Hello out there in Blog Land!

Yes, I know it’s been a while since my last post. Summer time is always busiest at WXPR Public Radio. I was just wrapping up some final reports following our summer pledge drive last week when Jan, the “Polka Queen," approached me. She waved a stiletto-like finger at me, “write a new blog, or else." I felt gelded.

So, today’s blog is being written under duress. But the timing couldn’t be better since I’m about to leave on vacation. Most of you know I’m a foodie. A trip away to me becomes an adventure in tracking down the perfect gastronomical experience.

By the time most of you read this, I’ll be somewhere in New England. My wife and I plan on wandering up the coast until we arrive on the beaches of Southern Maine. This is where we spent the first seven years of our married lives back in the 80s. Foodies; this is the place to satisfy your seafood addiction.

Lobster is to Maine what cheese is to Wisconsin. And the restaurants along the beaches of Southern Maine are the home of the “live and kickin'” lobster shore lunch. Yes, my friends. I plan on sitting down at one of the “el fresco” picnic tables overlooking the coast at low tide, contemplating a spread of steamed lobster, steamers (wonderfully succulent clams), corn on the cob, a chunk of corn bread and bowls of drawn butter. Now that’s good eatin!

Last night, I called my old friend, Tom, who still lives in Maine. Tom’s a foodie too. When I explained my quest for the ultimate foodie experience he immediately suggested we take in lunch at the Wentworth by the Sea Hotel in New Castle, New Hampshire.

At the Wentworth, Tom explained, I will find the ultimate lobster roll. For the uninitiated, a lobster roll is basically a lobster meat sandwich. But at the Wentworth, the oven broiled bun is stuffed with something like two pounds of lobster glistening with, you got it, hot drawn butter.

For us, no trip to the New England coast is complete wi... [Read More]

When it comes to the eating experience, what kind of food are you?

• Are you a parsley sprig on watercress with a side of sprouts?
• Do you order your fish broiled when beer battered and deep fried is an option?
• Do you consider a rice cake a decadent treat?
• Yes to any of these? Skip today’s blog. Like a bratwurst smothered in sauerkraut, you’re not going to like it.

Today, my foodie friends, I’m inviting you to join me in reliving a recent gastronomical adventure where I feel I discovered the Foodie Holy Grail.

If you aren’t sure you’re a foodie, here’s a short quiz.

• Do you buy jeans with the “koosh” (lardass) more room in the butt?
• Have you ever ordered two entrées because you couldn’t make a decision?
• In your opinion, are the sweetest words ever spoken include: “lunch is served” and “all you can eat”?
• Yes to any of the above? You’re a foodie.

Recently, my wife and I, on a weekend getaway in Duluth, stumbled onto an event called Taste at Fitger’s. They just happened to be celebrating their 15th annual Taste of 2009 when we arrived.

Picture this: You’re inside a historic brewery-turned-Four Diamond Hotel overlooking Lake Superior. The hotel is connected to a maze of subterranean catacombs lined with boutique shops, restaurants and pubs. You can feel the history of beer surrounding you, and you know a lot of beer flowed past these brick walls at one time.

But tonight, history has been replaced with display tables and decorative booths as chefs and restaurant representatives from the Duluth area scramble to get their special treats ready. My unofficial count surpasses 50 tables. A $40 donation benefiting the local food bank earns us the privilege of sampling all of them.

After paying our donation, we receive a pass on a neck cord and a beer/wine glass for ample sampling. We pause in front of the first table, contemplating a fancy French pastry disp... [Read More]

Hi Friends!

I’ve been away for awhile conducting research for a new direction I plan on taking my blogs. I enjoy some of the finer things in life, especially when properly cooked and displayed on my plate. Today I offer you my first restaurant review. The research was extensive and it required me to pull the cloak off an urban myth.

One of my favorite movies is The man who shot Liberty Valance. I’ll try not to ruin the ending for those of you that haven’t seen it, but the movie's two stars, Jimmy Steward and John Wayne, find themselves caught in a plot where a legend is confronted by the facts. The movie’s grizzled old newspaper editor finally summarizes the situation with this profound statement: “when legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

That statement came back to haunt me following a recent trip to Green Bay. Every region has something it's famous for. Visit Kansas City and it has to be barbeque. The East Coast: something in a shell served with drawn butter. Texas: steak. I think you get my drift.

