little gems in the UP

Some three months back Conrad, Karen (his sister), and I happened upon a great little place while roaming north in search of antiques in the UP.

Right as soon as I typed the word antiques, I should say, I felt about as gay as I've ever felt in my life.

Anyway, Lily's of Traunik was our great discovery that day. Their Website gives other variations on the name, but the sign on the store makes it simple. Housed in an historic property at a crossroads near the halfway mark between Escanaba and Marquette, the store endeared itself to us immediately. Pretty decent coffee, organic goods, and some prices that had me and Karen pinching ourselves at our luck. We were sold on it.

Despite the snow today, we were keen to get a drive in and revisit. Conrad's Mom declined to come, so we picked up Karen and drove - carefully - up to the store. You know what? Just as good as remembered. Did we spend an hour there? I think so. We were having a good time chatting with the people running the place - I'm assuming that would be Jeff and AJ Fischer, the owners. We drank our coffee and ate a cupcake and kept circling around the wares, picking out more and more things to buy. Candied ginger, the store's own chocolate truffles, a hat for Conrad, a Christmas ornament, spices, a postcard, a CD. What fun. We'll be back again some time this year. Doubtless there will be a third post.

It was getting on a bit after lunch when we left, and we hadn't had lunch yet. A slow drive back toward Escanaba, taking photos of snowy farms. At Rapid River, we headed to an old-time favourite called Jack's for a bit to eat.

OK, it's fair to call me (and Conrad, by extension) a food snob. I didn't want a sandwich, and I didn't want a big meal. Soup wouldn't likely be enough (I did order the clam chowder). What else could I have... ? Deep fried cauliflower, of course.

I know, I know. Batter dip a cellphone and fry it up, and it doubtless would be delicious. Do they make the little nuggets from scratch at Jack's? I don't know. I don't care. They were fried, and I liked the batter seasoning. They came to me hot, and they came with ranch dressing on the side. I was happy. Oh, and we bought seven pieces of various pies for gently reheating and eating for dessert tomorrow night at Conrad's mother's. The pie, we are assured, is homemade. It smelled mighty good.

Little gems dot the world, not the just the UP. The trick is stumbling upon them, of course. We don't go back to Chicago until Monday - I wonder what we stumble upon next....

where toast is born

Just in case you wondering where toast comes from. Or is that tooooh-wust (per the Yooper pronunciation)? No matter - it ain't the stork that brings it!

rich food

I think Conrad is rather full right now, and if not, then he darn well should be. Oh, no begrudging him his fun - he enjoyed dinner immensely tonight, though he'll regret it a little through the night and into tomorrow when his digestive system complains a bit. We all indulged in some rich food tonight, more than we might usually, in fact. I only got off a little easily by virtue of being the driver.

My dinner didn't photograph well. Perhaps I should say, instead, that I didn't take due care with it. I had a rare treat, something I never cook and seldom see on menus: liver. Love it. Hated it as a kid, but now? Yes, please!

Conrad had a steak - I didn't photograph it - but what finished the night richly for him, Karen, and their Mom were the three ice cream cocktails they shared between them. Conrad's Mom went with a Grasshopper.
Minty, boozy, sweet. She liked it fine. Conrad and Karen started out with one Bel Air - a Grasshopper with chocolate sauce - between them; one was insufficient in the end, and they quickly and thoroughly enjoyed a second. More minty, boozy, sweet.

Ah well, why not? It's the Saturday of a long weekend, and I was the one driving them. We may all want lighter fare tomorrow, sure. Maybe, just maybe, it should be a day of bran flakes, chicken broth, and steamed broccoli. For one night, though, a little richness to combat the cold winter night.

biscotti

A glimpse of biscotti after a first baking. I admit to having munched on more than just a few of the finished result in the days since - bad me. Actually, these were a fairly lazy effort, not a great one. Happily, the orange, almond, and milk chocolate in the biscotti carries the day nicely. Let me lose the holiday weight, and perhaps I can return to baking again.

offbeat

No photos of dinner - it was a boring breast of turkey with some rapini and cauliflower lightly glazed with balsamic (thanks Karen for the wonderful collection of vinegars and oils!). It didn't look bad on the plate, but the breast was dry. I'll look forward to turning into a pot pie or something tomorrow.

