Food city area

In Season

Tonight for dinner we had a number of dishes that can only be made when their key ingredients are in season. During the long wait from one summer to the next, it's easy to forget what summer fruits and vegetables taste like. Fresh and exciting things I used and made: <ul><li>Chopped tomatoes. The local tomatoes that I bought had a special aroma that you only get when the tomato has been ripened -- almost over-ripened -- on a vine on a farm not far away. Our first course included the tomatoes and a chopped olive salad that was ready-made at Whole Foods, my own cream cheese spread, and herb butter that I made with fresh cilantro.</li><li>Butterflied leg of lamb, made on the grill using a Julia Child recipe. I think it was a very small lamb, perhaps local but I'm not sure. It was the most tender lamb I've ever had.</li><li>Green bean salad with dried mushrooms and red pepper and a light vinaigrette -- the green beans now are small, not old & tough. The red peppers are still the industrial green-house version -- I hope that the odd-shaped local pimentos and nonstandard red peppers become available soon. For them, I will have to make it to the Farmers Market. </li><li>Lettuce salad with Michigan dried cherries, toasted pine nuts, and cherry balsamic vinaigrette. And one touch of Michigan maple syrup. </li><li>Peach cake (which I described <a href="http://regional-food.blogspot.com/2008/08/polish-peach-and-apricot-cake-from-new.html">here</a> when I first made it). The very first tree-ripened Michigan peaches are here. They make all the difference. So juicy and soft the "free stones" don't even want to come out. I added a few exceptional-tasting blueberries that came from Western Michigan.</li></ul>Time to get philosophical. Sorry, I haven't the energy -- I was cooking and preparing vegetables all afternoon.

In Season

Tonight for dinner we had a number of dishes that can only be made when their key ingredients are in season. During the long wait from one ...

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19.14

Saugatuck Farmer's Market

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/4844566150/" title="market3571 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="market3571" height="375" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4129/4844566150_79ae8c0acd.jpg" width="500" /></a> Before breakfast (served at 9 by our B&B) we walked up the hill towards the bridge across the Kalamazoo River to Douglas. Saugatuck has a farmer's market on Friday mornings -- we stopped to look around -- it seemed deserted. Later, our B&B hostess explained the lack of customers: the yacht owners show up at 8:00 to buy flowers, and the locals come at 11:00 to buy vegetables. Since we were there just after 8, we saw no one but the farmers. Each one seemed to have his or her own specialty -- blueberries, peaches, tomatoes, corn, flowers... <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/4844566500/" title="market3565 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="market3565" height="375" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4106/4844566500_712f1dbf28.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/4844566324/" title="market3570 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="market3570" height="480" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4133/4844566324_019e3851eb_b.jpg" width="640" /></a> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/4844566656/" title="market3567 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="market3567" height="375" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4091/4844566656_baf9ed8217.jpg" width="500" /></a> We ended our 24 hour getaway with around an hour sitting on Oval Beach -- one of the world's most beautiful beaches. See: <a href="http://maetravels.blogspot.com/2010/07/oval-beach-saugatuck-mi.html">Oval Beach, Saugatuck MI</a>

Saugatuck Farmer's Market

Before breakfast (served at 9 by our B&B) we walked up the hill towards the bridge across the Kalamazoo River to Douglas. Saugatuck has ...

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12.57

Marro's Restaurant

Marro's Restaurant

Marro's in Saugatuck has been serving American-Italian food for 40 seasons, and they do seem very popular with the crowds of tourists in...

