I hope this long list doesn’t sound too fishy, with a multi-faceted news flash into what could be your activities, but it seems that these days when it goes to feeding your indulgence, Lent to close, into walleye and also wine and maybe whiskey, the place to go if you’re a local business owner is your annual dish-deciding trip to Canada, many a hundred miles to its streams and lakes. You know, Ontario and others, even now become tariff territory, but salmon seeking surmounted, you have options back here in The States. Local and around The Cities.
Now that they have returned home, some still supply a lingering example of spring, as now materializing among the many, Green Mill is back with their March-led foray into walleye and related fish dishes, and many have a somewhat-common tangy but dark-tinged sauce in common, above tartar. The way they use it all fits them to a T, several appetizers and entrees and sandwiches alike, first letter invoked. Check out their Hudson or other location, sit around the circle and also cite multiple Minnesota award-winning pizza, and see how quick a look it takes for you to tell what the sauce is. OK, bang bang or cajun, tap tempura. The walleye fest beckons, even when blackened, with several options, listed on their sign. This is beyond fish and chips, at one of my favorite haunts. And you may also win a fly-out fishing trip to a lodge in, as stated, Ontario, with KaBeeLo.
Take this one step, or door down further. With a seemingly isolated (another one) ingredient that keeps popping up across the road. Down that proverbial Buffalo trail. At those Wild Wings is to be found over and again the killer hatch queso attached that made the Young Guns take arm or aim. Maybe even in the red-hot blazin’ scale of semi-scalding sauces that includes in its heat range a BBQ ranch, very low on the totem pole as in second from the last, (but then there is a restart of the red-hot to cool ranch type colors that occurs with the five dry rubs, not the 20 or so signature sauces.)
Segue to Mad City and its Firehouse franchise that is set to sub next to the Tropical Smoothies Cafe, (a cool if not red-hot combo of things), right in the heart of the college part of town. And not college, but K of C if you’re Catholic, their fish fry also held beer and wine for sale, just for a $10 fee to the city treasurer, on what was called 3-21-25 all through the way to 3-21-25, note that’s the same day, so I’m guessing just one day is what we’re talking. (Like maybe, my stated as 30-day Xanax prescription that said start one day through only that same day for use, so that sounds like a party, if you can stay awake.) At the church a few counties away, being held after three earlier tries is their brew fest contest — together with fish tacos for Lent, and a theme here? — where you can vote for the best beer, and you can even BYOB of brew for people to partake in, although not eligible for the contest. So it’s OK to haul in some watered down Bud or Busch, no one will judge you.
— This is one spring activity, running for about two years, that has been changed up. Now called The Believers Church, they are still ordering appetizers through Juniors grill and bar in River Falls, but have found a site for them to construct an actual building, after having held late in the afternoon each Saturday at Juniors spacious venue at least the start of yes, a church service, according to a representative of Juniors. Beginning at 4:30 p.m. were snacks followed by the service itself. This was seen by the church as a way to increase the size of its flock, through an alternative setting that will appeal more to non-typical types of church-goers.
We have no word on the nature of their theology, or if they are aligned with a recognizable denomination. —
Speaking of this, and recalling a week decades ago that was involved in the countryside and a state park near Golden just outside of Denver with a papal visit, when he was well, and World Youth Day, we move to Colorado as far as trip location. Rapid-fire to 2025, the spring elections clerk joined myself and many others I’ve seen in Hudson sporting a sweatshirt touting with the temps bouncing around the Bulldogs — the university that thus is by far the most prevalent in these parts, behind of course the local Badgers and Gophers, (forget Hawkeyes of Iowa, though other college teams have stepped forward in the postseason), wearers who just might rip up your sweatshirt long sleeves and turn them into, well, springtime short sleeves. Many of those, too, have been seen lately around town as temperatures move up out of the 30s range, but soon to revert back.
As has been Waldo, as in my involuntary take. I have that telltale T-shirt — maybe you do too — a couple of years ago pulled out of my closet, that gets many remarks every time I don’t pay attention and put it on. “There he is. I found Waldo!” I am getting a little more self-conscious each time I encounter such people downtown, although I will have to admit some of their comedic bits are entertaining. (Moreso than the soft spring hues, much the same color as the stripes I wore, on a short-dressed model on the way-down-south-shot TV commercial.) But back to those quips I still get on occasion: It goes on and on and on. It’s heaven and hell.
Ever watch golf on TV? Maybe before March Madness arrives? When you gaze these days, you see trees up and down the fairways that are already greened out, and look like that was not just the other day. We locally have only recently seen the beginning of budding, although moss grows green on decorative stones in our downtown. And with the March toward basketball, two local nightspots, tap the Hudson Tap and the Smilin’ Moose, which have similarities in ownership, started their specials for these games on The 18th, a Tuesday. One said they ended on the 31st. But we have only recently seen the beginning of The Final Four for men. Meanwhile, the U Conn women’s team set a record with its 12th title.
The newest series of commercials running on my freebie TV is of Maggie, the made-to-be-cool, red-haired woman who wants it all, Cosmo style and wonderful when she admonishes her bad dog. But what steals the show, so to speak, is the tall and lanky delivery guy who gives the most charismatic little wave you can imagine. Looks like a blue-collar guy I know with similar physique and hair. And Maggie appears to be a single woman, but just who is the guy who looks bored and is shown pushing the little girl, who also is a star, on the swingset. Is he a significant other? Or just some random and still nice but narrow attention spanned guy on the playground.
That’s it for this spate on what’s been going on in your neighborhood and on TV.