Well, for years, the Green Bay region has been famous for three things: Chicken Booyah, Friday Night Perch Fish Fry and a bowl of chili from the legendary Chili Johns.

“Booyah” was a word coined in Green Bay back around the early 1900s. It’s a variation of the word “bouillon” and refers to a thick chicken stew that was (still is) served in the back of community centers and church kitchens. Good homemade Booyah is thick and rich and gets even better when left in a pot on the back burner. I’ll save my Booyah review for another day.

Most of Wisconsin, not just the Green Bay region is known for its traditional Friday Night Fish Fry tradition. It was originally marketed for German Catholics who observed “meatless” Friday and made up the majority of the population. With prohibition, Friday Night Fish Fry offered the struggling taverns an opportunity to bring customers into their alcohol-less bar now turned into eateries. Ba... [Read More]

Hi all,

How do you like the weather? Someone told me once that hell freezes over at 500 degrees below zero; schools in Northern Wisconsin open on a 2-hour delay.

Well, there’s no question we’re back into regular winters again. Perfect. Along with the sucky economy, we just sit in front of the woodstove, bitch, drink cheap beer and dream about summer vacation.

Last week I received an email from Dave, one of my co-workers from the summer of ’79 when I lived and worked on Michigan’s Mackinac Island. He just got around to reading my blog from last July where I recounted my summer reunion at Fort Mackinac.

A star is born

Dave thanked me for recapturing our youth and stirring a lot of memories from the days when we were all young and skinny. He loved the stories from the summer we shared the Island with the cast of the movie Somewhere in Time. It was being filmed on “The Rock” that summer and it wasn’t uncommon to bump into its stars: the late Christopher Reeves, the still living Christopher Plummer and mega-babe, Jane Seymour. You may not believe this, but I too was counted among its stars, although my “extra” role most likely ended up on the cutting room floor.

There seems to be some regional affection for a place just a little quirky, a little behind the times and where horses have replaced the automobile. Whenever I blog about Mackinac Island, I get the most emails from readers eager for more. So I thought I’d give you folks pondering a trip to the rocky dot just off the coast of St. Ignace a few insider tips from someone who once lived there.

The fudgies

First of all, ALL visitors to Mackinac Island are called “fudgies.” It’s not really a term of endearment but accurately describes the island’s leading export and the people who shovel... [Read More]

Hi All,

Happy New Year and welcome to 2009. If 2008 was the party, 2009 is going to be the hangover. I believe 2008 and 2009 will earn special places in our history books and only time will tell if it’s going to be the start of something good, or the beginning of the end. How’s that for an attention-grabbing introduction?

But before we move ahead, let’s take a moment to check in on some of the celebrities and A-list folks who checked out in 2008.

Back in 1967 Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell had a hit with “Ain’t no mountain high enough.” Who knows, maybe they were singing about explorer Sir Edmund Hillary, the first known white man to climb the summit of Mt. Everest with the help of his Sherpa guide Tensing Norgay. Sir Eddy won’t be climbing anymore mountains. He was 89.

When I was a kid, I remember playing with some really cool toys like the Hula Hoop and the Frisbee made by the Wham-O Company. Which I also thought was a really cool name for a company. Richard Knerr was the founder of Wham-O and they also made Superballs. Richard, like my Superball when I hit it with a baseball bat, is “outta here.” He was 83.

The term “geek” was first coined around the year 1976. It originated from the longer slang “geek show” used to describe a peculiar or odd person. That would pretty much sum up Chess Genius Bobby Fischer who famously beat Russian Boris Spasky and then went off the deep end and lived in exile in Iceland. Bobby got checkmated at age 65.

Another relatively famous geek was Gary Gygax. Most of us normal folk wouldn’t know Gary from Joe the Plumber unless you got into the over-the-top fantasy obsession game, Dungeons and Dragons. Gary geeked out at 70.

And speaking of intellectual geeks, I remember when I was in college back in the early '80s and conservative egghead and columnist William F. Buckley came to speak on campus. We all sat still, listening for over an hour and everyone I spoke to after his speech didn’t have a c... [Read More]

Hi All,

I love vacation. We just got back from Chicago. My wife had seminars all week which left me free to explore the city. Readers of my earlier blog know I avoid stressful, near-death experiences. Which is why we eschewed driving down on the John Nolan Express-deathway and took the train.