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12.27

Saugatuck

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/4842062770/" title="1twin oaks inn by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="1twin oaks inn" height="480" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4092/4842062770_5dbdf08504_b.jpg" width="640" /></a> Twin Oaks Inn was our destination this morning. After an easy drive from Ann Arbor to Saugatuck without traffic surprises, we checked in at around 11:00, feeling that we had retreated! We walked around, looked at the old-fashioned and very old chain ferry and all the yachts in the harbor. The ferryman cranks a crank that pulls the boat across the Kalamazoo River via an underwater chain. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/4842123232/" title="chainferry by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="chainferry" height="334" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4091/4842123232_5a04f37ed5.jpg" width="500" /></a> Sadly, the Kalamazoo River is currently threatened by an oil pipeline breach upstream, but the water here is not yet affected, and we hope the oil can be contained. We had lunch on the waterfront. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/4842063168/" title="1mermaidlunch by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="1mermaidlunch" height="375" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4108/4842063168_537a6bf061.jpg" width="500" /></a> After lunch Len got our Bike Fridays out of the car -- they both fit in the trunk along with all our luggage. We discovered that a superb bike path has just opened that goes from just outside the town of Saugatuck to the Dunes State Park. It's wide, paved, and has wooden bridges where it goes over swampy creeks. The wood is so new that the bridges still smell like sawdust. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/4842062902/" title="bikepath by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="bikepath" height="375" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4127/4842062902_29b96aa957.jpg" width="500" /></a> We locked the bikes to a tree in the park and walked over to the beach. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/4841446127/" title="beachvw by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="beachvw" height="375" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4124/4841446127_1202f5f993.jpg" width="500" /></a> After a dip in the perfect-temperature water of Lake Michigan and a long time napping on the beach, we walked back over the dune and started back towards town. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/4841446009/" title="froghome by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="froghome" height="375" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4109/4841446009_7462046c82.jpg" width="500" /></a> I heard frogs singing on my bike. Groucho would ask: what were the frogs doing on your bike? Never mind. The four or five miles of bike path are beautiful, as there is a lot that you see from a bike and not from a car. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/4841445845/" title="1kilwins by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="1kilwins" height="375" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4090/4841445845_39273f0fc2.jpg" width="500" /></a> Our last bike stop was for Kilwin's ice cream. Lots of fun things to eat between activities here. Before we end our 24-hour stay we hope for dinner somewhere in town, breakfast made by our hospitable hostess Willa, and maybe even an early lunch.

Saugatuck

Twin Oaks Inn was our destination this morning. After an easy drive from Ann Arbor to Saugatuck without traffic surprises, we checked in at ...

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14.33

Redefinitions

Redefinitions

Here's a really neat NYT slide show about Korean tacos, truly imaginative fusion food.

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17.06

Bruschetta

Bruschetta originally meant "slices of toast with things on them, depending for success on the quality of the bread and olive oil," according to The Oxford Companion to Italian Food by Gillian Riley. During earlier, less prosperous times, Italian farmworkers and laborers spread salt, oil, salami or cheese on stale bread. Today "the concept has been turned upside down, and small, exquisitely put-together morsels are served with wine to stimulate jaded appetites ... . Bruschetta was known and loved in Lazio before its current popularity, as well as in Tuscany and Umbria." (p. 79) As I said about <a href="http://regional-food.blogspot.com/2010/07/crudites.html">Crudités</a>, recipes change, and definitions change, just as words change. What Italian farmworker eating his meager snack would have dreamed of the Jack-in-the-Box brand Bruschetta Chicken Ciabatta Sandwich with 660 calories and 26 grams of fat? He might have loved it. (I haven't tried it, as I never eat at that chain.) I decided to make a version of bruschetta for a first course to take to a friend's house last night. My first experience with this dish was partway through its Americanization process -- the garlic-and-olive-oil flavored toast is spread with chopped tomato and basil Maybe this is the trendy Italian version. Here's my product, in progress, and on the table: <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcrnXqF7Ghyphenhyphen49lBMP3c-XRhPLKfXVAAJrFSMCrJTXZC4Q-1lCLzQghPSV-XQw2LeZwtlfVQP0uKF4PJW2BMiSwmVTvq_TVgNRFTBourkTgDoOS-BsOB2BNB9Df5TnsPGcCvQqgLIvAWRui/s1600/bruschetta3514.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498301815662463986" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcrnXqF7Ghyphenhyphen49lBMP3c-XRhPLKfXVAAJrFSMCrJTXZC4Q-1lCLzQghPSV-XQw2LeZwtlfVQP0uKF4PJW2BMiSwmVTvq_TVgNRFTBourkTgDoOS-BsOB2BNB9Df5TnsPGcCvQqgLIvAWRui/s320/bruschetta3514.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" /></a> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhdyzQQ8IykKX3ZBXro7Awa675BqLksUsdITZ8zxUYrX1PcwKwUKANLtsZ5_gdk82rhQsTg9z4qGfUSrCB6JqGI6ljQWQmLmoHxTMbuskaGq8cdLA9Xub6QKi96MH2JsnwxLts9yX3mJKo/s1600/bruschetta3516.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498301808140958402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhdyzQQ8IykKX3ZBXro7Awa675BqLksUsdITZ8zxUYrX1PcwKwUKANLtsZ5_gdk82rhQsTg9z4qGfUSrCB6JqGI6ljQWQmLmoHxTMbuskaGq8cdLA9Xub6QKi96MH2JsnwxLts9yX3mJKo/s320/bruschetta3516.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" /></a> We all spread our own tomato mixture on the bread, which was sliced from a Zingerman's baguette and browned in good olive oil and crushed garlic. The morphing of bruschetta has in fact taken one really odd turn. At some restaurants in California, they serve the chopped tomatoes -- but not the bread! In one little cafe where I ate last year, in DelMar (near La Jolla), the waitress apologized profusely, when we considered ordering the dish, explaining that she had lost the argument with the chef when she tried to convince him that there should be bread. He was essentially serving bruschetta as a breadless salad. But as Riley says, "Definitions are best not agonized over."

