 Midwest Trade
Routes
Story and photos by Jack Leggett
Last summer we went to Italy and it was a great, and expensive, trip. This summer we needed to stay closer to home and headed home to the Midwest, visiting friends and family in Wisconsin and Michigan. But home is not what it used to be.
We started in Milwaukee, where our close friends Larry Koszewski and Louise Gorenc have lived all their lives, raising 4 children and now sending their youngest to UW Madison this fall. The only years they lived away from home were the years in Tampa for grad school, where I met them.
 Like much of the Midwest, there have been big changes in Milwaukee during the last few years, not all of them good. Manufacturing has been greatly reduced, taking with it lots of good jobs and leaving a lot of vacant buildings. Milwaukee still has Harley-Davidson but even Harley is feeling the recession. And the home of the Brewers still brews a lot of beer, even if Miller Brewing is now foreign owned. But it is still Milwaukee with Miller Valley to visit. And you can also find new, micro brewed beer, like Wheat Monkey. That takes away some of the pain of change.
  An upside to the many painful changes in the area is that some of the places which used to be hidden in an industrial maze are not being abandoned but are being reclaimed for other uses. The creative, energetic and imaginative people who no longer have the option of working in factories are making up their own jobs, and that makes for a lot of interesting places to go. For example, there is a new River Walk that takes you along a river reclaimed from the industrial past. Warehouses are being converted to lofts and condos, restaurants have sprung up everywhere. Boats cruise along the river and out to Lake Michigan. Water Buffalo is right on the river, making it easier to walk off some of the good food. And there are other restaurants, in the 3rd Ward, like Swig. A crew was shooting a movie in the 3rd Ward while we were there, a period piece set in the early 20th century-like a lot of the buildings in the 3rd Ward.
  There is also a world class art museum. The Milwaukee Art Museum has a marvelous collection of contemporary art, courtesy of Mrs Harry L. Bradley, who donated the art and the money to build the gallery to hold the works. Unique to this museum, there is a room at one end of the collection with couches and windows over the lake, where Mrs. Bradley used to come and sit to open her mail, while she continued to enjoy her collection.
But it was summer in the Midwest, so we couldn't spend too much time inside. We did a lot of grilling for family and friends, along with swinging from the top of the garage on the tree swing.
 We put together a mixed grill with shrimp, sausage (it is Milwaukee, after all), but the sausages included not only familiar brats but also ones made with chicken and feta, andouille (a nod to our years in Florida), chicken, salmon, even some vegetables (not my father's grilling repertoire). And all the food was rubbed with spices from the Spice House.
 The Spice House is a place that has to be smelled to be believed. Crammed with spices from around the world, the owners are usually there dispensing spices and advices. The staff is also friendly, knowledgeable, and passionate about spice. We admired them for having the vision, persistence and determination to turn passion into vocation.
We drove from Wauwatosa to Devil's Lake, south of Jackson, Michigan to visit good friends and their daughter. Jerry and Denise have a house overlooking Devils Lake, with an orchard where you can find heirloom apples like the Northern Spy apples my father remembered from childhood, rarely found in the era of Delicious and Gala. He was right; it does make a great pie. The apples weren't ready though, so after a slow trip around the lake while sampling some of those Wisconsin beers, we decided to do a spice tasting on steaks, using a half dozen different rubs from the Spice House. All were good, but the favorite was the Tosa Iron Grilling spice mix (formerly Milwaukee Iron, changed when some folks from Harley Davidson objected). We liked the Texas Steakhouse, Sedona Sun... but I go on too long. The next night we did a tasting using some salmon, and again found the Tosa our favorite. We found a dill mix went well with potatoes as well as sprinkling a variety on our salads and veggies.
  We passed through Ann Arbor to see friends, stopping by the Farmers' Market (Weds). Lots of good local food, but also locally roasted coffees and purses MaryBeth and Grace loved. As we were in the area, we made a substantial donation to Zingerman's Deli . Zingermans combines both local products and an amazing selection of cheeses, fresh breads, and goods from all over the world. Ari is another person who took a passion for something and made it world class. Food and Wine magazine named it one of the top 25 food markets in the world. And the staff, always friendly, even enthusiastic about helping you taste two dozen cheeses, is part of the reason a trip to ZIngerman's is always in the plan when we are close to Ann Arbor.
 We went on to Midland, where MaryBeth grew up, to see family. The morning after we arrived, we went out and picked 50 pounds of blueberries. The cauliflower from the Midland Farmers' Market was a revelation. That's not the way I normally talk about cauliflower, but the large head was almost sweet, with none of the bitterness cauliflower sometimes has. We ate Whitefish from Lake Michigan and venison chops from deer taken on what was once Mary Beth's grandparent's farm. Mary Beth's mom, Irene, grows raspberries and rhubarb in her backyard, and made raspberry-blueberry pies that have been known to cause near riots of relatives battling over the last piece.
 Mary Beth and I got away to visit friends Barbara and Donald near Eastport, after they had been inviting us for almost 20 years. They were incredible hosts, and we enjoyed sitting on their deck along Grand Traverse Bay, drinking wine, eating cherry brats. We biked along Traverse Bay, spent an evening in Charlevoix where we ate more Whitefish, Muskie, Perch, and tried a nonlocal dish, key lime pie, that was quite good (another nod to Florida, our server lived in Naples during the winter months). Next day we drove over to the Mission Peninsula near Traverse City for wine tasting and what proved to be an amazing lunch at The Boathouse on Bowers Harbor. Lunch lasted nearly until dinner time, but we had to get back home, so left reluctantly.
Our trip home proved to be an excellent mix of the familiar and the new. So, while our childhood home has changed a lot since we left, we're not complaining about all the changes. Though I do think I should have gotten that last piece of Irene's pie.
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Fri 25 Sep 2009 18:28:00 EDT