He Who Smelt It

When in Rome, right? I’ve eaten boiled cow’s hoof in Jamaica, alligator tails in Louisiana, seafood off a roadside cart in Belize, raw conch in the middle of the ocean somewhere and even brussel sprouts at my mother-in-law’s house in Iowa.

When I was 10, my father and took me to a restaurant in Monterrey, Mexico that served cabrito. This, of course, is your basic Roast Goat. In case my limited imagination couldn’t fathom that, he pointed to the many goat carcasses hanging by the doorway. “Pick one.”    …..um…. ewww. But I did and I ate it and I smiled.

They aren’t knocking my door down to host a reality eating show or anything, but I think I’m pretty brave. And I never puke. (Okay, I puked the cow’s hoof but I think that was the all the vodka I drank for culinary courage)

How weird can it be Up North? We’re still in America, right? I mean, my mom doesn’t think so, but pretty much.

Then the waiter put down a plate of minnows in front of me.

Not Filet of Minnow, the whole thing. Head, tail, bones – I’m assuming guts, too. They didn’t even have the decency to properly camouflage the little guys in corn meal. Or give me a creamy dill weed dipping sauce.

Couldn’t do it. Still can’t. I think they put smelt on the menu to spot the Fudgies. Hell, you could wrap that sombitch in Murdick’s Finest and I’d still hork it up – skeleton and all. Who pulled the tin bucket out of the river, held it up and said, “Hell, Joe. We’re not having any luck with the trout. Let’s fry this pail of bait up instead?”

I’m fascinated by who eats what, where. Not delicacies – just lunch.

My Midwestern husband wouldn’t touch catfish on a bet. In the South, entire restaurant chains are dedicated to it. I’ve driven an hour and a half for fried catfish and hushpuppies. Black-eyed peas, collard greens, cornbread stuffing… Lawd, Lawd… bring it on!

‘Course my grandmother used to eat pickled pig’s feet. Have you even seen that? They’re in a jar, floating. Pig’s feet. This is not euphemism for bacon wrapped shrimp or something. We’re talking about the feet of a pig. Pickled. You ain’t finding those beside the Hebrew National hotdogs, Myrtle.

Remember Vienna Sausages? We called them VI-EEna, if that tells you anything. They are like eating boneless big toes. Or that can of ham salad with the devil on the paper wrapper? Fancy Cat is better.

Do y’all have Spam up here? Spam has to be the grossest stuff ever manufactured for human consumption. When you open the can? Ho boy – nasty nasty. Now… slap a slab of that in a frying pan with butter? Well, that’s a whole ‘nother story, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Uh huh, that’s what I thought.

So, tell me – what’s the weirdest thing your grandmother made you eat?

Or you’ve choked down in Zimbabwe or India or Kalamazoo?

Maybe you are a smelt connoisseur and can give us five fantastic new recipes! (“Even if you’ve never liked smelt, you’ll LOVE this!”)

Me? I’m headed out for a cheeseburger. Maybe I’ll go crazy and get the havarti.

Fat Flakes

Got a good eight inches last night. Big, wet and sticky – just like I like it! So wonderful to wake up to that – just makes me hope to get more this afternoon.

A friend asked, “What’s your favorite thing to do in the winter – now that you’ve seen a long stretch of it?”

“Curling up in my den with a warm fire, reading a fat book and watching the snow just…fall down out of the sky.”

This question was posed as a group of us were sitting at one of those wonderful dives, eating pub food to re-fuel for the hour plus snowmobile ride back to the safety of The Car. We had peeled a couple of layers of clothes off just to sit down, we all had Helmet Head and I, personally, had just peeled the other four layers off so I could sit my cold, numb butt down on an even colder toilet seat.

I was not feeling pretty. Shockingly, it does not make me feel sexy to visualize my bashed and bloody body wrapped around a tree. Even if that tree is an Almighty Birch. Clearly I’m not from here. Three faces looked at me like I had lost my mind. My husband looked at me like he’d lost $150 on a recent snowshoe purchase.

Everyone says the key to surviving the long, lonely winter is to “get out in it”! I have handsome men offering me their services. They have skis I can borrow, snowshoes I can try and, oh, don’t they all have just the Perfect Trail. (which is different from a Happy Trail, which none have offered to show me)

Since we did buy the snowshoes, poles and, yet more, appropriate footwear, we figured we oughta get out there. I googled images of “snow shoeing” to see what to wear. One must always look the part. I put together my costume, layered up, took a few off, peed and prepared to strap in.

