A smiling, white-haired gentleman greets me and I give him the name of our party. “Oh, you’re having lunch with my good friends today. Welcome.” The dining room has plenty of dark wood, lit by stained glass and low lights. Nearly every bit of wall space has either a German artifact or a framed photo [...]
Category: Tastes
On Culture, Caraway, and a Computer
One of the featured examples of innovation in Frans Johansson book The Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation is the work of Marcus Samuelsson at Aquavit. Johansson explains the idea of Associative Barriers, the associations our brains naturally make between certain ideas. Some of these ideas are culturally bound. When we hear [...]
Backyard Grilling – Pheasant Sausage and House-made Pickles
There is a primal satisfaction in lighting a fire and cooking outside once again in early spring after a long, cold winter. Winters here in the Great Lakes region can be bitter cold and heavily snow-covered. The days are short and the nights long. As the days start to lengthen, the snow recedes and we [...]
Hoppel Poppel – Variations on a Theme
We have detailed our love for Hoppel Poppel, partly due to the association with the warming, filling versions served in Milwaukee at Benji's or Jo's Cafe, routinely named as two of the best places in the city for an old-fashioned diner-style breakfast. But the other reason to love Hoppel Poppel is the endless variations on the [...]
Smoked Turkey, White Bean Soup
From the outset of our effort here at GreatLakesCuisine.com, we have believed the foods of indigenous peoples in the Great Lakes region should be included in the conversation, both as tribute and inspiration. The failure to celebrate the peoples who thrived in the Great Lakes region before settlement by primarily European immigrants would be a [...]
Great Lakes Cuisine 