Tootsie Yr2: Madison, WI part 1
The bus ride to Madison was wonderfully short and uneventful.
And the hotel is lovely! They had all of our rooms ready for us!
After throwing our luggage into our rooms Katie (physical therapist) and I walked to Madison Sourdough.
This was my plan and Katie wanted in on it: eat lunch at the bakery, visit an adjacent vintage toy shop, walk to the local co-op for groceries.
It was close to closing time for the bakery, but they still had some lovely cakes out and a few loaves of bread left on the wall.
I decided not to get bread, figuring the co-op probably sells it (I was right) but Katie got a piece of cardamom lemon cake that looked and smelled beautiful. We both ordered sandwiches.
While we waited for our order we discovered that the bakery has viewing windows so that guests can watch the bakers at work.
On one side it looked like a flour mill! And places to stack loaves of bread and rolls for distribution throughout the city.
On the other it looked like the bakery/patisserie, with cooling racks and ovens and such.
One woman was assembling a cake near the window. We could smell bread baking too.
Not much other activity, but it WAS the end of their day.
Our sandwiches came out and they were delicious.
Mine was garam masala-marinated golden beets with cucumber, greens, and sun butter on their country sourdough.
I was surprised at how nice the sunflower butter was with the tangy beets. May have to try that at home!
After our meal we popped over to the vintage toy shop.
It was two floors of nostalgia.
Being an 80s kid, I quickly found all of my favorites: Alf, Rainbow Brite, The California Raisins, Ghostbusters, TMNT, Micro Machines, My Little Ponies, and more. Of course there were Star Wars and Star Trek figurines, and collectibles from all sorts of different movies and cartoons like The Simpsons, Alien, Garfield, Duck Tales, Transformers, etc. There were Hot Wheels cars in display cases alongside McDonald's kids toys and Smurf statuettes and Beanie Babies.
They even had an album of Garbage Pail Kids collectible cards!
On the second floor we found more anime and gaming-themed collectibles and toys for more modern shows.
There were also Young Adult books, including a big section of Goosebumps. Looking at the covers was fun and gave me big nostalgic feels!
There was a bin up there full of unopened McDonald's toys!
Most of them were not ones that were nostalgic to me...I have great memories of the Halloween Chicken Nugget toys, "transformers" that turned into Happy Meal menu items, and Tiny Toons flip-cars, and I didn't see any of those.
Some other things that I didn't see, that I had lowkey hoped for, were Teddy Ruxpin, Lollipop Dragon, Strawberry Shortcake (they had some mini toys but not the dolls), Trolls, and Choose Your Own Adventure books. Still, a lot of those things fetch high prices on resale sites, so they'd probably also fly off the shelves in stores like this.
Regardless, it was great fun to look and reflect on some of the awesome toys we had back in the day!
After that it was just a few blocks to the co-op.
It was very nice! Very well stocked, I found almost all of my groceries there.
In addition, of course, had to get some locally-made items!
That last pic above is of a brand of jerky I'd never seen before.
It turned out to be locally made, and not only that, low in sodium and sugar, low in fat, and in interesting and unique flavors!
My fomo kicked in and I got one of each flavor, excluding only the Italiano Chicken (because it contained dairy) and the Original Beef (to be fair to the excluded chicken lol)
The haul:
- Yodelay rhubarb yogurt
- Madison Sourdough pepita polenta loaf (I split this with Katie)
- Fig and black tea jam from Quince & Apple Co.
- Simply Snackin' jerky in the following flavors: chicken cherry BBQ, teriyaki chicken pineapple, black bean chili with bell peppers, apple & cherry beef, cranberry blueberry beef, and teriyaki pineapple beef.
- Silver Creek venison jerky sausages
- Bountiful Bean "Tasty Tofu" (firm soy and herb marinated tofu)
- Enroot herbal tea (this was the only thing not local)
- The co-op's own cold brew coffee
- Deli roast beef from Usinger's
Excited to try all of it, but especially that jerky!
I won't be trying the jam or most of the jerky until I get home.
Back at the hotel I put groceries away and unpacked until dinnertime, then treated myself to dessert for dinner at Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream! It's a Wisconsin-local chain serving premium ice cream make with local dairy.
They have a LOT of flavors to choose from!
I had wanted to try Burnt Butterscotch and Black Licorice, but they didn't have either of those in stock today.
So instead it was Carrot Cake and Zanzibar Chocolate.
The Zanzibar Chocolate was SO rich and fudgey. It's made with three types of cocoa, and has won several awards. It was incredibly good, like eating creamy cold fudge.
The flavors in the Carrot Cake were just amazing.
Wonderful spices, cream cheese, walnuts, classic carrot cake flavors.
Both flavors were super smooth, no ice crystals to be found. Definitely premium dairy!
I strolled around a bit to digest my treat, and picked up a few things at another grocery that the co-op hadn't had.
This is a college town, and there are lots of cute shops everywhere, plus we are right next to the capitol building.