Let me back up a bit…. Studmuffin, who is one of those guys who can do/play/sing/yodel anything and make it look easy, thought we were going up The Gator. Hole the pole there, pal. I’m not going UP anything. Last time I was on the damn Gator, I had to stop four times and, at least one of them was to put my head between my legs so I didn’t yak my smelt basket.

I decided to snowshoe the (flat) trail behind my house. He, who didn’t get to be a stud by that kind of candy-ass exercise, found a more worthy companion and assaulted said Gator. I, who had to at least make some tracks to prove I did it, started out on my own.

I walked straight out of my right snowshoe three times in the first ten steps. Each re-strap required the unwinding of the pole strap from my wrist, the yanking of the glove, the bending over and diddling with the strappy thing. Then putting it all back on so I could take three more steps before repeating. I was already sweating.  I looked back at the house. Well, actually, I just had to look over at the house, as it was not behind me yet.

“Does this count as exercise?”, I wonder. “I’m sweating, right?  I hate it, right? Aren’t those the two criteria?”

I finally found my stride and made it to the highway and back. I even went a little past the house so I could lie and say I went wayyy past the house. “See? See my tracks?”

By the time the guys got back from their hike, I had shed all my layers and was posing in the kitchen with a protein shake. I was pretty bored because I’d been posing for about 30 minutes

Finally, dry and exhausted, my snowy friends satisfied I had conquered the tundra, I hopped on the couch, burrowed into my Snuggie and looked out the window.

From one fat flake to another: I love you, Snow.

Cheers!

The first bar I ever snuck into.... I mean, was of legal age to enter... was a disco bar. Lights flashing, colors whirling, spandex shining - it was Energy personified.

I listened at the bar stand until I heard something that sounded mature, ordered it, then stood there practicing nonchalance. I wondered why the guy next to me was playing with baby powder on the bar.

Fast forward a little and you have me at your basic Fern Bar.

Cool and easy, wine-sipping, power-suit wearing single women was the vibe.

I choked down the House Chard and watched the divorcees scan the room for prey.

I've been to dance clubs, hotel bars and the smoky bar thumping with live music.

Oldies music clubs in the 80's where I laughed at 40 year olds rocking The Beatles or  The Stones (now it's 80's music and they're laughing at me wailing Journey) or Blues bars where dudes of all ages dangle cigarettes and ennui.

I've even been to gay bars where everyone danced with everyone and, god, we all looked fabulous! Except doing the two-step and then it just looked ridiculous.

But, never, nowhere, no-how had I ever been to a pub in Texas. Oh, I'd been to a capital P "Pub". Like, O'Malley's or Shenanagins. Shamrock napkins and green beer. Maybe The Bier Garden with waitresses with boobs pushed up in dirndls.  We do so love a theme in the South. (god knows, we love our boobs pushed up)

I watched Cheers on TV and longed to walk into my neighborhood pub where everyone knew my single-syllable name and the owner/bartender/ex-local-hottie, who peaked in high school, slid my Usual down the bar into my waiting hand and then put it on my Tab. Then I would lean with my back against the bar and just, you know, see who was here, who was back in town, who was suspiciously absent, who Albie the Alky had conned into buying him a beer.

There just aren't those kinds of places where I'm from. Granted, I've never been to that bar in the trailer on the highway outside of town. Maybe it's like that. That's really not the single-syllable name I want to be called, though.

So, way back, on the first day of my first summer Up North, when my husband took me to grab a burger, I took one look at the local tavern and I knew - this was gonna be fun! I jumped out of the car and never looked back.

Inside, there were beer signs with names I'd never heard of (Blatz?), unfathomable food on the menu (smelt?), an open grill with a semi-surly cook, an harried but un-hurried waitress who didn't give a damn where you were from and, oh! Look! A bartender who looked like he might have, you know, made the winning touchdown at the playoff game in '78! My husband grabbed my elbow, led me to a booth and told me to stop staring.

I couldn't stop. I haven't stopped yet. 

It's tables full of multi-generation families taking a break from the cottage kitchen. ("Table for 15, please?")

It's the young, granola-eating hikers grabbing some lunch on their 7,000 mile bike tour. ("um, like, is there anything vegan on this menu?")

It's the little family in swimsuits and cover ups trying to get the kids to eat something besides sand and ice-cream. ("Will you please stop licking that petoskey, young man?")

Gaggles of fresh, fit Lake Rats drinking a pitcher of beer and daring each other to try the backflip on the board. ("Dude, you gotta just try it! What's the worst that can happen?")

It's one of those places I want to wrap up and send into space so aliens will know who we are. 

What we are, of course, is crazy. From Dallas, Texas to the Great Lakes - solidly,  reassuringly crazy.

We all meet at the Tavern for soup on Wednesday, beer on Friday and karaoke on Saturday. 

