Food + Beverage

Pieway to Heaven

Upper Crust Catering • Fulfilling Private Classes Article by David Scheller Carina Smith was crying. Thanksgiving, thirty years ago. She, in the kitchen. Pie, fresh out of the oven. Crust, hard as ballistic steel. Time, wasted. Expectations, dashed. No pie . “It was the first apple pie I’d ever baked, and I couldn’t even cut through it.” Carina laments. “I never should have used margarine!” Such tragedy might have caused a weak spirit to forsake pie for good. But Carina is tougher stuff...

Style + Beauty

Bill's Toggery

Spring Into Spring With the Latest in Men’s Fashions Article by Bill Scheller | Photography by Posers Photography The turn of the season is approaching, and along with it comes the turn of the men's wardrobe year – time to take a good look at the clothes we put away last fall, when we brought out the woolens, and start thinking about an update to our spring sartorial lineup. At Bill’s Toggery, a Shakopee institution that’s been making men look their best since 1931, third-generation...

Food + Beverage

CottageFoodieCon

The World’s First Cottage Foods Convention Article by David Scheller IT IS A BEAUTIFUL, SUNNY DAY. You are at a farmer’s market, and feeling so sociable that you are even making eye contact with vendors whose goods you have no interest in.  Suddenly, the most interesting thing in the world – cookies – catches your attention. The nice lady manning the booth offers you a sample. “The first taste is always free!” she says, like the sunglasses-wearing character in a D.A.R.E. instructional...

Travel

Executive Transportation

The Premier Choice for Local Car Service Photography by Posers Photography Everyone in Hibbing knows Fraboni’s – the kind of neighborhood institution every Minnesota town seems to have. The place where you recognize the smell before you reach the door. Where the stories travel faster than the sausage. “When I was a kid, going anywhere with my Grandfather Leo was like traveling with the mayor,” says Gus Ortis, founder of Executive Transportation. “People didn’t admire him because he was...

Life + Culture

Dave Lindahl

For He's a Jolly Good Fellow Article by David Scheller THE YEAR WAS 2,500,000 B.C. It would have been a bad time to reside in Eden Prairie, because the entire Upper Midwest was soon to vanish beneath the first of several miles-thick slabs of ice. There were also no restaurants. Those glaciers gave form to Eden Prairie: pancaking large swaths of it, and chiseling pretty creeks, lakes and hillsides throughout. They did so very slowly. Glacially, in fact. Our town’s founding agriculturalists...

Auto + Marine

Great Drives

First to the Awards, Then to Golf in High Luxury Article by John Lee I have an unsettling confession to make. Sometimes … I don’t always feel like a clam at high tide. It’s true! In spite of the prevailing assumption that every regional magazine publisher’s life must be constantly ducky, my own occasionally bears no resemblance to any waterfowl at all. That’s why I keep close count of life’s simple blessings. The crisp exterior of a cheese omelet fried in butter. A cold, refreshing Coors...

Home Services

Monster Tree Service

Leaf It to the Professionals Article by David Scheller Their fruits and nuts? Tasty. Their shade? Cool. Their branches? Bird filled, and convenient refuge when wolves are around. Their effects on landscaping and surrounding property values? Positive . These are all reasons why: YOU LOVE TREES …within reason. You can do well enough without ones that are shabby, ill, dead, or dangling precarious limbs over your car, house or head.  But what do you do when your trees are misbehaving...

Real Estate

Brace Helgeson, Realtor

Forty-Three Years Serving the Twin Cities Article and Photography by Brace Helgeson helped build a juggernaut: Minnesota’s leading home seller since 2015, and Eden Prairie’s number one home-selling team since 1995. Even though the company name has recently changed from Helgeson/Platzke to Platzke Real Estate Group after forty-three years of selling homes, he’s re-focusing on what he loves best, selling homes.  “Our finely tuned marketing systems, which often sell homes before we can even...

Event Planning + Services

Bearpath Golf & Country Club

Extraordinary Special Events Article by David Scheller Bearpath . In Eden Prairie and the Twin Cities at large, the name stands for something special. Fitting, then, that Bearpath Golf & Country Club should offer the best spot for special events. Wedding. Birthday. Anniversary. Retirement. Place the name of any occasion between Bearpath and party , and it becomes a truly remarkable one. And it won’t do so by chance. Every private event at Bearpath Golf & Country Club is shaped under the...

Local Services

Alta Honors

Premium Awards and Promotional Products Article by David Scheller The internet contains the sum total of all mankind’s wisdom and silliness. And yet here you are, reading a magazine containing only a scintilla of each. Why is that? Because physical objects rule . They are real. They have weight. They make an impact, and not just when they’re thrown. “After thirty-eight years in this business, that’s still what I enjoy best about it,” said Zenon Dawydowycz, Alta Honors’ third owner since its...