In the 1960's and '70's, my family vacationed at friends' summer cottage on a small, Wisconsin lake surrounded by corn and soy bean fields and dairy farms. After a day of water-skiing, fishing, canoeing, and swimming, the adults would announce Happy Hour, - as if we hadn't been happy earlier. But Happy Hour was grand for kids because at this hour out would come our favorite snacks of cheese, crackers and summer sausage. True we ate cheese and crackers back in Illinois, but the cheese and summer sausage were better at the cottage. Naturally, the cottage was in Wisconsin. Our happy-hour cheese was super-fresh, made with real cream from cows down the road, and the savory sausage was made by real Germans in the town next over.
Back then, nobody cared about fat content, we were skinny and well-exercised. What mattered was food's flavor. At happy hour we gorged ourselves on a variety of cheddars, goudas, Swiss, and blues. We must have been eating "original" summer sausage because I don't remember any flavor options back then. We'd make Dagwood sandwiches of summer sausage and cheese between two crackers. If we picked at our grilled hamburgers and corn on the cob later, the adults didn't mind, we'd already gotten our protein from the snacks. Summer contentment served all around at our Wisconsin happy hour.
While Mom's flowered midi-skirts and Dad's elongated side-burns went out of style, these retro foods didn't. Cheese, crackers and summer sausage are still favorite happy-hour snacks served throughout the upper midwest. New Englanders can eat their raw clams and boiled mussels, South-westerners can munch on tortillas and green-chile salsa, Southerners can consume crawdads, but why would folks in the upper midwest bother importing these when we've got great snacks here? Truth is, we usually don't import those out-of-state delicacies. Instead, our fanciest Madison and Milwaukee restaurant/bars offer artisanal cheeses and sausages, and their up-scale menus name the particular dairies and sausage-makers from which the appetizers originated These establishments know that their Wisconsin patrons can discriminate between poor and superb cheeses and sausages, even during the most outrageous happy hours.
Decades ago, our- half-time-Wisconsin friends learned to discriminate too. In fact, they offered a a pseudo-import service to their neighbors in Illinois. They would take their friends' orders for Wisconsin cheeses and meats which they would purchase from a "special" grocer they had discovered in the small, Wisconsin town down the road from their cottage. Upon receipt of her order, my mom would pack the freezer with Wisconsin meat for the winter. Years later when I immigrated to Wisconsin I discovered that this "special grocer" was Sentry. Sentry is to Wisconsin as Jewel is to Illinois and Safeway is to Colorado. Just goes to show, one state's caviar is another's bread and butter.
But now, high-quality, artisanal meats and cheeses aren't only available in the upper midwest. Gourmet food artisans in Wisconsin ship their specialty foods directly to out-of-state patrons. A taste of Wisconsin can be enjoyed in Louisiana. How about some cheese with that crawdad?
"I know I can! " Positive thinking is half the work.
Posted by: Supra skytop | November 05, 2010 at 10:49 PM