Looking forward to exploring here!
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, I opted to actually sit down and "air trombone" through Spamalot because I haven't put enough work into it yet.
It was unusually cold and dreary, so a good day to do work and save energy for sunnier days later in the week.
At sound check there was nothing new, except our drummer is remoted (in a separate room because there's not enough space in the pit) so he was answering questions by a sort of "hit the drum once for no, twice for yes" system that had us cackling. On one hand it's probably fun for him to have his own space for a week; on the other, he doesn't have anyone to interact with during the show and can't see what's going on except through the conductor cam.
This theatre is pretty, the ceiling makes it look like you're under waves of water.
We had a decent and enthusiastic crowd.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday I was awake around 7:30, which is good because that'll be 8:30 EST and I need to keep my body forward-adjusted so I can hit the ground running when tour is over in 12 days.
Twelve days! That's all that's left. Crazy.
I scheduled a laundry service because the nearest laundromats did not look promising, but after waiting past the agreed-upon time and then texting person twice over the next hour to ask if they were still coming this morning, I gave up and decided to do it myself.
Before that, though, I walked to a small farmers market down the street.
Didn't get anything, but enjoyed looking at the lovely breads, cheeses, vegetables, and wares.
Grabbed my laundry and walked to the least-scuzzy-looking laundromat. It was better than anticipated, but I ended up having to run the washer twice because the person before me had used powdered detergent and gobs of it were stuck to my BLACK concert clothing. Sigh. Hopefully this is my last time at a laundromat for a while.
When the dryer was finished I called ahead to Himal Chuli to place an order of "momocha", dumplings, for pickup.
Himal Chuli was the very first Nepali restaurant in the US! It's super small, there are I think five tables inside and 4-5 outside, which is why I got food to go. Back at the hotel, the momocha:
Four were vegetarian, filled with peanut paste, veggies, spices, and herbs.
The other four were chicken/turkey with onion, herbs, and a spicy hot sauce of some kind.
The insides:
The red sauce was a chilled tomato coriander herb gazpacho that was very refreshing and wonderful.
About half of it was left over, so I will enjoy it with other foods as the week goes on.
I was tired from tromping all around, so just practiced Spamalot and worked on Foodie Finds and chatted with some friends online and watched anime for the rest of the afternoon.
The evening show went pretty well, but there were some tongue-tied leads on stage tonight, not sure what that was about.
----------------------------------------------------------
Tomorrow I don't have anything specific planned, but might go thrifting or tour the Capitol building.
Friday I want to get pel'meni dumplings, and maybe walk around the local lake.
And the hotel is lovely! They had all of our rooms ready for us!
After throwing our luggage into our rooms Katie (physical therapist) and I walked to Madison Sourdough.
This was my plan and Katie wanted in on it: eat lunch at the bakery, visit an adjacent vintage toy shop, walk to the local co-op for groceries.
It was close to closing time for the bakery, but they still had some lovely cakes out and a few loaves of bread left on the wall.
I decided not to get bread, figuring the co-op probably sells it (I was right) but Katie got a piece of cardamom lemon cake that looked and smelled beautiful. We both ordered sandwiches.
While we waited for our order we discovered that the bakery has viewing windows so that guests can watch the bakers at work.
On one side it looked like a flour mill! And places to stack loaves of bread and rolls for distribution throughout the city.
On the other it looked like the bakery/patisserie, with cooling racks and ovens and such.
One woman was assembling a cake near the window. We could smell bread baking too.
Not much other activity, but it WAS the end of their day.
Our sandwiches came out and they were delicious.
Mine was garam masala-marinated golden beets with cucumber, greens, and sun butter on their country sourdough.
I was surprised at how nice the sunflower butter was with the tangy beets. May have to try that at home!
After our meal we popped over to the vintage toy shop.
It was two floors of nostalgia.
Being an 80s kid, I quickly found all of my favorites: Alf, Rainbow Brite, The California Raisins, Ghostbusters, TMNT, Micro Machines, My Little Ponies, and more. Of course there were Star Wars and Star Trek figurines, and collectibles from all sorts of different movies and cartoons like The Simpsons, Alien, Garfield, Duck Tales, Transformers, etc. There were Hot Wheels cars in display cases alongside McDonald's kids toys and Smurf statuettes and Beanie Babies.
They even had an album of Garbage Pail Kids collectible cards!
On the second floor we found more anime and gaming-themed collectibles and toys for more modern shows.
There were also Young Adult books, including a big section of Goosebumps. Looking at the covers was fun and gave me big nostalgic feels!
There was a bin up there full of unopened McDonald's toys!
Most of them were not ones that were nostalgic to me...I have great memories of the Halloween Chicken Nugget toys, "transformers" that turned into Happy Meal menu items, and Tiny Toons flip-cars, and I didn't see any of those.
Some other things that I didn't see, that I had lowkey hoped for, were Teddy Ruxpin, Lollipop Dragon, Strawberry Shortcake (they had some mini toys but not the dolls), Trolls, and Choose Your Own Adventure books. Still, a lot of those things fetch high prices on resale sites, so they'd probably also fly off the shelves in stores like this.
