LC in the Big City

We, along with Fellow Traveler's delightful Aunt Helen, were in the Wayne/Westland suburbs of Detroit yesterday to help FT's aunt Alice celebrate her 90th birthday. We surprised her totally -- called her from the driveway and said, "What are you doing today?" -- and presented her with a birthday cake decorated with a graphic of her as a young woman that our local supermarket bakery crafted from an old photo. This was all a great deal of fun -- especially giving Aunt Helen some quality time with her sister, whom she hasn't been able to visit all that often, while FT and I drove over to Ann Arbor.

We really do not do the usual culture crawl in A2 -- for us it's Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, which are conveniently located within a short distance from one another. As we tell the staff there, we're on our semi-annual pilgrimage for provisions.

What I'm noticing though, since I've started networking with more foodies in our own neighborhood, is that I've grown more discerning about these trips. As far as meat and produce, for instance -- we have Lamb Lady and Farmer Ken and the Mast family; we don't need to import the same things from downstate. And now we're tending to use Whole Foods' deli more as an inspiration for our own scratch cooking than as a source for ready-made salads. We still appreciate the wine and cheese, though. (As did Cassie, who somehow snuck into the grocery bag while we were briefly out of the car and ate three small "no commitment" chunks of unfamiliar imported cheeses that I was looking forward to enjoying.)