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><br /><br />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...<br /><br /><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><br /><br /><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><br /><br /><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><br /><br />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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Marro's Restaurant

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/4844567478/" title="morros3564 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="morros3564" height="480" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4110/4844567478_d248daa465_b.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/4844567352/" title="morros3563 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="morros3563" height="479" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4104/4844567352_ff81405be7_b.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br />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 the picturesque town. After our bike trip to the dunes, we wanted a relaxed dinner -- nothing pretentious (if you want pretentious, Saugatuck can oblige). We also shared a piece of cheesecake, which the menu says is the best in the history of the world. It was good cheesecake, though perhaps age-old global superiority is a stretch.

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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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><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">retreated</span>!<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><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><br /><br />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.<br /><br />We had lunch on the waterfront.<br /><br /><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><br /><br />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.<br /><br /><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><br /><br />We locked the bikes to a tree in the park and walked over to the beach.<br /><br /><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><br /><br />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.<br /><br /><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><br /><br />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.<br /><br /><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><br /><br />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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Redefinitions

<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/07/27/dining/20100728-TACO.html">Here's a really neat NYT slide show</a> about Korean tacos, truly imaginative fusion food.<br /><img alt="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/07/27/dining/20100728-TACO-slide-CU3A/20100728-TACO-slide-CU3A-thumbWide.jpg" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/07/27/dining/20100728-TACO-slide-CU3A/20100728-TACO-slide-CU3A-thumbWide.jpg" />

Redefinitions

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

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Bruschetta

<span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Bruschetta</span> originally meant "slices of toast with things on them, depending for success on the quality of the bread and olive oil," according to <span style="font-style: italic;">The Oxford Companion to Italian Food</span> 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 ... . <span style="font-style: italic;">Bruschetta</span> was known and loved in Lazio before its current popularity, as well as in Tuscany and Umbria." (p. 79)<br /><br />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.)<br /><br />I decided to make a version of <span style="font-style: italic;">bruschetta</span> 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:<br /><br /><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><br />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.<br /><br />The morphing of <span style="font-style: italic;">bruschetta</span> 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 <span style="font-style: italic;">bruschetta</span> 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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Five Fish

<blockquote><span style="color: rgb(51, 153, 153);">"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. ...</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 153, 153);">"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." </span>("The Last Good Country," Hemingway, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Nick Adams Stories</span>, p. 111-116)<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 153, 51);">"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." </span>(Paul Greenberg, <span style="font-style: italic;">Four Fish</span>, p. 13-14)<br /></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 <span style="font-style: italic;">The Nick Adams Stories</span> 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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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Art Fair Food (that which I didn't eat)

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/4815890027/" title="artfair3506 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="artfair3506" height="480" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4073/4815890027_513f6fd833_b.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br />The most beautiful art work at the Ann Arbor Art Fair might just be the Milles Fountain in front of the Michigan League. This morning the water sparkled in the slanting sunlight, already baking the tables set up there for those buying food at the food stalls along the side of the building. Art Fair food comes from those trailers that go from carnival to carnival or other event with some approximation of fast food. It doesn't actually appeal to me much. I know I'm in a minority on this -- the lines were really long when my companions bought their Gyros sandwiches, not here, but in front of the Union.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/4816514628/" title="artfair3399 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="artfair3399" height="375" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4136/4816514628_516ef3aec5.jpg" width="500" /></a><br /><br />The smoothie booth is colorful. Too bad I hate bananas.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/4816514840/" title="artfair3501 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="artfair3501" height="375" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4118/4816514840_8b08468ce3.jpg" width="500" /></a><br /><br />Fusion stir-fry. Whatever. I had a large diet Pepsi from the fast food court in the Union & sat with my friends as they ate their Gyros. Later I had Almond Joy ice cream from the local shop Stucchi's. I'm just not a fan of carnival food. Not Greek Salad. Not Funnel Cakes. Not hot dogs. Sorry, I'm just not into that.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/4816514308/" title="artfair3509 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="artfair3509" height="480" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4082/4816514308_56c66936a6_b.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br />After walking around and looking at the artists' work, we stopped to hear Mr. B. play boogie-woogie on his piano-on-a-bicycle. I bought a painting, a mug, a ceramic dish for butter or cream cheese, and a tee shirt. I'll photograph them when I bring them home from campus. Somehow I did not find any artists' booths that I felt compelled to photograph -- maybe later in the week I will.

Art Fair Food (that which I didn't eat)

The most beautiful art work at the Ann Arbor Art Fair might just be the Milles Fountain in front of the Michigan League. This morning the wa...

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