Minnesota or: How I Learned to Stop Whining and Embrace the Cold

Minnesotans are a resilient people – it’s why we still live here.  We bear through the rough winters, the dangerous summer weather, the springtime floods, the congested highways, and even the crappy sports teams.  We may not be able to change any of this, but we learn to live with it. 

The most delicious way of warming up is the Minnesota Hotdish.  Not to be confused with the casserole.  My favorite is Tater Tot Hotdish.  It's ground beef mixed with cream of mushroom soup with tater tots on top.  You throw it in the oven for half an hour or so and viola! you have pure Minnesotan heaven.

The best example of dealing with winter is how we move indoors in the winter without locking ourselves in the house.  Minnesota is home to the first fully enclosed mall in the world – the Southdale Shopping Center in Edina.  Southdale was originally designed to be a place where people would come together and become a community.  Later came the Mall of America – the largest mall in the United States (until King of Prussia came along in Pennsylvania.)  This was the same idea, just on a much grander scale.  This even has a park in the middle which makes it even easier to forget you’re not outside.  The halls are decorated with fences, benches and lamp posts too that give the appearance of the outdoors. 

A similar idea to the mall is the Minneapolis Skyway.  The second floor of many office buildings are connected to one another which enables people to walk from building to building without ever having to take a step outside.  There are also a ton of restaurants and stores that are only in the skyway – that is how popular this system is!  Even some of the food trucks found outside in the summer move to indoor spaces for the winter. 

That's me in the water on Valentine's Day

Another way to deal is actually to not deal at all, but rather embrace the cold!  We call it Hockey.  Almost every neighborhood in Minnesota has a small neighborhood hockey rink.  Around here kids grow up on skates.  When you’re moving around and having fun you don’t have time to think about how cold it is.  This sport is near and dear to Minnesota, more than any other state in my opinion.  If skating isn’t you thing there is also skiing, snowboarding, cross-country, snowshoeing, ice-fishing, dog sled racing, and polar plunges!  If you haven’t tried the polar plunge you really should, it’s a blast!  There are also fun events like the St. Paul Winter Carnival and the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships on Lake Nokomis.

Of course you could always just up and leave for Christmas in the Bahamas instead.

There are many other fun ways to deal with a Minnesota winter.  What’s yours?