Minnesotan meal suggestions: wild rice, hot dish, cranberry sauce, apple crisp dishes?

Hello there food enthusiasts. I'd really like to prepare a Minnesota-themed meal for a French family, and I'm looking for some suggestions as to dishes I can make with a few ingredients I have and want to include. Help, Minnesotans, and midwesterners?

First, they'll be cooking possibly salmon, and probably chicken, and I want to use wild rice as a side. Possibly a soup with the chicken, but a kind of fancied' up rice dish to go with the meat dish would be great as well.

I also want to make them a hotdish, not totally sure of which one to pick, but of course, tater tot hotdish is a classic. I'm thinking of the tots/beef/green beans variety (see here). I even used to eat this with a corn flake layer on it. But, I've also had these made amazingly well, and not so well...having never made it myself, I'd really appreciate anyone who can give me hints about how to make a hotdish that will impress foreigners who will probably think it's slightly insane looking.

For a dessert, when I think Minnesota I think lefse, apple crisp, and bars. Lefse seems a little too crêpe-like to make for French people who eat crêpes constantly, so I'd rather make an apple crisp. I'm wondering if I could incorporate the (smooth) cranberry sauce into it somehow...as well as possibly blueberries, or raspberries, since they never eat blueberries, and it's a pretty darn Minnesota ingredient in my eyes. Anyone know of a decent way to incorporate those together? I might just experiment, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask how to make a bomb apple crisp.

Any other ideas about excellent Minnesota-themed foods involving wild rice, hotdish, and desserts would be great, thanks in advance! I realize this is a pretty open-ended post, but that's the trouble with cooking a meal representative of a state in a foreign country. More often than not, there are ingredients you just can't find (partially due to the fact that you don't have the learned cultural knowledge of the exact terminology and places you would locate said ingredient), and have to substitute with somethin' else.

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