This is why I like the train: 1) I don’t have to drive. 2) Someone else is driving and dealing with the rush hour idiots. 3) We arrived in Chicago just three hours after leaving Portage. And that included three stops. A conductor told me they averaged better than 80 miles per hour. 4) You’re on a train and not a plane which means travelers don’t have to deal with power hungry, inferiority-ridden TSAs who will tear apart your luggage if you don’t answer their inane questions to their liking. 5) You can carry your own cocktails onto the train. I hardly had enough time to shake up two margaritas before they announced we were in Chicago.

It had been a long time since I’d walked the streets of the Windy City. I think the last time for me was on a second grade field trip with Miss Putnam’s class. We road the yellow school bus and watched in horror while the class buffoon, Jeffrey Dunham, devoured two boxes of Screaming Yellow Zonkers. He washed those Zonkers down with a quart (before we had liters) of Mr. Pibb and promptly puked all over the bus aisle just as we arrived at our destination.

There’s nothing worse than being trapped in the back half of an aging, school bus by a puddle – make that a lake – of Screaming Yellow Zonker puke. It didn’t take long for the sympathy pukers to join in and then it was every kid for themselves. If it wasn’t for a quick-thinking bus driver and an emergency rear exit, we all could have died that day.

This is what I learned from my trip to the city. It’s cold. I mean, bone-chilling cold. I wanted to experience the Chicago skyline from... [Read More]

Hi all!

Last week, I cleaned out a file of partial blogs: ideas I’d had over the months that never developed into anything. I condensed them all into one neat little blog and called it "Premature Eblogulations."

My editor shrieked when she read that. She made slashing movements with a red Sharpie pen. I was told "eblogulations"  "wasn't a word." 

Instead, she inserted her own lame title onto my blog. It was something stupid like "cruising Chicago” and almost ruined the blog. That’s something only I have the right to do. Bad editor. She doesn't think I'm smart enough to make up new words.  

 Eblogulation….eblogulation, there, now it’s a word. New words are created all the time and I wanted my place in the history books, which in this case would be called the dictionary.

You know, every year there are new words created and I was curious to learn what other new words are out there in the crop of 2008. A quick Google check revealed that thanks to our president-elect, we have a bunch of new words this year. Anyone who achieves success is now known as a BarackStar. Those that supported Barack Obama got caught up in the hype called Obamamania. Their zeal during the primaries contributed to the Obamomentum that led to his election.

Other new words this year include:

Seagull Manager (or Editor): This is a manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything and then leaves. (Sound like someone I know?)

A Cube Farm: This in an office filled with cubicles.

Ginormous: This is a combination of gigantic and enormous. Used in a sentence: “Gee that sure was a ginormous burrito I ate for lunch.”

Crop Dusting: When someone walks through the cube farm after eating a ginormous burrito and releases a silent but deadly refried bean fart.

Eblogulations is not the first word I’ve created ... [Read More]

Hello All!

I’m leaving on a short vacation to Chi-town and decided to clean up a few premature blog ideas sitting on my desk.

It’s been nearly 30 years since the last time I visited Chicago. I was young and stupid and got talked into driving down with a car-full of buddies who assured me they “knew their way around” the big city.

I can still remember that night. Somewhere on the John Nolan Expressway, my passengers all went silent. No one had a clue where we were. They never did. Driving to a party in Chicago just seemed like a good idea. Every time I asked for directions, they just laughed and stared at me with their glazed-donut eyes.

“Okay, guys,” I shouted, “no more attitude adjustment stops until we get there!” Eventually, I maneuvered my 1966 Buick Wildcat off the expressway and into a part of town down by the docks that wasn’t so nice. Even the wharf rats knew to stay out of sight.

There was a group of pleasant-looking fellows milling around the corner by the stop sign. I pulled up and rolled down my window, but before I could ask for directions to Cicero, someone from the crowd screamed, “Let's kill these honkies.” Actually, they didn’t use the word honky, it was something much worse.

My buddies got a little more helpful after I punched the gas and took the corner on two tires. I ran the next two stop lights and drove up the exit ramp onto the expressway. I figured if we were going to die that night, we might as well go out in a blaze of glory driving a 66 Wildcat. I haven’t had the desire to return since.

This trip should be different however. I’ve decided to leave the driving to a professional and will take the train. No airports, no power-hungry TSAs, no metal detectors and passengers looking to ruin my day. My wife is going to pack me a travel bag with several magazines, a thermos of Margaritas and the address of our hotel written on the back of a $10 dollar bill. Now that’s my kind of traveling.

Be... [Read More]