Bruschetta

Bruschetta originally meant "slices of toast with things on them, depending for success on the quality of the bread and olive oil,&quo...

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12.38

Five Fish

<blockquote>"Nick ... made his way up the creek... At the pebbly shallow stretch he caught two small trout. they were beautiful fish, too, firm and hard and he gutted the ... fish and tossed the guts into the stream, then washed the trout carefully in the cold water and then wrapped them in a small faded sugar sack from his pocket. ... "He had his fire made and the skillet resting on it and he was laying strips of bacon in the skillet. ... Nick was cooking the trout now. the bacon was curled brown on a fresh-cut chip of wood from the piece of fallen timber they were using for the fire and they both smelled the trout cooking in the bacon fat. Nick basted them and then turned them and basted them again." ("The Last Good Country," Hemingway, The Nick Adams Stories, p. 111-116) "With wild fish we have chosen, time after time, to ignore the fundamental limits the laws of nature place on ecosystems and have consistently removed more fish than can be replaced by natural processes. ... We eat more fish every year, ... pausing only (and only briefly) when evidence surfaces of the risk of industrial contaminants in our seafood supply. ... And in telling the story of four fish, for which the collision of wildness and domestication is particularly relevant, I shall attempt to separate human wants from global needs and propose the terms for an equitable and long-lasting peace between man and fish." (Paul Greenberg, Four Fish, p. 13-14) </blockquote>Hemingway's story, set in northern Michigan before the First World War, describes the boy Nick Adams fishing for trout to make supper over a campfire for himself and his sister. Idyllic. I chose The Nick Adams Stories as nice summer reading after our recent trip to Traverse City, in country somewhat like the area where Hemingway's family summered around 100 years ago. It's still beautiful, mainly rural and full of beautiful little streams. Nick Adams, one of Hemingway's alter-egos, was aware of the precious quality of the woods where he fished -- most famously in the story "Big Two-Hearted River." In this story, Nick returns to Michigan escaping a lot of bad experiences that are mostly told through allusions. Fishing allows him to find a kind of happiness, mainly implied by Hemingway's spare prose. On the whole in the modern world, there might be a few trout in Michigan's streams, but fish more generally are in trouble. The four fish of Greenberg's title are salmon, tuna, seabass, and cod, all ocean species that have provided large supplies of food in the past. All are at risk, as he explains in his combination of natural history and biotechnology history. Fish farms are productive, but full of problems. Wild fish are so scarce that one can only have illusions about sustainable fisheries for them. I'm not sure why I was inspired to read such a depressing book, but the reviews were really intriguing. I couldn't help making the connection between Hemingway's idyll and Greenberg's modern dilemma of how we are depleting and polluting the oceans. (And he wrote prior to the disaster in the Gulf). Greenberg calls fish "the last wild food," but describes the challenges of fish farming, and the increasingly reduced supplies of any wild fish. I like this connection and the contrast between the two books I've been reading.

Five Fish

"Nick ... made his way up the creek... At the pebbly shallow stretch he caught two small trout. they were beautiful fish, too, firm and...

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10.20

Food city area

In Season

Saugatuck Farmer's Market

Marro's Restaurant

Saugatuck

Redefinitions

Bruschetta

Five Fish

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