(upbeat music) - [Narrator] On this episode of Post Cards.

(upbeat music) - Krewe restaurant is an homage to my family's heritage.

From in particular, my mother's heritage.

She's one of ten children born and raised in New Orleans.

- This is what I was taught.

They said, if you want to get, have good food, you put your whole finger in it, but don't put your feet.

That's what my mother always taught me.

(upbeat music) - Post Cards is made possible by the Minnesota Arts And Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by, Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, Mark and Margaret Yigal Julene on behalf of Shalom Hill farms.

A retreat and conference center in a Prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria Minnesota, a year round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at explorealex.com.

The Lake Region Arts Council's arts calendar, an arts and cultural heritage funded digital calendar, showcasing upcoming art events, and opportunities for artists in West central, Minnesota.

On the web at lracfourcalendar.org.

Playing today's new music plus your favorite hits, 96.7 kram.

Online at 967kram.com.

(upbeat music) - My mother has always cooked from when I could remember.

I definitely learned to cook a lot from her.

And then I got to watch my grandfather cook.

We would spend parts of our summers, in New Orleans visiting family.

It's just always been something that I've always felt very comfortable doing.

Even through high school or college was something that I had, I've always loved.

♪ I'm going home ♪ ♪ I'm going home ♪ ♪ I'm going home ♪ ♪ I'm going home ♪ Growing up for me in Bloomington Minnesota, was pretty typical.

You know, same things most kids did.

The only difference is we were one of a few black families at that time in Bloomington.

- [Mary] The population students of color was about 3%, in 1966 when we came up.

And at the time my kids grew up, they had struggles in schools in terms of acceptance.

You know, I was very active in the civil rights movement when I was in high school, in college.

And then when I came to Minnesota, I mean, I belonged to the NAACP and other organizations.

But once you get involved with raising a family, you're more concerned about how the world treats them.

♪ Going home ♪ ♪ Yes I'm going home ♪ - [Mateo] Krewe restaurant is an homage to my family's heritage.

In particular, my mother's heritage.

She's one of 10 children born and raised in New Orleans.

My grandfather was a chef on a cargo ship that would leave from the port of New Orleans and go all around the world.

And so some of these recipes here, are recipes that have been passed down from him to my mother, now, to me.

- My dad, I remember after he retired, and when I would go visit, my dad would have something on the stove by 7:00 AM in the morning.

Whether it was red beans or spaghetti or gumbo or what have you, it would be on there simmering all day.

And when the mailman came, he would offer him something to eat, when the garbage man came, he'd gets something to eat.

Neighbors would walk by, they'd all be invited to either, eat something that he had cooked, or to drink some wine that he had fermented in the attic.

And that's what I remember.

It's an act of love and just cooking was to be enjoyed by those who, you know, who came in contact with you.

♪ Hey hey I got the sauce got the sauce yeah ♪ ♪ Hey hey I got the sauce Got the sauce yeah ♪ ♪ Hey hey ♪ - My first job was at an Apple orchard.

That was just right outside of our high school.

So that kind of sparked a passion for baking and knowledge on how many Apple varieties there are.

And then from that job, I went to a small bakery.

And then at that point, I just knew that why waste any more time?

Go to a culinary school.

Get my degree and dive into the industry.

- Erin Ray is my partner in life and in love.

We met each other about little over six years ago.

- [Erin] In Flour and flower, my goal was to incorporate edible flowers.

I believe that plants in general, but also flowers, the sight of them just bring some sense of peace, to your body and to your day.

So, having that in there with the baked goods and the coffee, like those three things are the best way to wake up in the morning.

(upbeat music) - [Mateo] We think that New Orleans is a great representation of, the original Melting Pot here in The United States.

You find inspiration or ingredients from all over the world.

Because it was a port city too, it was kind of a gateway through the Mississippi to bring products Northward.

One of our favorite things to do when we go to New Orleans, is go to Central Market and Grocery and have a muffuletta.

Which is a Sicilian sandwich brought originally from Sicily.

We go across the street and eat beignets at Cafe Du Monde.

The beignet is essentially a fried bread, in Indian fried bread with a powdered sugar on it.

- I have a serious sweet tooth.

Think I eat at least one cookie a day.

And here, what I love most is the bread pudding for dessert.

It was something that I grew up on, but never liked.

But then when I was introduced to Mateo's mom and her bread pudding, it just reawakened my soul for this weird dessert.

And she was able to give me her secrets.

And it just opened my eyes to a whole nother level of what you can do in the pastry world.

Especially when you implement family recipes.

