Episode 611: Minnesota

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Introduction:

Welcome, everyone, to our final episode of Season Six of Reading With Libraries! 

It has been so great to read with you for this season – we just can’t bear for our book fun to end. So while we are on hiatus you will get a Browsing Books quick episode each week. We give you a book prompt for each state park, to highlight something neat at the park. Each week, we talk about six books to meet a prompt.  We have been producing these for a while now, so you can browse our entire archive on our website.

This week we are discussing a favorite topic: Minnesota books! We will look at book set in Minnesota, and books by Minnesota authors. This is always our season finale topic, because we know there are 10,000 lakes here and at least as many good stories!

Who is joining us today? We are welcoming back our CMLE Podcast Correspondent Ariel Kirst, from the Great River Public Library system! Thanks for joining us again today!

Beverages:

We have guests, we have our genre. We just need our beverages. Fortunately, we all came prepared with something to sip while we talk about our books. Each week we like to connect the theme of our books with our beverages. Each beverage will have a recipe or a link on our show notes page, so you can try them yourself!  Obviously, feel free to sip along with us with any beverage that is right for you. Just join us in celebrating books, and discussing books!

As Minnesotans, of course we have a wide variety of different beverages from all the cultures that make up our great state!  

Chai tea:

From The Somali Kitchen website: “It is amazing to see how international the humble cup of chai tea has become. Once common only in homely kitchens, it is now increasingly a popular drink of choice for the latte-sipping trendy folk.  We think they are onto a good thing, but we’ve been in the know for a longer time!”

Ingredients

2 cups of water

1 cup of milk

2 teaspoons of tea leaves (use a strong tea like Kenyan)

6 cardamom pods

1 cinnamon stick

½ teaspoon of ground ginger (you can use minced fresh ginger)

4 black peppercorns

2 cloves

Sugar to taste

Instructions

1. Grind all the spices

2. Place the water and spices in a saucepan

3. Add the tea leaves and bring to boil

4. Add the milk and heat through for two to three minutes

5. Sieve the tea into a pot and serve hot.

Cider:

From the Explore Minnesota website: “Minnesota is a great state for apples: The climate and soil are friendly to the fruit, and the University of Minnesota has done a great deal to ensure new and delicious varietals keep popping up in markets around the country. Most cafes will offer hot cider of some sort, particularly in the autumn through early winter months. And if you’re interested in something a bit stronger that still packs an apple punch, you can find ambitious artisan hard ciders from makers all over the state, including Milk and Honey Ciders (Cold Spring), Keepsake Cidery (Dundas) and Four Daughters Vineyard and Winery (Spring Valley). “

From Duluth Whiskey Project –one of our favorite vacation destinations – “mint whiskey

It’s like a visit to the North Shore in January: you notice the cold but remember the warmth.

Cool your jets with this exquisite, smooth-drinking batch of Minnesota heaven. (Note: You might say “Minnesota heaven” is being redundant, and we’ll say you’re right.)

A delectable hint of natural mint and vanilla flavor provides a perfect counterpunch to this rigorously taste-tested whiskey blend. Put it in a glass. Put it in a cocktail. Put it within easy reach for a relaxing day on the lake.”

Genre Suggestions:

We have a huge diversity of cultures and languages in Minnesota. There are a lot of Scandinavian descendants, as well as German descendants. And we have several Native American tribes across the state including Chippewa, Ojibwe, Lower Sioux, and Ojibwa or Anishinaabe. We have many groups of cultures who have moved here in the last fifty years, including strong populations of Vietnamese, Hmong, and Somali people.

We live in big cities, and small rural areas. We have deciduous trees and forests filled with pine trees. We root for the Vikings and the Wild. We have a pretty impressive great lake: Lake Superior; and to back that up we are known as the Land of 10,000 Lakes – but that doesn’t cover our whole range of lakes. We have waterfalls and historic sites. In short, we are a land filled with a diverse set of people and natural settings – and the literature of Minnesota is likewise exciting and diverse, and is filled with different kinds of settings, people, and genres!

We love Minnesota books, and collect all kinds of books across our website.  Browse around to find any number of books by our own Minnesota authors, and set in our lovely state!

We also have a collection of links to all kinds of other Minnesota books. Check our show notes page for details.

Our Book Discussion:

Now we are a little more familiar with this week’s genre, and we have enjoyed some of our special beverages, let’s get to the book discussion!

As always, all the images and books we link on our shownotes page lead to Amazon.com. If you click one and buy a nice book, or anything else, Amazon will give us a small percentage of their profits. Thanks in advance for helping to support us!!

Conclusion

Thank you so much for joining us for this discussion! And thank you for being with us all season. You know the book group is always better when you are here with us.

Thank you so much to our Alternate Host Ariel! She has been such a great host with us all season, and it is wonderful to have this chance to chat with her about books!

Want to be a full book group member? Join us on Patreon! For as little as $1 a month, you can support the podcast as well as helping to keep Official Office Dog, Lady Grey, in treats. We really need your help to keep podcasting, and this is a great way to support us and to be part of the podcast community! Thanks in advance for your support.

We look forward to seeing you next season!