Regardless, it was great fun to look and reflect on some of the awesome toys we had back in the day!
After that it was just a few blocks to the co-op.
It was very nice! Very well stocked, I found almost all of my groceries there.
In addition, of course, had to get some locally-made items!
That last pic above is of a brand of jerky I'd never seen before.
It turned out to be locally made, and not only that, low in sodium and sugar, low in fat, and in interesting and unique flavors!
My fomo kicked in and I got one of each flavor, excluding only the Italiano Chicken (because it contained dairy) and the Original Beef (to be fair to the excluded chicken lol)
The haul:
- Yodelay rhubarb yogurt
- Madison Sourdough pepita polenta loaf (I split this with Katie)
- Fig and black tea jam from Quince & Apple Co.
- Simply Snackin' jerky in the following flavors: chicken cherry BBQ, teriyaki chicken pineapple, black bean chili with bell peppers, apple & cherry beef, cranberry blueberry beef, and teriyaki pineapple beef.
- Silver Creek venison jerky sausages
- Bountiful Bean "Tasty Tofu" (firm soy and herb marinated tofu)
- Enroot herbal tea (this was the only thing not local)
- The co-op's own cold brew coffee
- Deli roast beef from Usinger's
Excited to try all of it, but especially that jerky!
I won't be trying the jam or most of the jerky until I get home.
Back at the hotel I put groceries away and unpacked until dinnertime, then treated myself to dessert for dinner at Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream! It's a Wisconsin-local chain serving premium ice cream make with local dairy.
They have a LOT of flavors to choose from!
I had wanted to try Burnt Butterscotch and Black Licorice, but they didn't have either of those in stock today.
So instead it was Carrot Cake and Zanzibar Chocolate.
The Zanzibar Chocolate was SO rich and fudgey. It's made with three types of cocoa, and has won several awards. It was incredibly good, like eating creamy cold fudge.
The flavors in the Carrot Cake were just amazing.
Wonderful spices, cream cheese, walnuts, classic carrot cake flavors.
Both flavors were super smooth, no ice crystals to be found. Definitely premium dairy!
I strolled around a bit to digest my treat, and picked up a few things at another grocery that the co-op hadn't had.
This is a college town, and there are lots of cute shops everywhere, plus we are right next to the capitol building.
Looking forward to exploring here!
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, I opted to actually sit down and "air trombone" through Spamalot because I haven't put enough work into it yet.
It was unusually cold and dreary, so a good day to do work and save energy for sunnier days later in the week.
At sound check there was nothing new, except our drummer is remoted (in a separate room because there's not enough space in the pit) so he was answering questions by a sort of "hit the drum once for no, twice for yes" system that had us cackling. On one hand it's probably fun for him to have his own space for a week; on the other, he doesn't have anyone to interact with during the show and can't see what's going on except through the conductor cam.
This theatre is pretty, the ceiling makes it look like you're under waves of water.
We had a decent and enthusiastic crowd.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday I was awake around 7:30, which is good because that'll be 8:30 EST and I need to keep my body forward-adjusted so I can hit the ground running when tour is over in 12 days.
Twelve days! That's all that's left. Crazy.
I scheduled a laundry service because the nearest laundromats did not look promising, but after waiting past the agreed-upon time and then texting person twice over the next hour to ask if they were still coming this morning, I gave up and decided to do it myself.
Before that, though, I walked to a small farmers market down the street.
Didn't get anything, but enjoyed looking at the lovely breads, cheeses, vegetables, and wares.
Grabbed my laundry and walked to the least-scuzzy-looking laundromat. It was better than anticipated, but I ended up having to run the washer twice because the person before me had used powdered detergent and gobs of it were stuck to my BLACK concert clothing. Sigh. Hopefully this is my last time at a laundromat for a while.
When the dryer was finished I called ahead to Himal Chuli to place an order of "momocha", dumplings, for pickup.
Himal Chuli was the very first Nepali restaurant in the US! It's super small, there are I think five tables inside and 4-5 outside, which is why I got food to go. Back at the hotel, the momocha:
Four were vegetarian, filled with peanut paste, veggies, spices, and herbs.
The other four were chicken/turkey with onion, herbs, and a spicy hot sauce of some kind.
The insides:
The red sauce was a chilled tomato coriander herb gazpacho that was very refreshing and wonderful.
About half of it was left over, so I will enjoy it with other foods as the week goes on.
I was tired from tromping all around, so just practiced Spamalot and worked on Foodie Finds and chatted with some friends online and watched anime for the rest of the afternoon.
The evening show went pretty well, but there were some tongue-tied leads on stage tonight, not sure what that was about.
----------------------------------------------------------
Tomorrow I don't have anything specific planned, but might go thrifting or tour the Capitol building.
Friday I want to get pel'meni dumplings, and maybe walk around the local lake.