Midwest Guest

Photo Friday: Fun with fungi

I'm not entirely sure if these are mushrooms or toadstools, and while this patch of vegetation I found on a lawn in the middle of the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana looks like nothing more than a hot mess, I found that zooming in close yielded a couple of images featuring some fun patterns and color variations.

Check out these stories for more views of the Notre Dame campus: Back to school at Indiana's University of Notre Dame, O'Shag Hall at Indiana's University of Notre Dame, Indiana's University of Notre Dame embraces "Touchdown Jesus" and Basilica of the Sacred Heart is the heart of Indiana's University of Notre Dame campus.

Also, if this post doesn't offer enough fun with fungi for you, check out one of my past Photo Friday posts, Along the trail to Michigan's Canyon Falls.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2012 All rights reserved

The Moose Preserve: A taste of "Up North" in metro Detroit

I physically spend most of my time in metro Detroit, but my heart is usually in northern Michigan.

So, when it's not possible to head Up North for a burger and beer, one of our favorite places to go for a little taste of Up North is The Moose Preserve Bar and Grill, about 10 miles north of Detroit in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

The Moose Preserve, established in 1990, is the flagship location of a small group of independent restaurants in metro Detroit that includes Camp Ticonderoga in Troy (opened in 1996), Deadwood Bar & Grill in Northville (opened in 1999) and Beaver Creek Tackle & Beer in Westland (opened in 1986).

Each of the restaurants boasts hunting lodge-themed decor and a menu stuffed with half-pound burgers, campfire-style fish dishes and comfort food favorites like macaroni and cheese, shepherd's pie and game meat like venison sausage, buffalo meatloaf and duck tenders.

The Moose definitely appeals to the carnivores, and huge servings mean many diners could easily share a dish or be prepared to take a good bit of their meals home with them to enjoy the next day for lunch.

As much fun as the food is at The Moose, I especially enjoy the relaxed vibe and friendly service. We've eaten many times at The Moose over the years (and a few times out at the Deadwood Grill on the way out to Plymouth Whalers' hockey games), and found the service to be mostly friendly and efficient.

The knotty pine and stone walls, the antler chandelier, log furniture, mounted game heads and vintage photos of miners and workers who built some greatest landmarks of Michigan's Upper Peninsula during the 1930s give The Moose the feeling of an "Up North" sports bar, without veering into truly cheesy territory.

There are plenty of televisions scattered throughout the restaurant, making it a great place to meet with friends to watch one of Detroit's great professional sports teams play

I particularly like heading up The Moose to eat a meal on the outdoor patio, where it's possible to forget that you're in suburban Detroit on an always busy Woodward Avenue. You can eat out on the heated and covered deck, tucked behind the building and well shielded from the parking lot and Woodward, quite late into the fall.

Other fun touches that make The Moose seem particularly homey include warm chocolate chip cookies (usually sold by the platter, but diners often get a free cookie with their meals at Sunday dinner), frequent offers of a free dog bone for the asking that you can take home to your best friend, and the restaurant's Dog Wall, which features fun photos of customers' dogs.

Bottom line-Great food in a fun atmosphere. Come prepared to eat, stay to enjoy a bit of "Up North" downstate.

© Dominique King 2012 All rights reserved

Midwest-related reads for spring 2012

I'm starting to think about beach and hammock reading these days, so here's another of my periodic lists of great Midwest reads:

• So, one day when I was getting my hair cut, I heard a stylist near me regaling his customer with the tale of his grandmother who ran afoul of local authorities when they discovered that she kept two chickens in her backyard, and (horror of horrors!) hung her clothes on a line behind her home. The guy's grandma had broken not just one, but two, municipal laws or statues, so grandma had to lose her clothesline and send her chickens, which included the memorably named Doctor Pecker, packing. Lame laws? Stupid statues? There seem to be plenty of them on the books, and Indiana mom and blogger Ann Sattley unearths some real gems in her book, Technically, That's Illegal.
  
  


• Regular readers of Midwest Guest know about Jessie Voigts' travels with her family through a number guest posts here at Midwest Guest. Jessie stresses making a special effort to include various multicultural activities part of her daughter's everyday life and teams up with daughter Lillie to share their family's experiences in Bringing the World Home: A Resource Guide to Raising Intercultural Kids. The pair packs plenty of practical advice and an extensive list of kid-friendly activities into this short e-book.
  
  


• Are you heading for Ohio and looking for things to do with the younger travelers in your family? Check out Adventures Around Cincinnati: A Parent's Guide to Unique and Memorable Places to Explore with your Kids by Laura Hoevener and Terri Weeks. These adventurous moms checked out 80 kid-tested destinations within a 2-hour drive of the Queen City (including a number of places in Dayton, Ohio) and pass on their findings and tips to help other parents encourage the spirit of adventurous traveling with their own families. Want more family-friendly travel tips? Check out Terri's blog, Travel 50 States with Kids.
  
  


• I read Jessie Voigts' favorable review of South of Superior by Ellen Airgood at A Traveler's Library last month and put it on my reading list. Jessie liked this story of a woman who moved from Chicago to a remote area of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and she seemed to especially appreciate the author's knowledge and appreciation of the UP's unique character and culture. I'm looking forward to reading it later this summer. (You can also check out Jessie's blog, Wandering Educators)
  
  


• Tim enjoyed reading the courtroom based novel, Anatomy of a Murder by Robert Traver, years ago. Traver was the nom de plume of well known Michigan attorney and judge John D. Voelker, and the novel originally came out in the 1950s and became a popular Otto Preminger-directed film starring James Stewart as a lawyer in a small town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula at the end of that decade.
  