They text me if they have meat loaf. 

It's just like I imagined.

Cheers, 

Anita Heffay

Natural Born Leaner

Snowmobiling! It's the most exciting way to see the snow-flocked, pristine back country Up North.
So they say - I've never seen anything except the trail right in front of my sled. I'm too scared to look around. I did one time and swore I saw red on the trees beside the trail. Maybe it was trail markers but I can't be sure.

As part of our Welcome to Michigan Package (put together by my husband), our family procured two beautiful snowmobiles. I won't tell you the brand because, evidently, it's quite the point of contention for serious sledders. The equivalent of "Dodge or Ford?" in the pickup truck world. Next thing you know, someone will slap one of those cartoon dudes peeing on my brand on my sled.  Let's just say they are new, shiny and most importantly, I have a new matching jacket.

Please don't think I'm some kind of wuss, here. I drive a pretty fierce go-cart, knocked the new off a Gator at the ranch and tend to drive a car with speedy precision. (Oh hush. Those accidents were all while I was in reverse. Those don't count.)  Put all that sassy-ness behind the handlebars of a mere snowmobile? Puh-leeese. Bring it on.

Bring on the thermals! Bring on the turtleneck! Bring on some more layers! Bring on the astronaut pants! Bring on the jacket! And the socks! And the boots! And the gloves! And the balaca-whatever-it's-called! And the titanium reinforced, air-flow ventilated, holy-crap-this-is-claustrophobic, $350 helmet! I am soooo ready to........ oh hell, I gotta pee.

Okay. Now I'm ready. Really, honey....

I climb on the back of our luxurious two-man rig. Ooooh! Hand warmers! Neato! And off we go! Off to see what mere mortals will never gaze upon. We are sledders - here us roar! (no really - they're really loud...)

The first thing you need to know is that, basically, you can't move because of all the gear. And you're head weighs about 17 pounds because of the Death Reduction Helmet. So every time you hit a bump and your head bobbles (and by "bobbles", I mean slams into the back of my husband.), you are compressing god-knows what and virtually insuring the eventual purchase of a Beemer by your chiropractor. So be it! God's Country! Pristine nature! uh huh...

At this point, I have to make a confession. I have wrecked every bicycle, dirt bike and Vespa I (and a few of my friends) have ever owned. I have the battle scars. The bikes are boogered up with road rash. I am like an episode of Jackass without the tattoos.
The fact is - I'm not a natural born Leaner. I don't know whether to lean with the turn or against it. It's not like I mind throwing my weight around, I'm just missing a gyroscope somewhere. Because of this deficit, I have a fear of being on the back of moving things I am not driving. In the South, we call it being "pumped".  Guys call it "riding bitch". My therapist  calls it "control issues". Whatever. 

The next time we went out, I demanded to drive my own sled. It was a different color and I didn't have a matching costume, which put me out a little, but anything was better than letting someone else kill me. If I die, it will be by my own throttle, thank you very much.

This is not me....

The trickiest part of maneuvering a speeding bullet on skis is navigating the turns. .....By leaning. Since, in case you forgot, this whole thing is in the snow/ice/frozen whiteness, I should remind you the word "turn" is really just slang for "controlled slide".  At, like, 40 mph. In the woods. Far, far away from civilization much less a nice field for Care Flight to land. I didn't know that I was in less danger of dying in a dismembering snowmobile accident as I was dying by the handlebar-heated, gloved-up hands of all the people forced to poke along behind me as I slowed to a near crawl at every curve.

Not me either - boring outfit.

In the end, I barely saw any of Mother Nature's bounty. I never took my eyes off the trail two feet in front of the snowmobile. There were all kinds of dips and bumps and turns and sticks and, you know - scary stuff! But, you know, I was warm. I only peed a little on the really big bumps. And I got to creatively edit my adventure enough to impress my wholly un-impressible teen aged son.

Yes, I will go again. I mean, I have the costume - I mean, gear. I'm sure I'll get better. Just like I did with the Vespas, right? Hey - where's the reverse on this thing?

It's a Sweet Ride

My Stud Muffin is doing doughnuts in the snow on a golf cart.
I keep thinking he's gonna flip the thing but he pulls out of each spin perfectly! He's a snow-pro.

I'm surprised he's not gathering a crowd, though. It's not your average golf cart. It's a pimped-out, custom painted hunk of special sassy Sweetness! (kind of like me) It even had a rockin' stereo until we left it out in the rain.

We live close to town (i.e. 3-way stop intersection where the grocery store is) so I like to use the golf cart to rip up there. It's particularly handy in the summer when there are 10, 000 tourists (fudgies) milling around aimlessly.