- When I go down there and to spend time with my family, we are a prototypical new Orleans family.

Lots of get togethers with family and friends around food.

And that's kind of the essence of new Orleans is there's music there's food and there's family.

Those three are really big for us and our family.

And also big here in Krewe.

(western music) The flavors and tastes of new Orleans are really vast and vary, you know, it's been owned by several different countries, before it was part of the United States.

And so there's a great Spanish influence.

There's an Italian influence.

There's a French influence.

You got a native American influence.

You've got African influence.

Depending on the dishes that you'll have, you'll have kind of a combination of those.

Say for instance, our gumbo has sirloin in it.

It's got chicken, it's got flour, it's got file, which is a native American.

That's ground up Sassafras root.

Usually has the Trinity in it.

Which is white onion, green bell pepper, and celery.

- He pretty much follows my recipes, although he tweaks them a little bit.

He makes an excellent jambalaya.

In fact, because he's so consistent in terms of the ingredients and how they put in, it always comes out the same.

Mine it varies.

- Our jambalaya has a really high tomato base to it.

My grandfather was, his first cooking experience was with an Italian family in their grocery store.

And so he's got a lot of Italian influences in some of his cooking.

- His gumball is much better than mine too.

I think he's found a different way of putting the roux in.

I wait until it's cooked and stir it in.

And he mixes it in early with all of the the meat and the veggies.

And so it tends to get more flavorful.

So I think I'm gonna adapt his way from now on.

- My favorite thing on the menu is the red beans and rice.

Simply because when we lived with his mom for a couple of years, when we would get home from a long shift at work, you could smell the red beans and rice outside on the sidewalk.

As you walked up to the house.

And you knew that you were about to get a big nice dinner and fall asleep really fast.

That right there, is kind of the smell of family for me and my new family which is Mateo.

- Red beans and rice, we had about three days a week.

My mom didn't work.

There were seven of us at home.

So I mean, we were probably considered poor.

Probably on Friday, We'd do the traditional Catholic, no meat.

But usually shrimp was really cheap.

I remember the shrimp guy with his wagon going through the neighborhood, you know, shrimp three pounds for dollar.

Little shrimp.

So you could make a nice jambalaya or gumbo at that point.

But gumbo was for special occasions.

Jambalaya was for special occasions too, because of the cost involved.

♪ Yesterday's too late for haste ♪ ♪ Tomorrow's just too far away ♪ ♪ You wanna make a major change ♪ ♪ There's no perfect day than today ♪ - Starting this restaurant has always been a dream of mine.

It is to keep our family history alive.

My son works with us.

And hopefully it's something I'll be able to pass on to him and he can take the mantle and I will continue these recipes down through him.

And maybe some new ones that we may develop together.

You know, hopefully we can teach, that's the biggest thing is being able to teach other people in here, how to do things inside of the restaurant correctly.

And so we've got a couple of high school students that work in the kitchen for us.

And so, they've expressed wanting to go to culinary school.

I'm trying to give them as much of that before they would make that decision, as I can.

♪ Strong come back for when I was a setback ♪ ♪ Tomorrow isn't promised ♪ ♪ You can't put off your problems ♪ ♪ And if you're jumping off the portrait ♪ ♪ Aint no my people following ♪ ♪ That's an eager Beaver ♪ ♪ But be your humble learner moment.

♪ ♪ This is my moment ♪ ♪ You gotta wait your turn bro ♪ ♪ I'm who the people yearn for ♪ - I'm from Minnesota.

I grew up here.

So my spiciest thing I ever ate was tacos and taco seasoning.

And you know, that's as crazy as my dinners got growing up.

So being able to go down to New Orleans and be immersed in his family and the way that he was raised, was probably the special time for me during this journey.

Because I got to see how he became the person that he is.

Even through his mom, and then his uncle and aunts and everybody else.

And then also see the culture in new Orleans and how that shapes the cuisine itself.

And so being able to immerse ourselves in those trips, I mean, the doors that we got from New Orleans is kind of a daily reminder for us to remember those times that we spent there, but also to remember the culture that's behind everything.

♪ To be about change then you gotta be bold ♪ ♪ Introduce or loose the young and the old ♪ ♪ Do more than you was told ♪ ♪ Be lethal with your mind ♪ ♪ Uplift them with your words make them set the tone ♪ ♪ And you walk in your truth nobody yells at you ♪ ♪ And when they say it can't be done ♪ ♪ say you are living proof ♪ ♪ And watch 'em all salute ♪ ♪ Watch 'em all salute ♪ - I think these areas appeal to us, one, because the access to land.