The interesting thing tonight was the wine. Last year Conrad and I visited his nephew in Kansas City and went wine tasting with Justin, his wife Tonna, and Conrad's Mom. Yep, Missouri wine tasting. Well, only one winery, but it was entirely pleasant. So much so that we bought some wine. Oh heck, why not? So when we went to the wine closet tonight, all our reds were more "special occasion" or heavy for dinner, from what I could tell. That in mind, I decided it was about time we cracked open the bottle of Cynthiana.

OK, love the name. Is it the grape? I should look that up. Whatever, it just sounds pretty and maidenly and a good match for a lighter meat like turkey breast. I poured some before dinner, and...

... well ...

... I'm not sure. I swear it was pretty good at the winery, but what I poured tonight was sweeter than I recalled and a touch reminiscent of cough syrup. Odd. Not anything as bad as the Carlos and the Noble, however. I asked Conrad to taste it, then suggested we wait to try it with the food before deciding on its fate.

You know what? We stayed with it. Against the turkey, it seemed a brighter wine, if that makes sense. The slightly queer notes of allspice and pepper on the finish were subdued, and it took on some lighter red berry tones. Fine, that's pretentious of me to describe it like that. Just the same, though, it wasn't at all bad, just odd, and intriguing and drinkable. We poured more.

There's still easily a third of a bottle left. I may use the rest for cooking. I wish I could rave about it as a wine, but at least I can think back to how much I enjoyed the day we got it. Maybe it's not in the same league as, oh, Michigan wines, but it gave us yet another thing to talk about through dinner. More than that. the trip when we bought it, the wine itself. Hmmm, I think in the end it was very well worth what we paid.

our glamorous lives

Contrary to prevailing opinion, Conrad and I do not simply swan about town, appearing at restaurants, sitting down to expensive multi-course meals, looking fabulous and dining exceedingly well. Nor do we loll about the house amongst a treasure trove of vintage Fiestaware, blithely feasting on whatever struck my fancy to cook.

The ugly truth I am about too reveal is that we have rather dull, boring lives full of the mundaneness that, in my fantasies, servants would take care of. So it is that we got out of the house on a dreary January afternoon and ran some errands. Household necessities, frivolous stuff, another storage bag for the tree.







This, dear readers, is what Conrad and I are really like. But just think: what would a blog of these sorts of activities and photos look like? And that is why it'll be back to dining and cooking and vacations for the foreseeable blogging future.

tree un-trimming dinner

If you cook for people, I've found, you can con them into most anything. And so it was with Frank tonight.

In past years, we've been so bad as to leave the tree up until February. Busy lives. Some sort of excuse like that. I dunno. Anyway, we did get the tree un-decorated this evening as well as taken down, and Frank was great help in accomplishing that. By the end of it all, he might have wished otherwise. I mean look, we're gay men, we go a little overboard with decorations. And imagine if we hadn't sent a bunch up to Vancouver!

Oh, it wasn't so very onerous a task, really.



We munched on cheese and olives and almonds and sipped a Domaine de Chaberton Gamay Noir before we attacked the tree. Once it was denuded and taken down, I served up dinner.

Here's the funny thing about me: people give me cookbooks because they know I love food, but I don't necessarily devour the cookbooks right away. It depends. It's no commentary on the books, really. I buy music (CDs back in the day, online now) and then don't listen to it for some time. Just the way I am. So it is that I finally opened up a cookbook the NBF sent me, for my last birthday, I think. I wanted a stew, but in flipping through the pages of the Jamie Oliver book, I found a better-looking recipe for chicken cacciatore than ever I'd seen before. Hmmmm.




Jeph, my friend, it was a great success. Not too many ingredients. Easy to cook. A delicious outcome. I'll be dipping back into that back, I promise, and soon. Once hooked, I'll return again and again.

Alongside the chicken I had a salad of butter lettuce, yellow tomato, radish, fennel, and blood orange. It's a great time of year for citrus, so I was pleased to have the blood orange for colour and for some tangy zing.

