I live in the land of ridiculous regional food. We are pretty regularly mocked for our mayonaise-based salads, love of casseroles and constant, constant pushing of lemon bars.

Casserole
Or perhaps you'd perfer to call it a 'hotdish'? In case you were wondering, here's how you made a casserole: Brown some hamburger and put it in a large glass dish. Cover with one can of Cream of Mushroom soup. Dump in a few cans of vegetables - tomatoes, peas, corn, whatev. Add some of those curly noodles that are always a little too limp. Stir, and then cover with something crunchy: pik-niks, bread crumbs, corn flakes - all viable options.

Venison everything
Who needs beef when deer are constantly throwing themselves in front of your truck? If you can make it out of cow, you can make it out of deer. And it's probably a lot healthier.

'Salads'
These salads deserve quotation marks because they are salads in name only. Are they cold? Yes. Do they include vegetables? Yes. But they also include 2 cups of mayo, some stripey cookies and then some pickled fish thrown in for good measure. I know of actual 'salad' recipes that combine broccoli and raisins. Or pickled fish and apples. Or shredded carrots and orange jello.

Lemon Bars
Actually, quite delicious. Gooey and tarty and lemony with a shortbread crust. Any church basement potluck would be incomplete without them.

Fried Smelt
Usually reserved for VFW fundraisers, Minnesotans love to eat deep-friend minnows. Heads and all. Apparently this really brings in the dollars for our local veterans.

What foods do the locals in your city love?

Posted by Sarah von

Photo Credit

It's a big cliche for a woman to sit down with a box of tissues, some chocolate and a good tearjerker, and many of us have our favourites, the films that, no matter how many times we watch them, always seem to make us well up. Here's my top five, and they're not all the girly tearjerker classics I expected to think of when I started this post. What are yours?

1. Apollo 13 
2. Armageddon 
3. The end of Season 2 of Skins
4. Saving Private Ryan 
5. Dancer in the Dark

• Typewriter I will probably only use it once or twice but at least it will still be aesthetically appealing!
• Cowboy Boots I like the idea of wearing cowboy boots but they will probably end up at the back of the wardrobe...
• Polaroid Camera Even though the film is expensive, the novelty factor makes up for it.
• Husky Although they have a reputation for being stubborn and contrary dogs I think they are a better option than a wolf, which is my first choice.
• Vintage Suitcase It may be hard to carry and be limited in packing space, but a brightly-coloured sticker-covered vintage suitcase is much more interesting!
• Another Journal This sounds like a reasonably useful thing to buy, except for the fact that I currently have four five half filled journals.

Do you have your heart set on spending hard earned money on something impractical and/or frivolous?

Posted by Bridey

There are plenty of things that I like that nobody else is into (beets, anyone?) but the other side of this coin are all the popular things that I have absolutely no time for. Por ejemplo:

Posted by Sarah Von

In honor of Father's Day, let's take a moment to sing the praises of the men who raised us. Awesome stuff about my Pop?

1. He was in the intelligence branch of the Navy. What? Yes. What's up, Spy Dad?

2. He gave up the life of international intrigue to teach sixth graders in rural Minnesota about the importance of knowing our history and appreciating other cultures

3. He has driven the following places a) from Minnesota to Alaska and back b) all over Europe c) all over New Zealand and Australia. I'm a pretty mediocre driver so this impresses me to no end.

4. He's not afraid of occasionally tearing up and saying big, emotional things.

5. He's also not afraid of dancing around the living room to Dire Straits, playing air guitar on a badmitton racket.

6. He has some of the best legs ever seen on a man over 60.

7. He taught me how to build a fire, roll a sleeping bag and paddle a canoe.

8. From him, I inherited my ability to tan, my compulsive organization and my crooked pinkies.

Happy Father's Day, Dad! I love you!

What's great about your dad?

Posted by Sarah Von

Musicians loooovvvve to pimp their hometowns through their songs, eh? Here are a few of my favorites:

• I don't need that much dessert
• Dealing with things straight away is always so much better than procrastinating
• Hitting snooze on my alarm one more time will make me late for work
• I will never last a whole day in high heel shoes
• Parking rules do apply to me

What lessons do you know you should have learnt by now?

Posted by Bridey

The Lawrence Welk Show

University is not just a place for learning facts, it definitely gives students a few lessons in life too! Here's a few things I learned outside the lecture theatre:

1. It is possible to wake up, shower, get dressed and leave the house in the space of 20 minutes.
2. Red wine gives me bad hangovers, vodka not so much, tequila is the devil.
3. After the second week, 99% of students stop caring so much about their outfits and revert to jeans and hoodies.
4. Left over pizza at noon is still breakfast if it's the first meal of the day!
5. There are never enough 20p coins when it's time to do laundry.
6. A diet of coffee, beans on toast, bacon sandwiches and orange juice can sustain a person for months!
7. If I'm tired enough, I can sleep through anything, including drunk people playing tag outside my door.
8. A 4-hour power cut is a great bonding experience for a corridor full of Internet junkies.
9. Drunken dancing burns off a lot of calories (when I stopped dancing on nights out but continued drinking I put on far too much weight!)
10. Taking the two or three totally mis-matched ingredients lying in the cupboard and creating a meal out of them because I can't be bothered to go to a supermarket yet is great fun!

What wonderful life lessons did you learn at uni?

• Hot baths + chocolate ice cream
• Rainy days + sleeping in
• Outrageous goals + action
• Summertime + picnics + cupcakes
• Hammocks + napping
• Roadtrips + unplanned detours + adventures

What are your favourite combinations?

Posted by Bridey

Let's find the silver lining shall we?