That was a big, big thing for us.

A big thing for a lot of folks who look like me.

There're people of color African-Americans, access to land, is something that is not necessarily that easily attainable.

And I think that was the linchpin for us to be able to do the all the things that we wanted to do.

Not only grow fruit for the restaurant, but also put programs in place for a nonprofit to show other kids who may be either from rural areas or urban areas, about farming.

- Steven and Mary Peterson, the owners of the farm, it's where Steve grew up.

They donated the land to us.

Simply because they are in their retirement stages of life.

And they wanted to be a part of something bigger and better.

As far as helping kids heal through food and farming.

- We're helping out some technological pieces here.

Some Bluetooth soil monitoring equipment.

Helping them to be able to write maybe some code for that kind of thing.

So where it can give information back.

You know what I mean?

Like there's tons of things that kids who don't want to put their hands on the dirt, but they may be like technologically advanced or that's what they want to get into.

There's a way for them to be in the agricultural business and hopefully being on a smaller scale, they can help small scale farmers kind of regain their momentum that they need to have.

(country music) The rural areas on that end appealed to us with the land.

But it also appeals to me, the conversations that we can have.

And hopefully the change that we can make in the kind of hearts and minds of people in rural area.

Who kind of look at the city area from afar and maybe don't necessarily understand it or understand the people there.

And so there's a judgment that gets put into place.

And we hopefully have created a space here that people can come in and have some of those conversations around food, which makes everything easier.

And also be able to sit across from people who may not look necessarily like them or have the same beliefs as them.

But hopefully they'll be able to come to an understanding that they both want basically the same things in life.

They're just looking at it through two different lenses.

That's part of what our nonprofit organization is about.

It's about bridging communities, both rural and urban.

Getting them together around food and farming.

To kind of show kids not only where the food comes from, but also what you can do with it.

Through some entrepreneurial initiatives that we have or kids to be able to create micro businesses around either food that they're growing that they can sell, or products that they can make from the food that we would grow.

Or the animals that we would grow.

And so being able to give kids an opportunity to not only understand where their food and food systems come from, but how to make them be better.

If they can go back and just for a minute think that my life could be bigger, than what I think it was before I came here.

Like, that's all that we want.

Is for them to just dream just a little bit.

- I personally have grown immensely but, I think it wasn't until Mateo and I moved out here, that we discovered what we can do together.

And how harmonious, not only our love for food but our love for each other.

And when you put them both together, what we can create.

And I think that's the most exciting thing for me is waking up to the, to my soulmate, I think.

And finding each day a new recipe or a new technique.

And remember that we still have forever to do this.

And I think that's the most exciting thing that the journey has brought us.

Cause the journey will never end, you know, every day we're growing and learning and that's the beauty in it.

(dog barking) - You can come out, give me a second.

Yeah.

I know.

She's like, what, mama you're gonna let me out?

What mama?

(dog barking) (soft music) Hey, Lola, this way mama.

This way.

Lets go.

No, no when you are sitting... (soft ukulele music) I was born in Nakhon Phanom Thailand.

I don't remember much in Thailand because I was still young.

And when I came here, I was already five.

Dad was in the service and we had the opportunity.

And I guess dad wanted to have a better life for us kids.

At that time it was my brother and I, and now there's three of us.

My brother, my other brother, when they came to America, he was born.

We came with nothing.

We just came with the clothes on our backs and a paper that say, "Hey, you can enter now."

My mother did not wannna work for nobody.

My mother wanted to use what she knew and what she knew was farming.

Growing up, she didn't have much, you know.

Her parents were poor.

And then when my father met my mother at that time, he was a soldier.

My father was Laotian.

My mother's Thai.

And my grandmother at that time did not like my father because he was a different nationality than what she is.

Believe it or not, my mother ran away with my father.

Yeah.

Oh, what did you do Mom?

I ran away with a soldier.

(laughing) And till she established herself, that's when she's she wrote a letter to home and say, "Hey, I'm doing okay."

And for a while they didn't, you know, they didn't have no contact.

Fresno is what they call home.

And that's why they're still at.

My mother's been farming since 1987.

And she's still farming till today.

And like the fruits and stuff like that, that we get here, she'll send for us seasonally.

I will make sure you get some fui hui persimmons this year.

Have you ever had those?

Those are amazing.

Oh, you guys should look at these My peppers.

I am so proud of my peppers this year.

Look at them.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

I'm very proud of them.

- Those are beautiful.

(cheerful piano music) - So this one, my mother gave me these silver bars, and I don't know whether, what these are.

