Hotdish...

My judge has been on the bench 20 years this year. To celebrate the milestone, his office is holding what sounds like an awfully nice reunion weekend for the Judge and all his clerks in Fargo in mid-July. Timing will be a little challenging -- I wrap up my bar review class the Monday before, my brother Dan's wedding is in Austin the following weekend, and then I have the bar exam three days later! But it sounds like something I'm not going to want to miss.

Part of the invitation is a request for "any stories about 'new' words/sayings/ideas you learned while living in Fargo, such as: What is a hotdish?"

What is a hotdish? I wrote back asking for clarification, which my future Fargo colleague found hilarious. Since I wanted an actual answer, I also looked in the Wikipedia, which as it turns out, has a full entry on hotdish, beginning with:
Hotdish is any of a variety of casserole dishes popular in the Midwest of the United States, and especially the state of Minnesota and its environs. It consists of a starch, a meat and a vegetable, mixed together along with some type of sauce.I love the Wikipedia. The entry contains a nice, dry "disambiguation" section: "While hotdish typically refers to the Minnesotan casserole described in this article, hot dish (written as two separate words) generally refers to any meal or item of cuisine that has been heated. This usage, needless to say, is sharply deprecated in Minnesota."

Toward the bottom of the entry, they have a recipe for Tater Tot Hotdish:This quick-and-dirty hotdish is made by browning hamburger meat, combining it with a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup (can also be made with cream of chicken soup) and some vegetables, placing the filling in a casserole, topping it all off with Tater Tots, and baking it at a "reasonable temperature" (i.e., 350 degrees) until it "smells done."This sounds delicious to me, and Jen, who is not really as nice as everyone thinks, says, "Your dad would be appalled... we should try it for him."

The Wikipedia also notes, "Cream of mushroom soup is so ubiquitous in hotdish that it is often referred to in such recipes as Lutheran Binder, referring to hotdish's position as a staple of Lutheran-church cookbooks."

While searching for a picture of a hotdish, I stumbled across a religious war, mostly concerning whether the tater tots go on top of, or underneath, the rest of the ingredients.

"You can find all of these items at your local grocery store and/or in your kitchen cupboard," says the under-the-ingredients author. "This task is immensely easier in rural Wisconsin than in, say, Greenwich Village; they practically sell all these items together in a blister-packed kit back home."

Here is a photo essay on hotdish preparation, and although the pictures are beautiful, the author used "tofu/protein fake beef instead of the real deal." Ugh.

Hotdish has also inspired art, in this case, poetry:I once had a housemate from Manitowoc,
who made us a hot dish out of tater tots.
I'd forgotten 'til now,
that it made me wish how,
she had stayed north of Oconomowoc....which brings all this kind of full circle, since Jen's whole family is from Wisconsin's Two Rivers/Manitowoc metropolitan area (and it's where we got married!).

Survivor: Fargo

Katie and I headed downtown yesterday and met Ann, a former clerk for my judge who now works in D.C. Ann had a great time in Fargo, lived to tell the tale, and very graciously agreed to share it with us.

Some highlights of the tale:

• Curling! A friend of the courthouse community takes the judges' clerks curling at the Fargo/Moorhead Curling Club every year. Curling!
  
  A club event said not to be missed is the Fargo Triathalon: Curling, bowling, and darts. It was most recently held this past Jan. 28. It sounds much more humane than the Fargo Marathon, which is the real, 26.2-mile deal, and was run in 30-degree weather its inaugural year last year. In May! It breaks my heart that I'll be unable to get out there for the race this year; it's the day before the Georgetown Law commencement.
  
  
• Addicted to the Sauce! Ann developed a yen for "Red Pepper Chip Sauce," (right) which she described, I think, as finely ground-up salsa with brown sugar added. It has kind of a spicy-sweet thing going, she says. It is manufactured in Grand Forks, N.D., and is available at several grocery stores in Fargo (and online! But they are set up to ship sandwiches, and only seem to ship overnight, and very expensively.)
  
  [Incidentally, here's something I haven't seen in a while: As of right now, if you Google "Red Pepper Chip Sauce," you get exactly one result! Though this mention on this page will probably fix that.]
  
  
• Crunchy blinking eyeballs! OK, so you don't really have to go out in minus-40 wind chill very often. But when you do, and when you've bundled up and covered just about everything but your eyeballs, and you step outside, your eyes begin to water a little. And that's OK, but when you blink, you can feel it crunch.

Speaking of curling, the Turin Winter Olympics have ignited a firestorm of interest in the sport in Fargo. From this week's Forum:

After the 2002 Olympic games in Salt Lake City, the club’s membership doubled from 150 to nearly 300, [Fargo/Moorhead Curling Club Vice President Al] Gulseth said.

The club is again on pace for another membership jump after open houses on Friday and Saturday drummed up new interest in league participation.

