least 45 minutes to get.

Tier 2

Food you can find in any city of a certain size. Think Minneapolis, maybe Sioux Falls. For example: Indian, Thai, Ethiopian, sushi, gyros. If starting from Tier 1, it might could be what you do for that occasional night out in the big city. Is the bread and butter of sophisticated urbanites.

Tier 3

Food elusive and exotic, to be pounced on at any availability. Usually found only in large cities (NYC, San Francisco) or specifically ethnic enclaves. For example: Burmese, Peruvian, Malagasy, Lithuanian, Vietnamese sandwiches. This guy I met over the summer raved about the West Indian roadie; I don’t even know what it is but I need to eat it. In a word: the Holy Grail.

It’s worth noting that these strata don’t strictly correspond to city size. Fantastic third tier food can be found in say, German Lutheran church suppers, pasty peddlers on the Iron Range, or that Somali restaurant that used to be in Owatonna. And of course, the distinctions between tiers may blur depending on what you’re used to and where you live. A friend proofing this article, for instance, balked at my early inclusion of soul food in the third tier, since there are about a billion times more soul food than Malagasy restaurants in the country. Valid point: you can find it in

Three Tiers Cont’d...

the Des Moines or North Minneapolis. But its more limited cultural accessibility to me than say, Thai food, is why I bumped it to the top. This raises important questions. Do we classify foods by patronage (who eats them), or availability (who readily can)? If the latter, do we consider just the geographic, or also social aspects of availability? Where does soul food go? Ultimately, the answer is: in your stomach. Everyone in the world should eat chicken and waffles. And the key point remains the same. Oh, to have traveled to New York, lived in Chicago and not pushed them to their outer culinary limits! How I could have been applying this for years: the unpronounceable menus! The pink plastic tablecloths! Don’t, dear reader, make the same mistake as my younger benighted self. Always, always strive for the top.

Bryan Boyce teaches high school English on the Rosebud Lakota Reservation in South Dakota. He can be reached at

boycebry@gmail.com.

“My Apartment Needs To Be Vacuumed But My Vacuum Sucks” by Megan O’Toole & John Pietz

Photos: Above: “Head’s Up!” by Ashley Birk

Below: “Waseca Gangster Disciples” by Bryan Boyce

Whatever Happened To Happy Chef?by Bryan Boyce So reads an esoteric sign posted afront the furthest-reaching Happy Chef restaurant I’ve ever seen, a quiet moldering affair aside the I-90 on-ramp in Kadoka, South Dakota. “They’re not open till the wintertime ends,” reported the gas station clerk next door when I inquired. No small amount of suspicion in her eye. “Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day weekend.” She seemed reluctant to say more. Am I the only one who’s puzzled over the decline of this once venerable Mankato institution? My childhood memories of letter-shaped fries with a working mom, midnight pancakes after lifeguard duty at the RV park aren’t isolated nostalgia. “It’s where you go after choir concerts,” a young woman recalled when Waseca’s Happy Chef closed down six years ago. Nor are these shutterings the only of their kind; I swear I’ve seen at least one or two more. How did a restaurant whose very name denotes wellbeing arrive at such a sorry state? Save the Crumbs ventured on a months-long investigation to find out. Appearing to predate the era of company websites, Happy Chef was, according to a neon display case in the original Mankato location, founded in 1953. When I called to ask about the apparent downturn, the manager said he was “going to go ahead and defer that one to Diane.” Her offices were closed. Such opacity lends an aura of mystery to the Happy Chef story that I don’t feel when considering other restaurants. Echoed Leif Gilbertson of rural southwestern Wisconsin, “What are they? To me, they’re like . . . difficult to understand.” The Chef’s most prominent literary cameo, a passage from Charles Baxter’s 2001 novel The Feast of Love states, “He took me out to

