It rained yesterday, so Rebecca and I decided to head to the local multiplex and see Robin Hood. It was a fine example of the swashbuckling kind, great battle scenes. I just finished reading Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, which takes place in England about 75 years earlier, both i think did a good job of depicting the grittiness of Medieval life.
Some of you might notice that in the first scene when the boys raid the barn, Marion laments that they have no “seed corn.” Well, I was all over that, because I knew that there was no corn in Europe in 1199. what I didn’t know was “corn” in those days was a general term for any cereal crop, not just maize, which of course was a New World plant.
I don’t really consider myself a foodie. I love to cook and have a somewhat undeserved reputation as a good cook; I have so many friends that can cook circles around me. But consider my itinerary. First stop, Chicago, to visit my daughter who does graphic design work for Rick Bayless’s Fontera Foods, and is showing some foodie inclinations. Then up to Traverse City, Michigan to visit my clients, and dear friends, Barb Tholin and Charlie Wunsch who publish Edible Grande Traverse, a beautiful magazine about the local food scene and my new client and friend Dr. Mary Clifton,who is a guru of plant based nutrition and healthy eating habits. Then on the way home I stopped in East Lansing for Dinner with college pals and former roommates Jim and SB Anthony. SB (it’s Patricia, but I’ll always think of her as SB, her college nickname) is one of those who can cook circles around me. So I was anticipating some mighty fine eats.
My first culinary experience was great road food, enjoyed on the fly, a bag of cheetos and a coke. Sorry Mary. OK so I wasn’t off to a great start. I do love cheetos though. One of my goals for the trip was to cut southeast through the back roads of rural Wisconsin. What’s the use of owning a Mazda if you don’t drive some crooked roads now and again. Unfortunately I was on a southwest bearing for awhile, turning a seven hour drive into ten. You might ask what this has to do with food. When I realized I was going to be so late, I contacted Lucia to check out their plans. She wanted to take me to Mixteco Grill, but the kitchen was only open until 9 Â and I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to get there. I estimated 8, but if you know Chicago traffic, you know you could be very wrong about any eta. Luck was with me, I hit their door at just about 8, we called ahead to the restaurant, put our names on the list and they assured us that if we got there by 9 they would serve us. We made it at about 8:45.
Next stop, Traverse City, Michigan. Traverse City is a tourist town, a college town and an ag town. It proclaims itself to be the cherry capital of the world, and has a booming winery business. TC and the area around it might have the highest per capita population of gourmet chefs in the country.
First stop was dinner at the Jolly Pumpkin a restaurant, micro brewery and distillery that’s out on Old Mission Peninsula, that stretches north from Traverse City, dividing Grande Traverse Bay. I had a white bean and braised lamb stew that was excellent, well worth the distress that the beans were going to cause later. It was a pleasant evening of reconnecting with my friends Barb and Charlie. There was a lot of talk about the micro brew offerings, I believe that “hoppy” was thrown around a bit. I’m not well versed in my alcohol terminology anymore.
I stayed that night by myself in the turn of the century farmhouse that Charlie’s family owns, where his parents had lived in their retirement. The next morning I drove into town to meet Charlie at their house in town and told that we were going to lunch at Frenchie’s Famous, which lays claim to the world’s greatest pastrami sandwich. But first we had to wait for Jim to show up with a load of horse shit that was destined to go in Charlie’s garden. When Jim arrived with the shit, we hopped in my car and headed for Frenchie’s. Frenchie’s establishment seats about 10 people, behind the counter is a huge copper espresso machine. When we got there, Barb was there having a latte with a beautiful swirl pattern, the mark of an expert barista. Turn’s out the Frenchman was an expert sandwich maker as well, the pastrami did not disappoint. Served on a chibatta, it was piled high with great pastrami, melted cheese and two different sauces, one of which I believe was mango wasabi.
Dinner was at the farmhouse and my new friend and client Dr. Mary Clifton volunteered to cook us a vegan dinner. We had a salad of shredded beets and parsnips with pasta in an excellent pesto. Barb whipped up a rhubarb pie for desert. It was a pleasant evening, Dr. Mary has an eight year old daughter Anna and Charlie and Barb have an eight year old son, Ellis, both kids are adventurous eaters. A very pleasant evening.
The next evening we drove out to the Lelanau Peninsula (lower Michigan’s little finger) to Glen Arbor and Blu, the award winning restaurant of Chef Randy Chamberlain. Blu is an architecturally stunning space, high ceilings and all windows, looking out onto the lake. The food was amazing. We ordered pork belly, duck liver pate and a third appetizer that I don’t remember. I had the sirloin. Now you might ask why I would order something as pedestrian as steak at a fine restaurant, but it was served with a terrific sauce that made it an outstanding dish. Ellis ordered the duck. It was duck confit, and ate it with gusto.
