Bacon Balm – Minnesota State Fair, MN

When I got to work today, THIS was sitting on my desk.

I didn’t know who put it there, but I knew I needed to give that person a hug. When I found out it was my coworker NotHisRealName, I forwent the hug, due to workplace weirdness, not because he's not awesome. Actually, NotHisRealName knows I love bacon in many different forms, and when he was at the Minnesota State Fair yesterday, someone shoved a tube of lip balm in his hands and he thought of ME! I’m assuming because of the flavor of lip balm, not the size of the container.

I whipped the cap off this technological oddity and liberally applied it to my lips, which were slightly chapped and needed relief. The initial taste does have some hints of bacon, but most of what I smell and taste is maple. The tube does say it’s maple bacon, and the maple definitely is the overpowering force in this thing. I feel like I’ve been eating pancakes with syrup for the past few hours.

I was half worried it would be a lipstick tube filled with congealed bacon fat (I STILL would have tried it), but thankfully, it does actually appear to be lip balm. It’s also SPF 15, so I have an excuse to wear it out in public. the tube does not indicate if it is vegan/vegetarian-friendly, sorry. Thanks again, NotHisRealName!

I’ll be sitting at my desk for the next few hours licking my chops like Yukon Cornelius.

Who wants to kiss me?

Birthday Cake at Work – Eden Prairie, MN

I’ve never really been known as a big dessert eater. Which has worked out well for me in the past – I’ve gotten fat eating other things aside from sugar. If I liked dessert, I would weigh 500+ pounds. But with my birthday coming up, everyone gravitates toward cake, except me.

My boss knew this, so she decided she was going to do something special for me for my birthday. She had talked this up at work for a week, so I was beginning to think it was going to be a pantless mariachi band or some sort of fight club or something. Thankfully, it wasn’t. She made me a cake. So what’s the only way I’ll eat something that I don’t really care for? …

Wait for it…

Put bacon on it. She made a red velvet cake with piggy pink frosting and then it was topped with bacon bits. I know it sounds horrific, but it’s truly not. Remember the chocolate covered bacon I had at the State Fair this summer? (boy I sure do...) It’s like that – you have to think of it as a salty-sweet snack, not a culinary horror. It was honestly one of the best desserts I’ve ever had in my entire life.

And it wasn’t just me. Many of my coworkers tried it hesitantly, and said they loved it, after they got over the weird factor. It truly was really good.

I think my boss may have moved up a notch in my book…

Top 5 things about bacon cake

1. Seriously, it had bacon on top
2. It had pink frosting
3. I didn’t have to make it
4. I got out of work for a half hour to eat
5. Bacon on cake traumatizes people

Bottom 5 things about bacon cake

1. It’s still cake (but it’s now a new mechanism to get bacon into my mouth)
2. I wanted to eat more of it
3. Leaving a piece of it on my desk drew all kinds of distracting attention from passers-by
4. I’m not likely to find it at any restaurant
5. My boss took the leftover part home to horrify her husband and son

5-8 Club – Minneapolis, MN

We’ve heard all the hype about which place has the best Jucy Lucy in Minneapolis. We’ve tried a couple places (Matt’s, the Nook, etc). With Gerd’s mom in town, we thought we’d better hook her up with the Minnesota staple food. If you don’t know what that is, it’s easy – it’s a cheeseburger, but the cheese is stuffed INSIDE the burger. Modern science working to your advantage, friends. Matt’s was too far, The Nook was way too far, so we went with the other place our friends have spoken about – the 5-8 Club. We’d never been there, so we told Gerd’s mom to… uhhh… not dress up, since it is likely a seedy dark bar with 5 tables (like the other Jucy Lucy places are).

We hit the road and actually found it by accident, based on Gerd’s totally messed up Google map program which shows a map totally unrelated to the highlighted driving route it gives you. It’s hilarious. I’ll throw a photo up here so you can see what I’m talking about.

We pulled into the ample parking lot and were amazed to see decent, respectable folk going into and out of the place. Weird. We get inside and it’s like a restaurant in there. Not at all what we were expecting. We found a table pretty quick, but got there just in time as we saw a slew of old people and pregnant people standing and waiting after we sat down. Not our problem, is it? (I’m totally kidding – if a pregnant woman were standing and waiting, I would invite her to sit and wait at our table…)

It actually was a tough decision because of the awesome looking OTHER food on the menu, but Gerd and her mother both ended up with the standard Jucy Lucy and JoJo’s which are like potato wedges (I feel the cooks get sick of cutting standard sized fries and just cut the potato into quarters to get through them faster – just my own theory here. They're probably exhausted from stuffing cheese inside hamburgers, so I'll cut them some slack.). The Lucys were delicious and more than one comment was made about the them actually being better than other places – sorry to offend, since some people will take that previous statement personally, but it’s true. Great potato wedges as well, so no complaints at all. We did have to remind Gerd’s mom not to eat the Jucy Lucy right away. See, the cheese is super heated to molten lava inside the burger. Your first bite usually ends up with cheese running down your face (and shirt and pants for some of us). Now warm cheese is fine, but scalding fire on your face is sure to leave a mark and force some sort of primal scream out of you in public – funny for others, not funny for you.

I ended up with the Saucy Sally, which is a half pound burger stuffed with frisco sauce (they call it secret sauce, but I’m totally on to their game), topped with American cheese, shredded lettuce and Thousand Island dressing. I’m SURE there couldn’t have been more the like 150 or 200 calories in this thing. Ha ha ha ha. I also got the onion rings which looked mighty tasty when the waitress walked other people’s orders past us as I was ordering. And this place is one of like two restaurants in the Twin Cities that serves Pepsi products, so I was able to score some Dew there. Seriously, you have no idea how much that means to me. The Sally was amazing, and Gerd kept trying to distract me so she could steal my frisco sauce and Thousand Island dressing dippin sauce for her JoJos.

I’ve mentioned the onion thing before in the Malt Shop post. I don’t eat the onions, just the fried part. So I left my usual pile of onion ring innards in the basket. Here’s what I’m talking about.


I’m a freak show. What do you expect?

Bottom line is – we’ll be back to this place. And for some reason, both Gerd and her mom raved about the bathroom. Seriously. The bathroom.


Top 5 things about the 5-8 Club
1. Saucy Sally
2. Jucy Lucy
3. Onion Rings
4. They have Mt. Dew
5. It’s more restaurant than bar, so you can bring the parents

Bottom 5 things
1. Can be tricky to get to
2. Not a dive bar – you decide whether this is good or bad
3. You’ll wait if you show up after like 6
4. Too many awesome looking dishes to try
5. We saw a sign on the wall for pig powder and are unsure what that means

http://www.5-8club.com