dinner at the Happy Chef . . . [who] himself is outside the restaurant on a concrete pedestal . . . ten feet tall and made out of plastic and wood and glue. He’s the symbol of everything that happens inside.” Symbol of what? My only guess is the overarching fondness expressed by almost every customer I talked to on the matter. “I miss it,” said a microfilm curator at the Waseca County Historical Society, presumably referring to the diner’s unparalleled balance of budget and flavor, grease and tact. “I notice that one in Owatonna closed down too.” Perhaps the most joyous variation on this sentiment is found in a regional pop song, artist unknown, whose Talking Heads-like refrain proclaims, “so I went into the Happy Chef and danced around / it’s my favorite restaurant/my favorite restaurant.” If anyone has the MP3 I’d trade my entire collection of oversized wooden spoons to hear it. Ultimately I’m afraid my research has produced more questions than answers. I phoned the Mankato location a month ago to ask about an unrelated bus stop schedule. “The bus?” an employee responded. “That’s at the gas station next door.” Maybe it always stopped at the gas station. Maybe it left Happy Chef behind in its rising standards. To follow up I checked the schedule online. “Xxx Noservice Mankato (B),” read the bus company’s search engine, suggesting that service to Happy Chef’s birthplace had ceased entirely. Add it to a long list of trends. Even south of the Mason-Dixon, the hue and cry over Happy Chef’s willingness to go down without a fight rings true. When I told aspiring physicist Patrick Crumley of Austin, Texas about this article he chuckled. “I think the one in Cedar Rapids [Iowa] is still open,” he said in reference to his boyhood home. Then he used his iPhone to double-check. I mused over how incompatible the mid-century hamburger-and-milkshake world of Happy Chef seemed with his sleek on-demand internet. “Oh my God,” he exclaimed. The headline, glowing from a Google Maps pop-up window: “This place is permanently closed.” As if the device were going out of its way to make known what wasn’t welcome. “What could have happened? . . . I[’m] indignant,” said Crumley. He’s not the only one.

Bryan Boyce teaches high school English on the Rosebud Lakota Reservation in South Dakota. He can be reached at

boycebry@gmail com.

Photos: Above: “Buffalo & Skinny Jeans” by Bryan Boyce

Below: “Museum Web” by Stefanie Berres

Five Edible Wildsby Bryan Boyce Summer’s in the air, children are playing softball in the park behind your home, all you want to do is while away your day with a book by the lake, and everything about the season calls for something fresh on the kitchen table. The problem: what if you don’t have time to garden, yet find farmers’ market fodder a bit stuffy or insufficiently hard-earned? Enter the edible wild, your perfect in-between. Kayaking, hiking, crawling on your hands and knees or up a tree in search of that elusive berry or root offers the satisfaction of working for your meal without the consistent neediness of a garden (water me, weed me). Bust your butt when you want to eat well or unusual, kick back when the mood warrants something different. Here’s a diverse five to get you started.

DandelionTaraxacum officinale

Yes, you can make fritters from the blossoms (you can make fritters out of anything) and apparently grind the roots up into a fine flour-like powder, but the star of the show here is the still the leaf. Blah, you’re thinking. Salad that smells like a black plastic bag of

yard waste? The key is to pick early and small (late and big means bitter). Channel my hypercompetitive DI athlete Teach For America friend and pick only the tiniest leaf from each plant as it rises from the ground in the spring. Use like spinach. Complement with gorgonzola, scrambled eggs, or bacon grease—which after all can make any green thing taste good.

PurselanePortulaca oleracea

Waiting for a curbside city bus? No place to lay your head? Finally gone to the dogs? Lo siento, but now is no time to give up on the omega-3s! Snatch a cup of salad dressing from a gas station Subway, pick a fistful of purselane, and settle down to a zesty treat. Known for its mucilaginous leaves and lemony flavor, purselane favors the sandy soil between garden rows and sidewalk cracks. It’s eaten as salad in Europe (though my Finnish cousin denies), fed to pigs in Africa (this I can confirm), and boasts the highest omega-

3 fatty acid content of any green leafy vegetable. Mix in with your other greens or use it to thicken soups. I’ve also heard good things about using it in potato salads.

