Break Time with the Official Dunking Toast of the Great Lakes Gazette

The Great Lakes Gazette is on hiatus.

I believe this is the longest break I’ve taken in the three+ years—935 posts—that I’ve been blogging.

See you in a week or so, and thanks for checking in at Great Lakes Gazette.

The tasting room of the Garden Bay Winery in Munising, in the Upper Peninsula near the Lake Superior shore

Michigan’s wine scene is growing not only in number of wineries but in respect for the beverages they’re crafting and the enjoyable experience of visiting vineyards and wine makers on several trails across the state.

Plan now to attend the Memorial Weekend Wine & Art Fair May 26-27 at Lemon Creek Winery in Berrien Springs, or spend a night at one of the winery Bed & Breakfasts in the Traverse City area, or enjoy music on the dock at Manistique’s Mackinaw Trail Winery in the Upper Peninsula.

To get you started see a story I wrote for Chicago Sun-Times that appeared in April, during Michigan Wine Month.

Cheers!

The ornate, barrel-vaulted ceiling of the main arcade of Detroit’s Fisher Building

All of the entries for the Where? Wednesday photo posted on May 2 were correct, so I selected the first responder and it was a former classmate at Redford Union High School, Christopher Caminsky.

We were in the RUHS band together and Chris still lives in the Detroit area. We reconnected via Facebook some months ago, and are looking forward (I think!) to our upcoming class reunion.

The Where? Wednesday answer: The Fisher Building in Detroit’s New Center, a few miles north of the Detroit Riverfront.

The Fisher Building is an architectural gem designed by Albert Kahn Associates for the Fisher Body automotive family. The ornate Art Deco office and retail space, built in 1928, it was phase one of what was to have been a complex of  pair of 28-story structures and a 60-story centerpiece tower. The Great Depression interrupted the plan after just one of the shorter buildings was completed.

The Fisher Building has been referred to as “Detroit’s largest art object,” and is a National Historic Landmark. It houses the Fisher Theatre, a 2,000+ seat venue for touring Broadway productions; the 2012-13 season includes Billy Elliot, The Book of Mormon, Memphis, and Catch Me If You Can.

Applause!

Many goodies come out of the kitchen at the Amish Country Bakery near Coldwater

You can keep your chocolate chips and peanut butter; I’ll take a molasses cookie any day. I like molasses cookies that are dense and chewy and I like molasses cookies that are soft and puffy.

Betty Graber turns out the very best molasses cookies at her Amish Country Bakery in Quincy. Hers are the soft and puffy variety, and rich in flavor. And only $3.00 for a freshly baked dozen.

Maybe it’s the lard. Or the kerosene-powered oven. But Betty sure knows how to bake, and not only cookies.

She makes bread, rolls, pies and dessert bars. She sells Amish noodles and jars of preserves, and baskets handmade by a neighbor. She’s a gentle lady who’s ready and willing to chat and share news of other places to visit in this Amish area north of Coldwater.

Her bakery is the kind of discovery you can only make by driving the backroads and following hand-painted signs, or by checking in at the Branch County Tourism Bureau in beautiful downtown Coldwater.

Pick up a free copy of the Coldwater Country visitors guide and ask about the other Amish shops sprinkled across the farmland north of the Indiana border.

I bought a dozen cookies to take home with me and couldn’t resist trying one as I headed east, back to the 313.

Delish.

I had to stash the bag of cookies away in the rear of the Jeep, well out of reach, so I would have some to share with TJ and Graham. It was all I could do to save a few for the photo before we devoured them.

Slow down, take a drive, bring your dollar bills and enjoy some old-fashioned goodness in southern Michigan’s Amish country.

Check back with the Great Lakes Gazette (or subscribe—it’s free!) for more stories about what to see in the Coldwater area.

Amish Country Bakery is located at 1004 Herricksville Road, Quincy.  Closed Sundays.

Visitor Info Clicks:

Branch County Tourism Bureau

Pure Michigan

 

 

 

 

On the farm at Amish Country Bakery

Horton Creek, where a young Ernie Hemingway learned to fish

Every summer of his youth Ernest Hemingway traveled with his family from their home in the Chicago area to their cottage on Walloon Lake in Northern Michigan. Years later he wrote about some of his experiences and people he met in the Nick Adams Stories and other works.

You can tour many of those locations with Petoskey Yesterday, a company founded by two Hemingway experts, and attend the biennial Hemingway Society Conference in Petoskey June 17-22.

Read about visiting Hemingway haunts and find out more about the conference in my story at GrossePointeToday.com.

Mike Federspiel (left) and Christopher Struble founded Petoskey Yesterday tours. Mike is now Executive Director of the Little Traverse Historical Society and Chris continues to operate the tours.

Detail, 1930s kitchen, Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn

Call me a crazy mom, but I see reminders of my kids, Paige and Graham, everywhere.

1930s kitchen at Henry Ford Museum

The Edgar Allan Poe house at The Dearborn Inn

Edgar Allan Poe won’t be there to greet you, but you can stay at his home when you’re in the Detroit area.

Okay, it’s a replica of the house in New York where Poe lived and wrote, and it stands in a little neighborhood of five homes, all copies of residences of Americans admired by Henry Ford. They are a part of The Dearborn Inn, the hotel he built near his indoor/outdoor museum complex, Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village.

Check out my story about the Colonial homes at The Dearborn Inn and The Henry Ford  that appeared in a special section of the Chicago Sun-Times.

Visitor Info Clicks:

Detroit

Pure Michigan

Topped with avocado and tortilla strips, the Southwest Detroit burger honors the flavors of nearby Mexicantown

Forget about pink slime, aka LFTB (lean finely textured beef). May is National Hamburger Month, and no food additive controversy is going to keep Americans from one of their favorite foods.

