This is My Country

Although it's a lot less monolithic than some of the news media on either side might have you believe. (Overall state results at the top, county-by-county results at the bottom. Map source, the New York Times. It's interesting to move the little slider over on the left and see which counties did and didn't change.)

There has been more knitting, although it got a lot less lacy. It's going to end up being a woolly lap blanket, so the lack of laciness is fine. I am just finishing a couple of plain rounds and psyching myself up for my weird vision of squaring the circle. I have to decide about dyeing the last skein of this yarn. I'm pretty sure I don't want to leave it plain Dijon mustard, but haven't picked out a new color for it yet.

I meant to take this photo of the blueberry fields yesterday on our way to the polls, but I forgot to bring the camera. Fortunately today's weather is just as spookily beautiful as yesterday's, when it hit 71 degrees F (22 C)! In November!

After we voted, we went to pick up the countertop we ordered for the cabinet where the new gas soapstone stove will stand. (It's from Woodstock Soapstone Stoves, the mini cottage stove.) When we did, I bought a new birdfeeder.

When we moved here, we had the rare and strange good luck to live in a patch of land with no squirrels. For a bird watcher with a feeder, it was great. Naturally, this couldn't last, and about 8 years ago squirrels found and started to colonize our little spot. I guess there are finally enough acorns on the maturing young oak trees and enough maple seeds to sustain them.

What this means, of course, is that my old hand-me-down hopper feeder is now regularly occupied by a fox squirrel, Sciurus niger, happily stuffing its face with the black oil sunflower seeds I usually offer and gnawing the suet out of the suet feeder.

Although I don't believe it's possible to completely stop a determined squirrel from getting into a feeder^*, at least it should be entertaining to watch them attempting to figure this one out.

^*What else have they got to do? And anything that doesn't stop them just makes them smarter!

No News / Not Sinking

No news on the maybe-deployment front. Argh. My husband has a drill this weekend and might find out more then. Meanwhile we're both as nervous as two cats in a rocking-chair store.

So how about this headline?

McCain pulling out of Michigan

I can't wrap my head around that one. What exactly does that mean?

I knew it was bad here, what with hundreds of thousands of jobs leaving the state, 8.9% unemployment, and a rank of either 3rd, 5th, or 7th highest mortgage foreclosures in the US, depending on who you consult.

Is Michigan sinking? How bad are things when politicians start leaving the state?

Last time around, I got really tired of hearing about red states and blue states, so it was kind of a relief to see this Patchwork Nation map. I live on the border of "Tractor Country" and "Emptying Nests", in a big patch of smallish family farms.

I wasn't really aware, until I started poking around, that having all these little farms around was unusual. We have some farmers who plant acres of corn and soybeans, but we also have apples of all varieties, peaches, sweet and sour cherries, blueberries (lots of blueberries!) and small fruits that don't ship very well like fresh red raspberries. It makes for really good eating, and excellent cider.

And that's only the fruit. I also drive by fields of pickling cucumbers, probably headed for Freestone Pickle. I drive by the pickling vats on my way to work.

I pass a pasture with either bison or beefalo grazing in it, and I keep trying to remember to bring my camera and get a picture.

It's sort of like living in the French countryside, as far as the variety of fresh local foods goes. A couple of representative links:

Lakeshore Harvest Country
Southwestern Michigan Farms & Markets
Michigan Lakeshore Wine Trail

We have chocolatiers, dairy bars, brewpubs, and sheep farms.

Among the reasons I'll never be a politician - I'm not leaving!

Local Food-y Post

Although I half-jokingly say I live in SW Outer Nowhere, Michigan, I realize that with modern transportation, it's a lot less nowhere-y than it could be.

One example of this is that we live only minutes away from some pretty fantastic, local-source, artisanal restaurants or other eateries.

For example, there is Crane's Pie Pantry, a fruit-farm restaurant just outside Fennville, Michigan. The sandwiches are pretty basic, but the dessert pies are great. In the fall, the parking lot is often packed, with cars parked along the side of the road. (I should probably note that in the US, "pie" usually means a sweet dessert pie.)

Friday evening we tried Journeyman Cafe in "downtown" Fennville, which my husband had walked by while taking the kids to the children's museum for their field trip.

Our son and I split a wood-fired pizza, and my husband ordered clams. They print the menu each day, based on what they have available that day. There is also a bakery and coffee bar. We liked the pizza, but my son learned that he does not want to order anchovies!

I often say I'm not a cook, but I come from a long line of eaters. Although my husband claims he can step on my foot and I'll open my mouth* (think step-can trash can), I tend to be a little fussy about my food. I have this naive idea that it ought to taste like something other than just salt or just sugar.

My husband, who is a cook, is much more fussy than I am. He often makes something and then rejects it on some teensy taste or texture defect I can barely detect when he dejectedly points it out. (The fact that I'll eat this "ruined" food is why he say this*.)

So we like to eat at places where they make their own sauces, rather than buying them by the food service drum.

Places like the Amicarelli Vineyard in South Haven, where we have ended up with three distinctly different tomato sauces in various dishes at one table. The spinach pie is to die for -- one of the tasty exceptions to "pie in the US is sweet"!

Or like Su Casa, a great Mexican restaurant also in Fennville, which built a large new restaurant next door to the tiny old one. We went there Sunday evening to celebrate the opening of the new restaurant. (Having finished construction of our own not long ago, we were very sympathetic about construction delays.) Luckily for us, Sunday evening was not as busy, and we didn't have to wait for a table or our food.

And talk about luxury, in the front of the new restaurant they offer Palazzolo's Artisan Gelato, which I didn't realize has their manufactory right in Fennville!

Su Casa offers Mexican-inspired flavors like horchata and tamarind, which I think is about the best thing about America's melting pot: to be with a Polish-Irish-American guy buying Mexican flavors of Italian gelato from a woman from Germany.

I could go on for pages:

Sherman's Dairy Bar is in South Haven. (Sorry, they just closed Sunday for the season.)

The Chocolate Cafe is in South Haven. (They were open all last winter -- the Mexican hot chocolate with chilis is almost as good as my husband makes.)

The Corner Chocolate Shop is in South Haven.

We are absolutely awash in farm markets around here. There's the Dutch Farm Market, Stephenson's Farm Market, and Crane's U-Pick. (The Pie Pantry Cranes, the Cranes of Crane's U-Pick, and the Cranes who have the corn maze are all related, but have separate businesses.)