Tiger LilyLilium lancifolium

“Spotted, edible, / delicate, unspreadable” I once rhymed on a ridiculous application wherein I had to describe myself as a flower to gain admission to a student service trip. Little did I

know how useful these haiku lines would prove in later life! The taste is of cucumber, the texture crisp, the ornamental value unparalleled. Stick them on kebabs sandwiched between shrimp and pineapple, gussy up that finger bowl into something actually worthy of being drunk by Plath’s heroine in The Bell Jar, or yes, just enjoy it on top of your salad.

CattailTypha latifolia

Like the dandelion, the cattail is both multifarious in use and best harvested early

Five Edible Wilds Cont’d...

for its choice parts. Bake with the pollen or boil the buds in the fall, but save the tender green shoots for spring. They’re sometimes described as a sort of watery asparagus. Olive oil and garlic in stir fry do a nice job of bringing out the flavor. And I’ll always treasure the memory of cooking cattails and steak in tinfoil over fire with my dad on a camping trip—just be sure to pick them well before July to avoid the cud-like dinner we ended up with!

ThimbleberryRubus parviflorus

Glistening jewel of the North Shore! Tarter, seedier, and more flavorful than a raspberry, the thimbleberry is the one food item on this list that you’d actually serve in say, a restaurant. What couldn’t you do with it? Serve over ice cream, collect enough for a pie, gobble them fresh on the trail. You generally do have to be a bit further north, though. Start looking for the ripened fruit in late July.

As with any other guide to edible wilds, I must disclaim that this is not a field guide. If you aren’t sure what you’re eating, do not eat it, for fear of ending up like that guy in Into the Wild. For more information seek out Teresa Marrone’s regionally relevant Abundantly Wild or Euell Gibbons’ classic Stalking the Wild Asparagus, both of which books this article cribs from unapologetically. Happy trails!

Bryan Boyce interns for an education nonprofit in Minneapolis. He can be reached at boycebry@gmail.com.

Photos: Above: “Laundromat” by Bryan BoyceBelow: “Salutations” by Krissy Rausch

It Snows In Little Mogadishuby Bryan Boyce The New York Times once referred to the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis as “Little Mogadishu,” and while I can appreciate the obvious Somali connection, I think it’s important to note that there are at least a couple differences between this river-bound borough and its coastal East African corollary. For example, it snows in Little Mogadishu. Pirates seem to have considerably less sway. No governmental buildings have been shelled in recent memory. And American currency is accepted everywhere you go! All of which is to say that Little Mogadishu is a way better place to travel to than Mogadishu. Your humble Save the Crumbs contributor recently had a go at it, endeavoring to explore every Somali dining establishment in the district in one night. To start I met two friends at The Red Sea (320 Cedar Ave S), a small but classily presented affair whose stools and wood paneling reminded me not unpleasantly of cowboy bars of the American West. The minute I saw a menu I realized I was already in over my head, and my more experienced friend began to translate. Berbere—spicy red sauce that comes in manifold forms; loosely, the North African equivalent of curry. Kifto—spiced hamburger served uncooked, like haggis; doesn’t every culture have some raw meat dish? It being the night’s first stop, I ordered only samosas. They were crispy and compact with a side of sweet and sour sauce. Both my friends found entrees that came with a generous serving of injera, and I mused at the practicality of taking the spongy bread home to sop up other leftovers. Ready to continue the Somali crawl, we walked to the register as my friend asked, “You know this is an Ethiopian restaurant, right?” Right. This would explain the expansive spread of alcohol displayed behind the front counter. My apologies to the disputed Ogaden Desert! Onward then, past the West Bank Diner (324 Cedar), which I absolutely know is Somali because of the tasty Ramadan leftovers they treated me to one late night last summer. The Alle Aamin Coffee Shop (609 Cedar) blocks down made for an excellent interlude as we plotted further progress. For a dollar twenty-five you can get a delicious cup of black tea and steamed milk flavored with honey and—clutch—cardamom. It’s very sweet but just shy of overwhelming and the spice leaves a delightfully lingering numbness as you sip. Combine this with the true coffee shop ambience—industrial cement floor and whirring espresso machine giving way to community and conversation—and you have on your hands the perfect place for probing life’s unanswered questions. Like, “Do