1. You can go ahead and stop shaving your legs
2. There is no pressure to attend all those Superbowl parties/family reunions/professional sports games you had zero interest in
3. You don't have to pretend to like his best friend any more
4. A bowl of popcorn, a diet coke and three cookies is, in fact, a perfectly acceptable meal
5. You can do whatever you want, whenever you want, with whomever you want
6. No more guilt about spending hours reading www.gofugyourself.com or watching The Hills
7. On any given day, you could meet your next lover. At the grocery store! In the park! At a bbq!
8. Four words: The.whole.damn.bed

What do you love about being single?

I think, deep down, everyone geeks about something. Here's a list of some of my terribly geeky traits! 

1. I picked my phone based on the fact that it has a full keyboard and can be hooked up to my laptop to use as a modem.
2. I check my email every day when I'm on holiday. (and about 8 times a day when I'm not!)
3. If I skip a day's blog-reading my Google reader has over 300 posts waiting for me!
4. I identify with the boys on The Big Bang Theory.
5. I almost skipped a valuable day's revision to travel to Milton Keynes to get Ben Browder and Nathan Fillion's autographs, and only the price put me off.
6. I find my law course fascinating!
7. I own, on DVD, a documentary about BBSs (it's realy interesting!) and Helvetica, which is just awesome.
   

Are you a geek too? What makes you geeky?

1. 
   

5) A Saturday afternoon organizing my spices is well spent. Offers deep satisfaction.

4) President’s introduction to Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor makes me weepy. Anything related to the first couple, really.

3) It is socially appropriate for my friends to be married, have children, or even be divorced and remarried.

2) Drinking four or five beers on a Tuesday night is pretty fun, but still not as fun as it was six or seven years ago.

1) All my friends are doing it.

Are you ready?

Posted by Darcie

Claire Askew blogs at One Night Stanzas, an advice blog for those new to the world of creative writing.  She also runs a literary and a small press, and works as a Lecturer in English.  She is a huge geek about literature, vinyl records and Formula 1 motorracing.

1. Allen Ginsberg
He grew up taking care of his seriously mentally ill mother, suffered anti-Semitic and homophobic abuse as a youth, fought a massive obscenity trial to get his poetry published, campaigned tirelessly for gay and civil rights and mobilised a generation against government corruption, reckless consumerism and the Vietnam War.  He also wrote amazing poems!

2. Margaret Atwood
She grew up in very provincial Canada, but has become a household name -- she's made science fiction "literary," made feminism accessible and helped to put Canadian writing -- particularly by women -- on the map.  She's written over 30 books and is still going.  She's also passionate about encouraging emerging writers.

3. Emily Bronte
If anyone's read Wuthering Heights, you'll know how unbelievable it is that that book was written by a timid vicar's daughter living in a tiny northern English town.  She and her sisters had to pretend to be men in order to get their groundbreaking and (in Emily's case) pretty shocking -- but incredible -- novels published.  They also had to deal with a crazy drug-addict brother and more than their fair share of scandal...

4. Robert Louis Stevenson
I'm Scottish, and this guy is a huge hero here.  But he deserves it -- he was chronically ill his entire life, but still travelled all over the world writing about his experiences and raising awareness of native South Pacific cultures.  Random trivia: he died while making salad dressing in his kitchen in Samoa.

5. Billy Collins
He's pretty much the only poet whose ever been properly rich and famous, so he gives me hope for penniless writers everywhere!  But he's also a very cool guy: he fights constantly against massive literary snobbery, all because he writes poems that the public actually like.  He also pioneered a huge project (Poetry 180) to get schoolchildren reading poems.  And he writes poems about making sandwiches and smoking and sleeping!

Here are some of the everyday things that always make me feel a little nervous:

• Malfunctioning toilets
  
• Small children (so little and unpredictable!)
  
• Watching the start of races
• Being out of my depth in the sea
• Letters from the tax man
• When the petrol gauge is on empty (especially if I'm running late)

What sort of things give you butterflies?

Posted by Bridey

1. Corn on the cob, straight off the bbq, all smoky and slightly caramelized
2. Caprese salad. I once went through a phase where I spent $15 a week on fresh mozz!
3. Cherries by the bushel
4. Homemade popsicles (pudding pops! mashed strawberries! passion fruit with mango juice!)
5. The Best Couscous Salad in The Land (yes, it's practically the same as a Caprese salad. I don't care)
6. Hobo potatoes, straight off the grill
7. Curried potato salad (so innovative! so yummy!)
8. Strawberries dipped in sour cream and then brown sugar

What are you eating this time of year?

Posted by Sarah Von

These are the songs that remind me of summer even in the depths of the coldest winter, and the songs that always make me smile and energise me when the sun is shining! The titles link to YouTube videos so you can enjoy them too! 

1. Ash - Burn Baby Burn - A bright bouncy song that was always played at the free music festival held at my uni each year. 
2. Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel - Make Me Smile - An oldie that's terribly cheesy, but at the Isle of Wight Festival some years ago it was immensely fun to jump around and sing along to in the August sunshine!
3. Dir en Grey - The Final - Reminds me of the 24 hot hours in Berlin  some friends and I spent seeing the band then soaking up the history of the city all night. (It's about suicide but don't let that put you off, it's a really great song!)
4. Manic Street Preachers - No Surface All Feeling - One of my favourite songs, I think it sounds best on a warm summer evening over drinks on a balcony, watching the sun set. 
5. Feeder - Buck Rogers - I don't think I know anyone who doesn't have a soft spot for this song! It's yet another one that reminds me of festivals and happy summery times!
6. Bon Jovi - Living On A Prayer - Because summer seems to be a great time to break out the cheesy hits, and what could be a better representative of cheesy songs that get everyone dancing and singing along?

What are your feel-good summer songs?