Duane Campbell, a civil engineer turned brat entrepreneur, serves up these delicacies at the Foothills Café in Burdickville on Thursday through Saturday evenings. “I try to make inspired brats. Anyone can go to the store and buy a package of Johnsonville Brats,” he says. “Compare those to a handcrafted raspberry chipotle brat, or one with turkey, feta, tomato and fresh basil.” Duane often uses local ingredients, and always a better grade of meat than run-of-the-mill bratwursts.
Green Cuisine, scheduled this year for Wednesday, July 13 from 5-8 p.m., is Michigan’s first zero waste event and an expression of Food for Thought’s mission to “raise awareness around just and sustainable food systems” and an effort to promote the best in local food and sustainable business practices.
On Lake Street in Glen Arbor, clusters of friends, fresh off a motorcoach, made their way south along the sidewalk. Some paused to browse at shops. Others ambled slowly toward a destination — a trio of wooden buildings known as “world headquarters for all things cherry.”
It’s a quiet evening in The Village at The Homestead. Months of heavy equipment excavations and re-shaping around the parking area at the base of the ski hill are nearly complete, and four days of constant rain have settled the dust and painted the hillsides the lush green of a cool, wet June. But inside the elegant eatery called Nonna’s, it’s warm and welcoming.
The Michigan Land Use Institute has announced that tickets to the annual Taste the Local Difference Summer Celebration are now on sale. The Celebration, in its third year, is one of the region’s premier local food and farm events.
Long known for its Mexican-style fare — including fajitas, enchiladas, burritos, nachos and tostadas, and for its fabulously decadent desserts such as Earthquake Cake, Sombrero Sundae and Apple Cinnamon Delight — Sugarfoot Saloon formed a beer-making partnership with homebrewer Brian Bartos and began tapping his talents earlier this year.
The Michigan Land Use Institute today published its eighth annual Taste the Local Difference farm and food guide and launched its brand-new “Spend Ten Local Dollars” campaign, which urges Northwest Lower Michigan residents to pledge to buy local grown food products every week.
“You can take the girl out of Northern Michigan,” I explain to my climbing partner, Geoff, at our campsite in Yosemite National Park. “But you cannot take Northern Michigan out of the girl.” He watches as I dance childishly around the picnic table with a spatula in my hand, the smell of butter, fried onions, and morels rising from the camp stove.
Suttons Bay’s farmers market will open Saturday in its new location, at North Park at the intersection of M-204 and M-22. The others lag a bit behind. Empire will open its farmers market on June 18 and remain open on Saturdays, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., until September 10. Glen Arbor will hold its farmers market on Tuesdays, from 9 to 1, from June 21 until August 30.
On May 20 and 21, join the Village of Empire for its eighth annual Asparagus Festival in downtown Empire. Help celebrate the arrival of this welcome spring bounty by penning a tribute and submitting it in the 2011 Empire Asparagus Festival Poetry Contest.