people in their mid-20s still like playing Yahtzee when they’re drinking?” (I pled the fifth in objection to use of the word still). Sagal Restaurant and Coffee (411), whose formica tables and fluorescent lights most resembled the low-overhead establishments I’d grown accustomed to while living in Africa, declared their kitchen closed when we arrived. So we picked sambusa from a display of baked goods—chewy this time and filled with more peas, like beef stew wrapped in a pastry shell. Do you ever mull the culinary legacies of colonization? A man next to us chomping on spaghetti and a banana prompted such debate. Speaking strictly food-wise, I insist you’re worst off with the British, much better with Portugal, and in colonial fusion heaven with the French (Vietnamese sandwiches on baguette, anyone?). But where does that leave Italian Somaliland? We’d have to find out. This devolved into a discussion of the pros and cons of having maxillofacial surgery after an accident, which concluded with the statement “and that’s why I don’t bike at night anymore.” My two friends tagged out, leaving me and a third to cross the street to the Sahara East African Restaurant (408). Inside, the Muslim call to prayer rang out as bearded men in robes sat talking beneath a high ceiling, creating a serene effect. Goat spaghetti immediately popped into mind as the desired fusion (there’s got to be camel somewhere too), but they were out and we settled for fish. A lemon drink with the aftertaste you get from cranberry juice accompanied our meal, as well as two bananas—evidently the standard after dinner mint. Yellow and zippy, the spaghetti twined through a fried fish filet and sauces both red (marinara-like) and green (packing heat). At the counter, I inquired about sampling a gelatinous orange desert I’d been afraid to eat at a cultural fair in eighth grade. Halwo, it turns out, is primarily chewy and generically sweet, though my friend claims to have detected almond notes. Midnight loomed. To finish out the night we walked to the bustling Maashaa’allah Restaurant (605) for another round of teas. While they were sadly less spicy than Alle Amin’s, I stood transfixed by the pictures of goat liver and papaya bowls the business would serve for breakfast in mere hours. Around me, men—always men—laughed and conversed across the room, hands gesturing, feet resting on Victorian carpet, and my friend and I followed suit. It was a homey feeling. With a regretful nod to the tucked-away Cedar Coffee (419), I turned my attention to the task of biking home without acquiring a need for reconstructive surgery. Somali pirates were the last thing on my mind.

Bryan Boyce interns for an education nonprofit in Minneapolis. He can be reached at boycebry@gmail.com.