We looked at photos - Frank's and ours - and I brought over some cookies, cheeses, my Mum's rum balls, and slices of Asian pear. A simple dessert, but a generous one.

So, the tree is down, and the decorations will go down into storage tomorrow. I guess Christmas is over. Mind you, given the snowfall of the last 24 hours, that's a little hard to believe. Ah well... 11 weeks until New Zealand!

And that is the update from Chicago - a week of no blogging while I've babied myself through a cold. There's not too much point photographing and blogging the very simple food I've made for myself, or that I've ordered for delivery. The cold is gone. Let's see what the week ahead brings.

new new Vancouver Yoshi's

Wasn't it just a few short months back when Conrad and I stumbled upon a restaurant we wanted to make our Vancouver Yoshi's? And then what happened? After five years of business, they closed.

Merde.

Less than a month ago, a new option opened even closer. Formerly the space that a kind of funky hole-in-the-wall Portuguese restaurant called Adega had occupied, it's now a minimalist Italian place called Campagnolo. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a winner. Or so Conrad and I hope.

We actually first ate there, with Marie, the night we arrived before setting up the tree. That intrigued us enough for me and Conrad to have a date there tonight. It's only a few doors down, after all, so why not.

At 6:45 we walked in (no reservations save for big groups) and got a nice table against the north wall. The place was pretty busy - an encouraging sign. We immediately ordered the marinated olives and spiced hazelnuts, and had a glass each of a Prosecco to go alongside.

Conrad and I decided to juggle some small courses, then share a pizza. Smart idea. I just wish they'd all photographed well. In order of how much I liked them (I liked them all), starting with the best:

Coppa di Testa (head cheese, served with pickled eggplant).

Octopus salad with roasted peppers, cucumber, and lemon.

Seared albacore tuna with salt-roasted onions, treviso, and chives.

Pate di Campagna.

Again, all were good. We sipped through a half liter of a Ricossa Barbaresco then moved on to a half liter of Forte Canto Primitivo to sip during and after the Margherita Pizza (flordilatte cheese, basil, tomato). Wow. We haven't had a pizza in ages, but heck, it's vacation. Screw the carbs! Also fun: the side dish of seasonings to add as desired.

No, it really was very good, and there are several things we still want to try on the menu. Not a big menu, but some good things, and we like the room and the wine list. Sarah, our waitress, gave us excellent advice, we thought.

So please please please, Campagnolo, stay open for many months and years to come, and stay good. We are ever so glad for a place like that in our little neck of the woods.

NYE dinner, 2008

I feel lazy today, and can you blame me. Hours of slaving away in the kitchen yesterday. My difficult life.

No, not difficult. Dinner for three of us was a doodle to prepare, all the more so since we drew it out over the course of a handful of hours on our way to midnight. New Year's Eve was, as a result, a relaxed affair, and glad we were of it.

The dinner:

Cheeses (smoked cheddar and pecorino romano) and olives, Rain Coast Crisps, a bottle of a 2006 Sumac Ridge Stellar Jay Brut.

Seafood broth with local prawns, pine nuts, hedgehog mushroom, and thyme. A bottle of a Quails Gate Chasselas Pinot Blanc.

Oven-braised lamb shank with French green lentils, Brussels sprouts, roasted hedgehog mushrooms, and a reduction of the braising liquid.

A bottle of a Cedar Creek Platinum Reserve Pinot Noir and a bottle of a Quails Gate Pinot Noir.

Chocolate budini.


Forme d'Ambert cheese, dried figs, more Crisps, some dark chocolate.

Oh, and several bottles of sparkling mineral water. Can you imagine the shape we'd have been in this morning without downing that water throughout the night?

Chris looked spiffy,
no surprise there. His marvelously hammy side came out time and again as well
- also no surprise.

I took up residence in my kitchen


but welcomed Conrad and Chris' presence and conversation. Conrad photographed all he could and seemed never to be sitting still.

Just after midnight we packed it in. Chris went home, stuffed (I hope), and we headed for bed. One of the most enjoyable NYE in my experience - thank you Chris for coming over - due largely to how well we could let it all unspool as we felt.