More than 70 people showed up at the curling club’s Fargo facility at 909 17th Ave. N. to learn more about the sport.
Another recent Forum article, "Where are the Olympians?" notes, "North Dakota, despite its wintry reputation, once again lacks a single athlete on the U.S. roster in the Winter Olympics. It’s a familiar position for the state, which has sent only two athletes to the Winter Games in the past half century, according to news archives and the best recollections of state sports officials."

The last North Dakotan to go was Don Barcome Jr., of Grand Forks, a member of the 2002 U.S. (yes, you guessed it!) curling team.

Gearing Up...

OK, I don't usually spend a lot of time fretting about when stores hold their big sales, but I've made an exception for the end-of-winter sales this year. For months, I've had a low-lying fear that we'll end up in Fargo in t-shirts and shorts if I don't plan this right. On the other hand, I also had a low-level suspicion that I was being unnecessarily hyper about the issue -- at least, until Fargo's wind chill hit -44 this week. Now I believe myself to be the essence of prudence.

The sales have begun in Washington, since our winter is just about through (sorry, F-M area readers!). I spent a personal record at the local REI last weekend, nabbing 50%-off coats, gloves, and boots for the five of us.

I nabbed a coat for myself that is, I think, the warmest, most beautifully made garment I have ever put on (right). It's a long down jacket made by Bonfire called the "Strobe." It turns out that it's made for snowboarding. The hood is lined with down. The snowboarding heritage shows through in its very thoughtful accommodation of iPods and headphones. If Fargo-area readers can tell by casting a critical eye on the jacket whether it will keep me from freezing to death next winter, I'd most appreciate it. It's a large, and I'm wondering if I shouldn't go back and exchange it for an extra-large. It's not tight, but there's not a giant amount of extra room in there, either.

I'm also pleased with the boots I bought for the girls (left). They are said to be rated for -32 weather, but I certainly can't tell by looking at them. I'm a sucker for the technical details: "Removable 6mm Zylex® liners combine a moisture-wicking polypropylene inner layer, a warm wool felt middle, and a heat-reflecting foil outer layer." Sounds good to me.

We had called the folks at Patagonia months ago to find out when they put their winter stuff on sale, and it's next week. I called the local store yesterday to make sure that there was no pre-sale, during which all the good stuff would be spirited away. A staffer assured me that there was not, but that the best strategy would be to go and buy what I needed now, then come back after the sale started and get a refund for the difference. A curious strategy to hear from the store itself, but there it was. With Jen out of town in Raleigh, N.C., visiting our pal Suz and her newborn twin boys (!), I decided to head downtown today with Joey and Ellie to see what they had.

Turns out, not much. Patagonia is famed for its mountaineering gear, but they stock their stores according to the local climate. I asked for the warmest women's coat in the store, and was pointed to a middleweight coat. "This is overkill for D.C.," the salesperson told me. "We're moving to Fargo next year!" I hissed. (No, actually, I only hissed on the inside.) He pointed me to a catalog with their seriously warm stuff, none of which they stock in the D.C. store.

Jen mooted the question by combining her visit to Suz's new family with a stop at the Raleigh, N.C., REI store, which was still filled to the gills with women's winter outerwear. The men's side was stripped -- I guess women in the Research Triangle have better things to do than tromp around in freezing temperatures.

So I hope we're set. If any Fargo-area readers have a thought on items we should be picking up for next winter, please feel free to let us know via comments. Thanks!

"Fargo," the 10th Anniversary...

The City of Fargo is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the movie of "Fargo" with an outdoor screening on March 1. They plan to project the movie onto the side of the downtown Radisson Hotel, which is, coincidentally, the very nice hotel I stayed in when I went for the interview with my judge. I imagine it will still be pretty cold on March 1.

It certainly is this week. The mercury was at minus 18 degrees Fahrenheit this morning with a wind chill of -44. It's a relatively balmy -13F with -30 wind chill at this moment.

I asked my future Fargo colleague how one survives wind chill that was threatening to dip to 60 below zero, and she replied, "Actually, nothing too different than zero! You keep your pets indoors, you let your car warm up a bit longer, and you wear warmer clothing! But you definitely stay out of the wind!"

The National Weather Service actually had two separate warnings going over this weather system, including dire wind chill warnings: "POTENTIALLY LIFE THREATENING WIND CHILLS FROM 40 TO 60 BELOW ZERO WILL DEVELOP THIS EVENING... EXPOSED FLESH WILL FREEZE IN LESS THAN 10 MINUTES. BE SURE TO CARRY YOUR WINTER SURVIVAL KIT IF YOU MUST TRAVEL TONIGHT OR FRIDAY...AND ADVISE OTHERS OF YOUR PLANS."

A new "friend," Fargomike, posted a comment this morning to Fargoing's initial post which was designed to frighten parent and child alike. Some highlights:

• Elementary schools have outdoor recess until the wind chill hits 20 below zero.
• Fargomike's wife came out to Fargo for a one-year clerkship, and the whole family is still there 13 years later.

The last bit is Katie's worst fear. "[D]on't let Katie see," says Jen. "She's convinced we might decide not to come back to DC."