MCDFB • June 2009 • Page 3
Manager’s Corner
If the garage smells great, you’ll want to roll in the hay field He stepped from the attached, two-stall garage, exhaled and smiled. “Ahh,the garage smells great,” he said. I swallowed my laughter too late; he was serious. The combination of vehicle fumes, grass clippings and basketball possessed the mood-lifting powers of lavender for this New York City resident. He views the garage and its corresponding fragrance as a small-town luxury. The New Yorker visited my in-laws’ home recently with eight of my sister-in-law’s friends. This visit is among several interactions I have throughout the year with big-city friends who experience our area of tiny-town Illinois. I learn something new to appreciate at every meeting, but the garage’s odor was among the least of my predictions. I decided that if he likes the garage so much, he should vacation here for some rural aromatherapy with fragrances we country folk most enjoy. The three or four times a summer when Grandpa mows the hay tops the list. The hay’s sweet smell is worth bottling, and jumping the fence for, if you’re a cow. Or, I suggest smelling welcome rain through slow nasal inhalation with your eyes closed. By “welcome,” I mean a rain the crops need. Farmers breathe through only their mouths when the crops don’t need the rain. (OK, not really. But by comparison, it’s hard to enjoy the smell of a grilled ribeye steak when you’re full.) I’m unsure whether I like the smell of the rain or everything it makes wet besides our dog. It takes practice to appreciate the fragrance of quality, black soil. I believe the aroma of freshly turned soil keeps the neighbor content with his cabless tractor for field work. Meanwhile, most farmers use tractors with a climate-controlled cab, leaving only those outside the glass to ride high on soil fumes. Then, I could offer an itinerary filled with other pleasant, rural fragrances: fall’s harvest air, lightly toasted marshmallows on a wiener roast fire or the local pork producers’ food pavilion at the county fair. After a few aromatherapy sessions, we could step inside for a home-cooked dinner, an aroma commonly shared and appreciated, whether in Little York or New York. I predict that most anyone can prepare a meal that smells better than the garage.
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Earlier in June I had the opportunity to be part of a walking food tour in Chicago. It was put together by a company called Food Planet. The tour takes about 3 hours and you visit several local establishments, taking time to sample their special delicacy before moving on to the next stop. They offer two tours and we were on the Near North Tour. We visited a pizzeria, a spice and herb specialty shop, a fudge shop, a gourmet food and catering shop, a Jewish deli, a tea merchant and an aged balsamic vinegar and olive oil store. Let me just say- I was a bit skeptical of this. I thought, wait a minutewe get to eat, but not a lot- and I have to walk everywhere? But- I was so wrong! This tour was amazing and I would definitely do it again.
It’s so interesting. As you can guess from the shops listed above, these are not stores that you’d usually find locally. The spice and herb shop is the place that the Food network goes when they need a spice expert! We learned all kinds of interesting information about where they get their herbs and spices and how they grind them. They also shared some interesting information about how hard it was for them to get certified organic herbs and spices. Since many of those products come from foreign countries and very poor at that- it is very hard to get those cultures to produce certified organic spices and herbs. The tea merchant we visited brewed everyone a fresh iced tea and showed us the types of tea that can be made depending on what is
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done to the tea leaf. For someone that thought there was two kinds of tea- hot and cold- this was a wealth of knowledge! I’ve always been quite the coffee connoisseur but I’ve definitely been paying more attention to the tea I see in the stores. Possibility one of my favorite stops was a local pizzeria. This was our last stop and by this time we had made it all the way to “Old Town” and were very hungry! The pizzeria made a stuffed cheese and spinach pizza for us to enjoy. It was delicious and healthy! I know that sounds crazy, but it has a heart healthy designation because of the thin crust, low fat cheese and spinach! I’m not much of a vegetable pizza person but I honestly didn’t
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