The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

If I had been thinking, I probably would have asked my mother-in-law to please pack me a lunch for the flight to Tampa. Elmarie usually has some homemade meatballs in the freezer, and she makes terrific kolaches and the world's best potato salad. But I didn't think of it, and so we left the farm yesterday morning for the airport with about 150 miles of road ahead of us, and not a place between Protivin, Iowa and MSP where you can pick up a decent box lunch - at least not on a Sunday morning.

While John McCain played an excellent Solomon Grundy in America's two-year long episode of the Superfriends, we should all be thankful that the election is behind us.

Here's what happened. Mitch Omer -- one of my dearest friends in this world -- showed up at my house on Thanksgiving with a red-lined version of Andrew Zimmern's December column, livid about some of the things it contained. Mitch railed. I defended Andrew on many points. We got into a bit of a tiff, which we worked out in about 30 seconds over a nice Cabernet. Then we moved on.