{"id":35012,"date":"2019-02-01T16:25:57","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T22:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/?p=35012"},"modified":"2019-02-01T16:25:57","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T22:25:57","slug":"a-passion-for-minnesota-stories-and-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/2019\/02\/01\/a-passion-for-minnesota-stories-and-food\/","title":{"rendered":"A Passion for Minnesota, Stories and Food"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lonni<\/a>As a former farm girl, restaurant owner and newly-published author, Lonnette “Lonni” Whitchurch’s recipe for success is to follow one’s passions.<\/p>\n

Growing up on a small farm near Karlstad, Whitchurch found an early affinity towards the English language. After graduating from Karlstad High School, she earned her English degree in 1973 as a member of Bemidji State’s first Honors Program class. She then went on to spend six years teaching English at Cass Lake High School and Bena’s Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig school. She recalls the joy she received in teaching.<\/p>\n

“I appreciated the kids who had a passion for English. I was lucky to have some very bright and interesting students.”<\/p>\n

Whitchurch and her husband, Ron, moved from Bemidji to Florida in 1987. Whitchurch soon opened Lonni’s Sandwiches, Etc., a 900-square-foot restaurant in Dunedin, Fla., that borrowed elements of Minnesota culture to create a unique dining experience.<\/p>\n

Snowshoes hung from the walls, flowers were planted in snowmobile hoods  <\/span>and uninitiated customers were puzzled by the “Uff da” sign in the corner. Most importantly, Whitchurch introduced her customers to wild rice.<\/p>\n

“I was one of the first people in Florida to use wild rice as a main ingredient in my recipes,” she said. “Few people in Florida had heard of wild rice at that point.”<\/p>\n

Over a seven-year period, Lonni’s Sandwiches expanded to Clearwater, St. Petersburg, Tampa and Sarasota before she sold the business and retired as a restaurateur in 2008.<\/p>\n

Whitchurch published her first book of poetry in 2018. Available as an e-book on Amazon.com, “Send the Moon” is based on her life experiences growing up in a small town to becoming part of an enormous, challenging world.<\/p>\n

When asked if she has plans to publish more poems in the future, she responded coyly.<\/p>\n

“Give me a year to let me think about it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a former farm girl, restaurant owner and newly-published author, Lonnette \u201cLonni\u201d Whitchurch\u2019s recipe for success is to follow one\u2019s passions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35013,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[958],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35012"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35014,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35012\/revisions\/35014"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}