Life isn’t always a bowl of cherries. Motherhood, full-time jobs, marriages and life in general can wear a girl out! Johanna Puelston loves scheduling regular girls’ nights with her favorite girlfriends; sometimes they go out and sometimes they stay in, but either way, they have a blast. Get her essential tips for your own girl time.

As much as I’d love my kids to eat kale and quinoa with free-range roasted chicken for lunch, (of course prepared by someone else who has time for that), and as much as I’d like to pretend they aren’t very picky…my two toddlers like and eat classic kid fare. Of course, in the spirit of mom-guilt, I try to healthify their lunches and include AT LEAST a vegetable or a fruit or both and source their food well. But let’s face it, moms and dads: sometimes chicken nuggets are the only thing they are going to eat. 

For Minnesota wineries, the road to becoming a competitive force in the wine industry has been long, arduous and fraught with challenge. But in recent years the decades of hard work have finally begun to pay off—and in large part, it’s because winemakers have been embracing wines of place. Two years ago, for the first time, a Minnesota wine made from Minnesota grapes (Carlos Creek Winery’s 2009 Frontenac) won a double gold medal in the prestigious Indy International Wine Competition. Last year, three Minnesota wineries took home double golds.

In the past decade, wineries have been popping up in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, the Dakotas and beyond. More than 1200 wineries are now open for business across an 11-state area. In Minnesota alone, the wine industry has recently been growing at an annual rate of 28 percent. But in cold weather states, making wine from only locally grown grapes has proved challenging.  Many winemakers are looking for flavor profiles with more depth and dimension. And one of the regions Midwest winemakers are sourcing grapes is Lodi, Calif.

We were thrilled to catch up with some of the grape growers and wine makers who were at the Minnesota Grape Growers Association 2013 Cold Climate Conference. Check out our video interviews and get some insight on pruning in -20 and some of the wines Midwest wineries are specializing in.

It speaks of the grit and determination it takes to grow grapes and make wine in the upper Midwest when a third-generation winegrower from California says with conviction, “These are the real grape growers.”

The nine Best Picture contenders for the 85^th Academy Awards are a fine representation of the best films of 2012. Most of us have probably seen at least one of them, a few aficionados may have seen them all, but the movies assuredly grow even more entertaining when they’re paired with a wine demonstrating similar traits.