Then next day it was lunch at Trattoria Stella with Dr. Mary. Stella is in the Village, a former mental institution turned swank development, where both Dr. Mary and Barb have their offices. Frankly the conversation with the doc was so intriguing that I can’t remember what I had to eat. But I’m sure it was good. I think I had lamb, again. You might be sensing a pattern developing. Yes, I like lamb.
I was planning to get an early start the next day, but Charlie and Barb twisted my arm to stay for lunch at Amical featuring French cuisine made from local farm goods. I had a pasta with braised lamb, tomato based sauce, with olives and wonderful cheese. I know, if I was really going to write about the food on my trip I should have taken notes. After lunch I called SB in East Lansing to let her know I wasn’t going to make it until late afternoon. She said that that worked and that she was planning dinner, and asked if I like lamb. “Of course,” I said.
From East Lansing I headed down to Chicago for a couple of days. Lucia and David and I tried to go to Du Champ at the end of their street on Damen, but it was packed so we just headed down Damen to take advantage of the plethora of small independent restaurants in their neighborhood. I love Chicago. We found a tiny Middle Eastern place where the food was excellent. The real culinary highlight of this stop was the Chicago style hot dog at Wriggly Field.
In order to get from Lucia’s apartment to the street one must navigate a narrow passage between a fence on one side and the house on the other. When I was packing up my car to leave last Tuesday, the cable guy had a ladder leaning against the house, working on a junction box of some kind. I had no choice but to walk under it. About six times. Now I don’t consider myself a superstitious person, but I have to admit this gave me a very uneasy feeling, particularly since I was about to set off on a journey that would require me to navigate through the hell called Chicago traffic and then run the speed trap gauntlet of Wisconsin.
The trip was uneventful, so I thought I was off the hook. Flash forward to the weekend.
On Sunday Beck and I decided to get some yard work done. It started innocently enough, tearing out some of that nasty plastic edging that the earth rejects every spring, and pushing the rocks back so they won’t spill onto the neighbor’s lawn for awhile. We’ve been talking about taking the rotting timbers off the three raised beds in the backyard, expanding the garden to incorporate the two larger beds bringing in loads of dirt and grading the beds out to the new dirt level, a big project.
Step one was to take the timbers off. At first we were going to just remove them from the little bed, just to see how it would go, but since that bed won’t be part of the eventual expanded garden we decided to leave it and pull up the timbers from one of the larger gardens.
Step one was to take out the low wire fence that we put around them to keep the rabbits out (no longer need thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Fox). So I started ripping it out with a pry bar, one of those that has sharp claws on either side. The staples that held the fence to the timbers were popping out easily and I was working quickly when I took a good hard pull on the bar and it released a little too easily, sending the pry bar right into my knee. Bad luck.
The timbers came out fairly easily, our neighbor let us borrow his chain saw to cut them up into small chunks and we decided to avoid double handling and put them right into the car and head for the dump. We put down the back seats and threw a tarp down and filled the Mazda up. That’s when we found out that there was no dump open on Sundays and that the municipal dump wasn’t open on Tuesdays either. So now we had a car full of dirty, ant infested, smelly old rotting lumber. Bad luck.
We determined that there was a commercial dump site open on Monday so we closed up the car cleaned up, drove the log truck to dinner and exhausted, packed it in for the night.
We got up in the morning ready to head for the junk drop off. We jumped in the car and turned the key. Nothing. It turns out that we must have bumped the overhead light switch when we were loading the crap in the car, the battery was as dead as my neighbors in the cemetery. Bad luck.
Moral of the story: don’t tempt fate, don’t walk under ladders.
Tuesday evening I returned home from a great solo road trip, that combined business and pleasure. My route took me from the Twin Cities to Chicago, with a detour for some scenic back roads in Wisconsin, and then to Traverse City, Michigan, Â back through East Lansing and Chicago again . I stayed with my daughter Lucia in Chicago, slept at an incredible nineteenth century farm house on Old Mission Peninsula near Traverse City and visited college friends in East Lansing. It was ten days of fun roads, great food and great friends. Too much to really relate in a single post, but I will be posting my road stories throughout the week.
Also today marks the 25th anniversary of abstinence from alcohol. I quit drinking the year Lucia was born, although it wasn’t a conscious decision to not raise my kids as a practicing alcoholic. I just woke up after a May Day party at my Wife’s office and felt so shitty that I decided I never wanted to experience that again. I’d been having black outs and nasty hangovers way too often in the prior five years or so, and I just didn’t want to feel that shitty again, or walk around wondering what the hell I’d done the night before. I made my decision in the shower, Beck was in the room getting ready for work when I got out and I told her, “That’s it, I’m done.”
I made some calls and was talking to a counsellor that day. I started going to outpatient treatment and attending AA meetings right away, but over the years I’ve drifted away and no longer go to meetings. I just kind of take it for granted now, just like I know I can’t eat shrimp since I suddenly developed an allergy. I don’t like to make a big deal about it, I kind of get embarrassed when people start talking about it. But Beck and I went out to a bar last night to celebrate.