Having  been a "summer resident" for a whole buncha years, I love to see Northern Michigan hopping with people! I love that they love it here. It's a higher level of excitement  than in the winter. By that I mean that it actually registers on the Fun-o-Meter. Winter is..... well, it's really pretty, y'all.

Anyhoozle, it's a little town and it's very quaint so everyone just walks from place to place. Like, in the street, mostly. It's like Bourbon Street. They're everywhere! I'm gonna start throwing beads.Verrry busy looking at everything but the ginormous SUV bearing down on them. Scares the crap outta me!

The grocery store is the hub of all things Townie. You gotcher ice, your propane, your wine and cheese plus enough groceries to get you through the beach party. The coming - the going. It's crazy!

I am certain that I am gonna plow Maw Maw down one day. Or some little Fudgelet in polka dot swimsuit. Or some drunk-ass grabbing more ice for the cooler. Oh wait - that's my brother....

We have a famous centenarian in town. He's amazing. More active than most of us and just a great example of human kind. He also lives near town and walks or rides his bike everywhere. Everyone loves him, waves to him, gives him big high fives. He's a hundred freakin' years old, for crying out loud!! Here's the deal:  I do not want to find his wrinkled hide smushed on my back bumper, you get me?  Can you say "pariah"? (I can but I had to spell-check it)

The golf cart is just the ticket! I can see 360 without whipping my head around 8 times to check and recheck.  I can always find a parking space unless there's a bike parked in my spot. People always see me coming because of the aforementioned Sweetn. Plus, I am always throwing out friendly waves. Or screaming obscenities. It's a fine line.

I can send my little BoogerButt to the store for me, too! He loves it. It is his ride, after all, not mine. I have about a year and a half until he's driving a real rig so I'm taking advantage of him. He drives like a maniac so the Fudge River does a good job of parting for him. It's fun to watch - he's like Moses of the IGA.

Admittedly, this is Summer Transpo. Unless you want to do doughnuts down M-22, it's not great. It's, what? A one-wheel drive? Maybe I should put a plow on the front? Wahahahaha!  I just cracked myself up there - that reeks Up North, doesn't it?

Okay, that's enough. You get the picture. If not, here's one for you. You can see why they know it's me. Um..... who stole my fudge, dangit?

It's In The Bag

 [This was Anita's first blog explaining the origin of Southern Fried Fudge]

Up North Michigan has alot to brag about.
Okay, it's not the shoes (too sensible). It's not the amazing shopping (why bother). And it's certainly not the Mexican food (wet or dry burrito? what does that even mean?)

But one of the claims to fame  is FUDGE.
Milk, white, dark chocolate fudge. Cherry fudge, maple fudge, chocolate chip fudge. Fudge with walnuts or pecans or, hell, probably rhubarb, if you look hard enough. Whatever your poison - it's here. And it's good.

They put the fudgemeister in the storefront window and let him roll out that chocolate velvet on a solid marble slab. It's poetry in motion, man. I double-dog dare you to not lick the window.

In the end, you'll buy that fudge. Not just a little, but in quarter pound slabs. Then you'll carry your fudge in a little white bag while you wander the town, silently proclaiming to those who see, that, you, dearheart..... are a tourist.

Locals buy it, too. But carry it around in plain brown bags like a Baptist carries bourbon. Because the worst thing to be called, Up North, is a FUDGIE.

My husband's mother's family has been coming to the area since the 1940's. Fudgies.
Our little family has spent all summer here for 13 years. Fudgies.
We own and pay taxes on two homes here. Fudgies.
We got upgraded to Perma-Fudge when we started spending a few winter weekends....
 
Well, now we've gone and done it. We've moved Up North permanently.
Not just from anywhere, like Down State.  We moved from wayyyy down state.
Texas, baby!
Y'all get ready! We got a little Dixie in the house!

Now, I'm usually a big fitter-inner. (shut up! I am!) But it's just too much dern dang fun to get my Dixie on up here. I swear my southern accent has gotten worse just because it cracks all y'all up. That's okay. God knows I'm laughing at your accent! "Jeez o'Pete"? puh leeeese!

Don't get me wrong - we love it! Love it Love it Love it!
I've only cried three times:
The day I put on my first puffy vest.
The day I put away all my gorgeous high heels.
And the day I realized big tits were not the preferred accessory.

Well, here's the deal, you Yankees.  I'll wear the vest and the thermal underwear and the Sorels and the ugly-ass knit hat. I'll eat the squash and the whitefish and the cherries that give me the runs.

But this Southern Fried Fudgie is gonna teach you a few things, too!

Yeah, so..... yeah..... let's see how that works out for me. Wanna?

Hungry now?  click this!