  


• Tim's latest read is a recently reissued novel by Robert Traver called Laughing Whitefish. This is another story set in the Upper Peninsula and based on an actual case during the late 1800s that had the daughter of a Native guide who sues a large mining company for the money coming from the interest in the mine originally promised to her father. Tim says the book is especially intriguing for those who know a bit, or want to learn a bit, about the history of Michigan and the issues surrounding Native Americans and later settlers in the state.
  
  


• We seem to spend a lot of time in cemeteries when we travel. Some of our most interesting geocache finds seem to be in graveyards, but we even found ourselves stopping at graveyards in our pre-geocaching days because of the history, gardens, art and unusual architecture we found in many cemeteries. That makes Badger Boneyards: The Eternal Rest of the Story by Dennis McCann a read I'll need to check out before our next trip to Wisconsin.
  
  

Any more great Midwest reads I should check out?

© Dominique King 2012 All rights reserved

Photo Friday: Michigan trilliums

It can sometimes be easy to overlook the beauty in your own backyard-or in this case, in my parents' backyard.

We were recently helping my mom pack and clear out her house as she prepares to downsize and start a new chapter in her life. It's another step in a series of big steps we've taken as we all adjust life after my father's death last summer.

This particular day, I looked out of the window and remembered how pretty their backyard has always been each spring. I ran back home to fetch my camera so I could make a few last images of the trilliums that bloom near the lake behind my parents' home each year. I've seen a lot of nice trillium patches around Michigan each year, but few seemed as prolific and serene as this patch of blooms at the house.

 

 

 

 

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2012 All rights reserved

Taste the local difference in northern Michigan

We love stopping at farm markets when we travel, especially in northwestern Michigan where it seems possible to find a farmers market going nearly every day of the week during the summer.

Northwest Michigan has a particularly nice glove-box sized local food and farm guide called Taste the Local Difference. It features a list of farm markets in the area, as well as information about U-pick farms, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) organizations, wineries, breweries, restaurants and stores featuring local products, and more.

You can find the annual guide in tourist centers, libraries, markets and stores around an 8-county region in northern Michigan (I picked mine up from a rack at the group's presenting sponsor, Crystal Mountain Resort).

You can also download it as a PDF from the Taste the Local Difference site, although I prefer to view it online because the PDF version lacks hot links that would make searching through the virtual booklet easier.

Taste the Local Difference is a project of the Michigan Land Use Institute aimed at building markets for products from farmers in Michigan's northwestern Lower Peninsula, connecting them to shoppers, grocers, restaurants and other food businesses.

The group urges supporters to pledge to spend at least $10 each week on locally grown and produced foods, saying that if everyone did so that the region's economy would grow by nearly $5 million a year.

The Michigan Land Use Institute estimates that more than 70 percent of the farms participating in their local food marketing campaigns report sales increases due to the program.

The local food movement can also have other benefits like healthier meals for kids as a result of farm-to-school food initiatives in concert with environmental improvements as a result of accompanying green-energy and clean-water initiatives.

This region of the state seemed to embrace efforts to promote local food producers quite early, promoting the support of local farmers as one of the best way to support the region's economy. It's always been fun to see how our favorite "Up North" restaurants spotlighted local foods in their menus, and I remember seeing the region's restaurants highlighting their use of local foods much earlier than I remember seeing the same emphasis elsewhere in the state.

Check out the Taste the Local Difference site for suggestions about how to best use local food year round and some great recipes featuring local ingredients, including a few from Chef Darren Hawley of the Crystal Mountain Resort at Thompsonville, Michigan.

It was a special pleasure to sit down with Chef Hawley late last summer and talk about the benefits of using local food and the resort's long-term commitment to working with local farmers. Check out my interview with him here.

As much fun as it is to browse the Taste the Local Difference web site, I still find the hard copy of the guide particularly handy in helping to local farmers markets while I'm on the road.

We visited the Grow Benzie and Crystal Mountain farm markets after spotting them in our guide.

Grow Benzie purchased a 3.7-acre site in Benzonia to use as a community farmstead and a training center to help in bolstering the local economy in 2008. Grow Benzie established their farmers market in 2009. The group offered 25 garden plots and greenhouse space for lease to interested members of the community this year and opens its weekly farmers market this summer for the third season in a row on M-115 between Beulah-Benzonia and Frankfort.

This small market offered a great opportunity to talk with the local farmers as we shopped and selected some raspberry jam to take home with us.

This year, the Grow Benzie Farmers Market runs 3 p.m. until 7 p.m. each Monday from June 18 through mid-September. New this year at the market will be music from local performers.

We also visited the market a Crystal Mountain last summer. We spotted our raspberry jam farmer again at this market, and this time he had blueberry jam (which also ended up going home with us!).

Crystal's market takes place in one of the parking lots near a ski hill from 3 p.m. until 6 p.m. each Friday, starting this year on June 15 and running through Labor Day weekend in early September.

Thanks to Brian Lawson, Director of Public Relations at Crystal Mountain Resort, for hosting us for lunch at Crystal's Thistle Pub & Grille and arranging an interview with Chef Hawley for me.

© Dominique King 2012 All rights reserved