*I am an employee of Kraft Heinz*

After graduating Peanut Prep, my team and I said some sad goodbyes, packed up our NUTmobile and pretended we knew what we were doing as we embarked on our four hour drive to our first stop: Minneapolis, Minnesota. I was expecting our time in Minneapolis to be relatively easy because I have spent a lot of time there in Wisconsin’s neighboring state, but our first week on the job turned out to be both sweet and salty.

On the salty side, we were really not prepared for some of the bizarre comments and questions we would get at our events. For example, we were shocked by how irrationally angry some people get over the true identity of Mr. Peanut (Mr. Peanut is himself you guys!!!!).  We also suffered an attack from our own tent when it decided to take off with the wind, fly over the NUTmobile and nearly pin my partner, Extra Salted Elise, between it and the NUT. We are really thankful there happened to be a heroic bystander who dragged the tent off of Elise before things got too serious.

Perhaps the worst thing of all about our time in Minnesota was that I got food poisoning, which turned out to be the worst sickness of my life to date! I’ll spare you the gory details, but I had to use one of my sick days on only the fourth day of work, watched two Harry Potter movies and threw up in an Uber — as promised, my year as a Peanutter was already full of firsts. Long story short, don’t buy chicken curry from the hot bar at a grocery store.

While Minnesota had its struggles, we managed to still have a lot of fun. On our first day in town, we hit the Mall of America where Conner (a.k.a. Hampton O’Conner Palmore a.k.a. my guy partner) got his first pedicure and survived his first roller coaster — although he did scream louder than the 5-year-olds in the car in front of us. With Minnesota being the land of 10,000 lakes, we made sure to spend some time outdoors and even kayaked one day, although I stayed on shore for that because it was post-food poisoning. One of the sweetest parts about Minne was the awesome food like the best barbeque I’ve ever had at Surly Brewing Company, orgasmic chai (that’s literally what it’s called) in Uptown and delicious breakfast at the legendary Al’s Breakfast in Dinkytown.

The best thing about Minneapolis though was the people I got to spend my time there with. It was my first week being alone with my two partners, and the ups and downs of the week only proved to bring us closer as a team. We also met up with one of my best friends, Carole, who has lived in Minne for four years and was able to show us around. It was really nice to see a familiar face and to spend some time at an actual house while on the road (again, let me know if I’m ever in your area!). Lastly, we met up with two of our favorite hotdogger pals, Dogger (that’s literally his name you guys) and Jena, for an off day.

All in all, I was grateful that our first week on the job was pretty trying because it has made our experiences since then feel as smooth as peanut butter. And speaking of those experiences, I’ve been having one shell of a time on the road and completely neglecting my blog, so in an attempt to catch up, you can expect to hear more on SD and WY very soon.

Stay Nutty!