by doitinnorth | Mar 7, 2021 | evergreen, people/passions
I’m so grateful to Vice President Walter Mondale, Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, Justice Alan Page, Ann Bancroft, Will Steger, Alex West Steinman, Yia Vang, and the late David Carr for lending their voices. This
project began more than 5 years ago when we started asking notable
Northerners how this place shaped their lives and recording their stories. The end result is a love letter to my home state and the season that defines this region and I’m thrilled to see it finally come to life. Read full-feature
here.
by doitinnorth | Feb 5, 2021 | evergreen, shop/share
From the Caribbean island of Trinidad, this pepper combines intense heat and a nutty-sweet flavor for a truly unique taste experience. I’ve fermented several varieties of 7-Pot peppers and blended them with secret ingredients to give you my 7-Pot Scorn.
Order your Valentine’s Day gift today!
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Order a bottle or three. These 5 oz. bottles of joy make perfect gifts for the people in your life who you want to impress the most.
I’m Troy, Miss Jenny’s partner in the garden, kitchen, and life.
Miss Jenny, (Jennifer) and I have shared a love of hot and spicy food since we first met. A few years ago our friend introduced us to the 7-Pot chile pepper and shared his harvest with us. Jennifer is an accomplished home cook who enjoys tinkering in the kitchen. She had dabbled with fermenting other foods before and decided to try making a fermented hot sauce with this superhot, flavorful pepper. It was a savory, superhot success.
We began growing our own 7-Pot peppers at home and Jennifer continued to hone her recipe. We made and bottled sauce in our little kitchen and shared it with friends and family. When people started asking us for hot sauce before our peppers were even ripe, we knew we had something special going.
Friends who loved our li’l sauce convinced us to try selling it. So, we came up with a name. Then, talented and generous friends helped us design a logo and a funky-fun label, and Miss Jenny’s 7-Pot Scorn was born. Soon we were selling 7-Pot Scorn at farmer’s markets and to friends of friends.
Finally, we made the leap to selling commercially. So, another talented and generous friend helped us design this website. Then we got licensed and graduated to a professional, commercial kitchen space located in South Minneapolis. This is truly a small, family operation. I do the marketing, sales, crazy ideas stuff, Jennifer does the math-related, legal, creative food stuff. We all pitch in on the chopping, bottling, and shipping stuff–even the kids. Oh, and we both have day jobs. It’s been a fun, crazy project so far! We hope you love our sauce!
We Love Growing Peppers…
…but we couldn’t possibly grow as many as we need on our own. We’ve partnered with these local growers to supply us with enough 7-Pot peppers to allow us to crank out the 7-Pot Scorn:
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Easy Bean Farm – Milan, MN
Connecting Farm and Family since 1996
Our longtime friends Mike and Malena, of Easy Bean Farm in Milan, MN have run a successful farm share operation for over 20 years. We look forward to their fresh veggies every year! Please check them out.
Toadstool Gardens – Owatonna, MN
Toadstool Gardens is an organic family farm in Owatonna, MN. They specialize in heirloom, non-GMO, hybrid and exotic garden veggie plants, produce and seeds.
by doitinnorth | Jan 24, 2021 | evergreen, shop/share
Now’s the time to check out author Neal Karlen’s This Thing Called Life: Prince’s Odyssey – On + Off the Record!
We’ve got copies signed by Neal while supplies last. Each inscription is unique. What will yours say?
Available in the store and at: electricfetus.com
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by doitinnorth | Jan 3, 2021 | events/locations, evergreen
by doitinnorth | Jan 3, 2021 | art/design, evergreen
…and became America’s first climate-controlled indoor shopping mall!
The mall’s architect, Victor Gruen, designed the building to mimic Vienna’s outdoor squares, with plants hanging from the balconies and plenty of space for people to mingle. In the atrium, there was a fish pond, large faux trees, and a 21-foot cage filled with birds.
If you take a look at the video above, shared by Kottke.org, you’ll notice that Southdale Center looks a lot like a typical mall. Designed by Victor Gruen, the father of suburban American shopping malls, the layout was revolutionary at the time but has since been copied by shopping centers across America. (For more on Gruen, listen to this great episode of the podcast 99 Percent Invisible.)
The mall’s highlight was the central atrium, topped by a skylight, which Gruen designed as a kind of indoor town square. The exteriors were designed to be boring in order to make the dazzling interiors seem more exciting by contrast, encouraging people to stick around and shop rather than exit.
However, by the end of his life, Gruen had become an outspoken critic of shopping malls, which he had envisioned as a solution to suburbia’s lack of walkable public space. While Southdale is still open, America’s indoor shopping malls are largely dying, often finding new life as things like medical centers or residential developments.
Image: The Southdale Center in Edina, Minnesota in 1956. Life magazine photo archive