Photos: Above: “Scandanavian” by Bryan Boyce

Below: “You Got The Torah, I Got This” by Michelle Premack

Of Canned Carp And Arctic Rowboatsby Brian Boyce The word Arctic is a cheap modifier. Append it to any number of nouns—fauna, dreams, swimming—and you immediately conjure a magic frozen netherworld of Philip Pullman novels, northern lights, and polar bear maulings. So behold: a pollock, silver skin glinting in the Arctic sun (see?), clamped between my skittish hands in what I hope are (any time now!) its final death throes. Visions of Alaskan salmon boats have long attracted me as a potential get-rich-quick scheme, and my years-old ambition to fully catch, clean, and cook a fish myself pairs perfectly with my duties as unappointed food correspondent at Save the Crumbs. Yet my high school English students spoke to truth when their responses to Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea ranged from shoulder shrugs to thoughtful distaste. Baiting and waiting for and bashing and gutting a fish is, it turns out, an unglamorous business. A first and more local attempt to catch my lake-dwelling dinner illustrated this from the get-go. Rod? Check. But open-faced or closed? Do I tie the line in a square knot? Is it gross to bite the end off with my teeth? I recall the last time I fished, how I found more entertainment in untangling my line from a towering willow (climb!) than anything else, and a vague sense of shame in growing up Minnesotan into only a baseline-competent fisherman. Not that it doesn’t run in my family. Observe the local legacy of my great uncle Armin: Seriously! During World War II he applied for and received federal stimulus funds to set up the nation’s first Lakefish Canning Company in Mankato, feeding carp instead of tuna to our hungry soldiers overseas. According to Henry Quade’s fascinating if uneven history The Multifaceted Carp: Mankato’s Moment on the Stage, “Armin considered carp a delicious fish, and whoever could discover a successful means of canning it would be serving a useful societal purpose.” At one point shipping 10,000 pounds of lakefish per day, the venture “just scratched the surface in regard to the possibilities of carp.”

To channel this uncle and others I try in my second stab at self-sufficient fishing, this time a wonderfully slapdash group effort off the icy shores of coastal Norway. We’re from the land of lakes, my cousin and I assure an international crew as we row into the Arctic chop. Soon our lureless handline (not to be confused with handfishing, the glorious Oklahoman practice of using your fist as catfish bait) has wrested several gleaming pollock from the ocean. My cousin and I take hapless turns trying to stun the beasts with the butt of our oars. “Where did you guys say you were from again?” asks a fellow rower. On shore, hook removed if fish still writhing, I feel more comfortable with the thought of sticking a knife into its belly due to a few brushes with chicken killing in college. As always, it takes a minute to realize the full force needed for removing guts—you’ve just got to rip them out. I startle each time the fish twitches, particularly when this continues long after evisceration. No scaling needed for the slick skin, however, and head intact, it’s thrown into a cast iron skillet on a wood-fired stove. We cook and eat, picking flesh from bones, savoring eye and jowl, sharing a moment in this fire-lit cottage as waves lap outside the kitchen door. It’s lovely. Lakefish Canning may have gone belly up, but Quade’s argument for harnessing the resources of our own shores prefigures a more national trend. In Eating Aliens, Jackson Landers—a vegetarian turned hunter who “hasn’t yet met a species he cannot stomach, given enough garlic and butter”—makes the case for turning the rapacious human appetite on invasive species, literally eating our way out of problems like the exploding population of Asian carp. Even more telling, a Baton Rouge-based chef is at work on a “line of microwavable carp meals coming to a grocer’s freezer near you, as soon as the chef can raise money to outfit a plant for his proprietary carp-deboning process.” Would that he were born 70 years prior! For why not eat cheap, healthy, purportedly tasty carp? Undercut the tilapia imports. Play to the local foods sensibilities of Uptown Minneapolis. For the environmental value-add, I know I’d put up for carp tacos or lakefish curry on my Minnesota fusion menu. The question has always been not if, but when.

Bryan Boyce is either herding reindeer in the Arctic Circle or selling fried pies from an Airstream trailer in North Dakota. He can be reached at

boycebry@gmail.com

If y

ou’r

e in

tere

sted

in re

ceiv

ing

copi

es o

f Sav

e th

e C

rum

bs in

you

r mai

lbox

, sen

d us

an

emai

l at

save

thec

rum

bs@

gmai

l.com

and

we

can

set

som

ethi

ng u

p. F

or th

e lo

w p

rice

of $

10 (t

o co

ver t

he

cost

of s

hipp

ing)

we

can

send

you

a y

ear’s

supp

ly o

f Sa

ve th

e C

rum

bs (s

ix is

sues

) rig

ht to

you

r doo

r.

Hey

Rea

ders

!