Supposed to be some kind of protection in the Buddhist tradition.

It has those, think those are rhinos.

But yeah, I got a pair of these from my mother.

I don't know how old these are.

My mother was a seamstress back at home, like in her country.

Back in her younger days.

This is actually from real silk.

And these are all hand, thread by thread.

It has to be kind of, they call it Tamsin.

So I got one of these, from my great aunt and then my mother gave me this one, right?

But what happened was, I went to the seamstress.

There's supposed to be a seamstress in charge pantoo.

And she ended up cutting this too short, but we know with me being a round girl, when it comes up, it's like this.

So they want to bend down guess what?

So yeah, I just, I hold onto it because my mother designed the whole thing.

So it's supposed to be like a costume type of thing.

Like we wear to the temple and to like, a wedding, to a party.

When we go to the temple, we always bow.

And traditionally, the right way to bow at a temple, is you put this down here, this is what I was told, whether it's right or not.

You put this down so that you can pray and go down with the fabric type of thing.

So this is what my great aunt made for my husband, so that he can be part of the tradition when we go to the temple.

Cause every time we go home, yes, I take husband to the temple.

(somber music) When I met Lyndon, I was still in California.

And I was going back and forth.

And at that time I was like, okay, well I'm really interested in this guy.

So I ended up renting a studio in Fargo.

And from Fargo, it was like, "Hey, I have a house.

You know, when you want to visit, you want to go check it out?"

At that time, Lyndon didn't even think I wanted to be in a small town.

Cause me coming from a big town, you know, didn't want to be in a small town, I guess, you know.

Big town doesn't really outdo small town.

It's always good in small town where everybody knows more about you than you do.

Yeah.

Cause I mean, when we had our wedding at the Pantry, holy smokes, everybody knew about it.

Everybody knew about it.

I love it.

People here in Madison anyways, you know, they're welcoming.

Even my mother's like, Oh my gosh, you know I've never seen any community that is welcome as Madison.

(somber music) (soft ukulele music) I am a waitress at the Pantry cafe, here in Madison.

And I've been there for almost, going on three years.

(restaurant noise) Me, who likes to eat, I always bring things to kitchen tasks and see whether you know, we can make things happen at the Pantry and do different dishes and different things, you know.

just to bring a different food to town, so that people don't have to leave a small town just to get egg rolls and fried rice.

That's how people know me.

They call me the eggroll girl here.

We just got pork today guys.

We are having pork egg rolls.

(cheerful music) Okay.

We're gonna add that in there, and then this is gonna be our mixture.

It's simple.

It's, you know, it's snack food for us because, when we come home, you know, from school mom always liked to have snacks for us, because we can't go out and buy candies and chips.

So it's pretty much simple.

It's a lot of things are, you know cabbage, carrots, bean thread noodles, your meat.

And just fire them up, and that's it.

(upbeat music) My mother was hands-on.

If you wannna eat, you got to come in the kitchen.

If you're not doing anything else, the least you could do is wash the vegetables, or do the dishes.

So with me, as you can see, there is nothing small about me.

I still like to eat til today.

So I was always in the kitchen.

When I was, I wanna say teenager, 14?

15?

My mother was, out at the farm.

At that time, they were running produce, shipping produce from Fresno to Los Angeles.

And my job at home was to watch my two little brothers, and made sure we call it dinner in California.

You guys call it supper here in Minnesota.

So to make sure that supper was on the table when my parents got home.

And there was a lot of failures and a lot of, Oh gosh, what did you put in there?

So from there on, it was just mixing this and mixing that.

And if it doesn't taste good, throw it away.

Try it over.

This is what I was taught.

They said, if you want get have good food, you put your whole finger in there but don't put your feet.

That's what my mother always taught me.

Anything that I guess I was raised on, it's like when I cook it myself, it brings back memories.

It brings me home.

It brings me like, Oh yeah, I was in the kitchen with my mom when I was such and such age.

And we had so much fun cooking.

And like, she would get on me because I would taste, before I even, it's done.

I enjoy, I enjoyed that.

(upbeat music) - Post Cards is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by, Margaret A Cargill Philanthropies, Mark and Margaret Yigal Julene on behalf of Shalom Hill farms.

A retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria Minnesota, a year round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information explorealex.com.

The Lake Region Arts Councils, Arts Calendar.

An Arts and Cultural Heritage funded, digital calendars showcasing upcoming art events, and opportunities for artists in West central, Minnesota.

On the web at lrac4calendar.org.

Playing today's new music plus your favorite hits, 96.7 Kram.

Online at 967kram.com.

(cheerful music)