The hamburger, introduced in the U.S. by immigrants from Hamburg, Germany, is just a patty of ground beef cooked on a griddle, grill, or under a broiler. In this country it’s served as a sandwich on a bun or bread.

White Castle sliders

White Castle, maker of the legendary slider, is the oldest continuously operating hamburger chain. Founded in Wichita, Kansas in 1921, the first day’s profit at the first White Castle burger shack was $3.75.

A gourmet burger today can easily cost double that and more, as burger joints try to differentiate from all the other burger joints with elaborate toppings and custom blends of ground beef.

At the Mercury Burger Bar in Detroit’s Corktown the star sandwich is made with hormone and antibiotic-free Black Angus beef from Creekstone Farms, a Kansas company that promises the meat is “raised and grazed in the USA.”

Most of the rest of the ingredients on the Mercury menu are made, grown or obtained locally, from Detroit’s own Brown’s Buns to Faygo pop and jalapenos from Honey Bee Market in Mexicantown.

Open since mid-March, Mercury Burger Bar is the brainchild of restaurateur Dave Steinke and Dennis Fulton, who retired from the Detroit Police Department.

Mercury mural by Detroit artist Jerome Feretti

The buddies and business partners refurbished what had been a World War II era tavern for military passing through Detroit. The name came from the Mercury train that ran out of the now-deserted Michigan Central Train Station across the park.

Anchoring a corner of Michigan Avenue and 14th, the Mercury is decorated with white subway tile, original art and a zinc-topped bar. Picnic tables in the outdoor “biergarten” will be popular through the warm months ahead.

Service with a smile

Depending on the time of day the tables, booths and bar can be filled with families, hipsters and Boomers. Service is friendly and casual, and prices are decent: burgers are in the $6-$8 range.

TJ and I sampled two of the specialties of the house: the Shroom, topped with Portobello mushrooms, and the Southwest Detroit, a taste of nearby Mexicantown between buns.

That burger is topped with a chorizo slider, jalapeno peppers, Muenster cheese, avocado, and crispy tortilla strips.

Delish.

The black bean burger gets rave reviews and there are other sandwiches and salads on the menu. Several types of must-try fries include regular, garlic, and sweet potato.

This is a burger joint, so there are milkshakes, and it’s a bar, so there’s liquor and 16 beers on tap, many of them Michigan craft brews.

The Mercury has 16 beers on tap

You can even order a Boston Cooler, a combination of Detroit’s own Vernors ginger ale and vanilla ice cream. No one knows why it’s not named Detroit Cooler.

Maybe the Mercury Burger Bar could call it that, because Detroit is a bit cooler with this addition to the city scene.

Mercury Burger Bar is open 7 days. Located at 2163 Michigan Avenue, Detroit; 313-964-5000.

Visitor Info Clicks:

Detroit

Pure Michigan

Lori McCarthy looks at a lampshade she made from a vintage burlap potato sack

Lori McCarthy is making Michigan a brighter place with the lighting fixtures she and her husband Paul are creating in the barn on their mid-mitten farmland.

I met Lori when at her Luminature shop in Owosso, where she sold her work and that of several other artists who handcraft home goods, many made of recycled and repurposed items.

I really want the chandelier made of an antique hay pulley and rope. This is not your grandma’s chandelier, and not something you’ll find at a big box store.

I also like her fixtures with pine cones; they’re comparable in price to something shipped from overseas but of better quality—and made by someone who actually knows what a pine cone is.

See her work on Facebook and check out my story about Lori (and her new location in Corunna) in the latest issue of Michigan Country Lines magazine. 

Email Lori at mccarthylori@gmail.com or phone 989-472-7290.

Lori’s designs are cut from steel, finished, and made into lamps or wall decor; she created a series of train designs when Owosso, home of the Steam Railroading Institute, hosted a national train festival

No room for Lake Erie, missing from the lower right corner of this postcard

I didn’t know it until today but I have a mild case of deltiology.

It is, according to postcardy.com, the hobby of postcard collecting. Postcardy, a Great Laker who is based in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, also has a Postcardy blog with themed posts (i.e., Transportation Tuesdays) and a link to YouTube videos showcasing themes.

Mine is not a serious condition. My collection is not archived or catalogued. It is stashed in a couple of shoe boxes: one for cards I’ve received and another for blank cards.

If I’m traveling I’ll pick up a few as souvenirs and sometimes mail them to family and friends. At an antiques store I might buy a vintage card or two just for kicks or to use as a greeting card.

A vintage linen postcard of the Wisconsin Dells that tickled my fancy

My case is nothing like that of Master Deltiologist Donald R. Brown of Pennsylvania, who started collecting postcards in 1943.

He served as president of the Wolverine Postcard Club in 1960, which was located in Detroit. The group held monthly meetings at the Detroit Historical Museum.

In 1993, a half-century after he started his hobby, Mr. Brown founded The Institute of American Deltiology. He established the non-profit, located in Myerstown, PA, as a research center, gallery and library.

It consists of more than a million postcards, which he has donated to the National Trust for Historic Preservation Library Collection.

This is National Postcard Week.

Why not snail mail a postcard to someone and help keep alive the craze that one writer in a 1906 article termed Postal Carditis. This is an affliction that has all been stamped out by the invasive Facebook and the tweeting habit.

Be aware, however, that in rare instances Postal Carditis has evolved into deltiology and it, according to those so affected, cannot be licked.

Related Posts:

Send A Postcard—If You Can Find A Stamp, May 2, 2011

Postcard Pix For Kicks, May 3, 2011

Lick A Stamp: It’s National Postcard Week, May 3, 2010

Go Postal, May 5, 2009