Lifestyle

Robyn Aslesen, a teacher at Yellow Medicine East, first started baking custom cakes for her own wedding in 2014. Being pleased with the results, she began adding in a few more wedding and graduation cakes over the years. By the end of 2021, her three-yearold son began helping Aslesen with her baking. “He wanted to bake more than we were able to eat,” she says. “When I mentioned that to him, his response was – mom, you should sell some!” Thus, Aslesen says, it was that idea from her child that planted the seed of inspiration to move the business forward. Within a week of his suggestion, Aslesen says she applied for and received her Minnesota Cottage Food Producer license, and Tasty Bakes and Custom Cakes was born.

I teach two sections of freshmen learning Academic Writing at SMSU, and in class, I often find myself waxing rhapsodic about goings-on in Granite Falls. As a result, at least two of my college students watched our sketch comedy show and emailed me to share their favorites (the one involving a large foam dinosaur head / the one about our cat Zeke and her romantic history with Frank Sinatra). Time will tell re: the impact this has on my professorial dignity, but at least they seemed to have fun, as did our fantastic crowd at Bluenose on Thursday – thanks to everyone who came!

Have you ever heard someone say, “I did not see that coming?” Perhaps you have even said those words yourself. The phrase is used when we experience something we were not expecting – and in this fast-paced world of uncertainty, it doesn’t seem surprising that we are often blind-sided by the unexpected.

Plastic bags. Plastic case overwrap. Plastic items in general? Why are plastic items such an issue with recycling? Why is plastic recycling so hard? The answer is not as simple as we would like it to be. Plastic bags as well as plastic film have very little value as compared to recycled cardboard. Plastic bags and plastic film, if resold as a commodity, would be worth pennies on the dollar while cardboard is worth hundreds of dollars. The same goes for any other kind of item made of plastic.

It was a chilly weekend across the state of Minnesota. Highs on Sunday were only in the 20s and 30s. We did see lots of sunshine which made up a bit for the lack of warmth. Some locations in Minnesota Sunday morning were below zero for overnight lows. Crane Lake dropped to a very cold -13! Meanwhile, International Falls fell to -4 while Orr and Cook were both at -2. Much of central, west central and northern Minnesota were in the single digits to low double-digits above zero for overnight low temperatures. We did see temperatures warm up into the lower 40s for highs on Monday out ahead of our next system that arrived late Tuesday.

I like change. According to a 2016 Forbes.com article titled “The Big Reason Why Some People Are Terrified Of Change (While Others Love It),” I’m one of 38 percent of people that like to leave their comfort zone. The other 62 percent often feel threatened with how they interpret the outcome of a potential change.

Editor’s Note: “Meet your local business community” is a new feature of the Advocate Tribune that aims to better connect our community to the people behind the businesses and services in our local area. To participate in this feature, contact Jessica Stölen-Jacobson at jstolen-jacobson@cherryroad.com

On Monday, the Minnesota Valley Area Learning Center hosted a virtual reality experience in which students were able to get a taste of what various skilled trades jobs involve through the use of virtual reality headgear and a handson traveling truck that is set up for augmented reality experiences. The company working with the ALC is titled Big Ideas USA traveled from New Ulm for the day. Inside the truck, the students were able to wear virtual reality headsets, while also holding the tools of the trade, such as a paint sprayer. Inside of the classroom, students were able to wear headsets that had around 26 different skilled trade tasks that could be sampled through virtual reality programming.