Suzy, Suzi…this Pasty is for You

I am aiming, dear reader, to write TWO blogs tonight.  This shall be the first.  The second shall be…we hope…upcoming soon.  With details of my Trip dowstate. Depending who appears at the house to visit with Aunt Kathy.

If others appear at the door to visit Aunt Kathy, I shall have to sign out until Later.

But am typing at the speed of lightning now trying to get the TWO blogs published.  Type faster, Kathy!

Suzy...I mean Suzi...here are your Pasties.

OK, this blog is another invitation to photographically play suggested by Suzi at Laundry Line Divine.  I think she suggested that we photograph weird food signs.  Or weird food places.  Or something like that.  She suggested that I would have it Easy because the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is filled with restaurants selling Pasties.

Do the rest of you know what Pasties are?  They are meat, potato, carrot, onion and rutabaga pies.  They were brought over to our fair Upper Peninsula by the Finnish folk, or perhaps also from the Cornwall crowd.  Our babies are weaned on pasties.  We eat ’em like the rest of the world eats hotdogs and hamburgers.

(Excepting for us, of course.  We’re vegetarians.  We could eat vegetarian pasties, but don’t.  We do, however, have memories of years of eating pasties.)

Hey, Suzi, are you impressed that someone named a pasty for you?  LOL!

Hilltop Restaurant. Home of the world famous Sweet Roll.

I took a picture of the Hilltop Restaurant sign as I was leaving L’Anse yesterday.  Not because they have weird food.  Au contraire.  But they do serve one of the biggest sweet rolls known to mankind.  We wean our babies on these, too.  They are the size of small bricks.  They are also very tasty.  Unfortunately, we do not eat these either.  Although, years ago, they made great breakfasts for our camping adventures with the kids. 

(And you want to know why we don’t eat these foods?  Because, truly, Barry and I eat the weirdest food known to mankind.  Tofu, seaweed, shoyu, tempeh…now that’s what some people call weird food.  And there are–truly–few, if any, shops in the U.P. selling our kind of weird food.  Therefore you shall have to view photos of smoked fish, pasties and the like.  Normal weird food.)

Fudge, Smoked Fish, Pasties

If you get close to Mackinac City or Mackinac Island you shall see signs advertising fudge everywhere.  Now that’s weird food.  It is so sweet that your lips will lock shut if you eat too much.  I remember those days.  Weird food.  Does this count, Suzi?

Smoked fish, anyone?

It’s funny when you’re traveling downstate with your eyes alert for weird food everywhere you look.  Barry insisted that I go inside a restaurant and beg the cook or waitress to appear at the door with a smiling face and apron and pasty in hand.  He insisted that would be the Best Photograph.

Sorry, dear reader.  I don’t have the chutzpah to ask the cook to appear in the front door with a pasty.  You shall have to imagine it.

Yep, some more smoked fish

As for smoked fish–it’s everywhere in the U.P.  Smoked trout, smoked salmon, smoked whitefish.  Yum!  Maybe not weird, but weird to see so many places selling smoked fish.

The weirdest food of all. woops! Did I say that?

Finally, I must post a photo of the weirdest food of all.  A restaurant specializing in fat.  No, no, no!  I did not mean to label that so callously, especially in light of my anti-labeling blog yesterday.  Actually I ate–quit gasping!–at McDonald’s yesterday at noon.  A southwestern chicken salad.  Paul Newman salad dressing.  Seemed very healthy.  Was quick.  I was not in the slow-food mood.  As it was, I stretched a six-hour drive into nine hours.

More on that soon!  Will write another blog now.  As long as a nephew or niece or sister-in-law doesn’t show up…