The Place Where We Live

Hidden gems.  Those wonderful places that you never new existed but were there right under your nose all along.  Last weekend, I discovered one.

It’s called The Flour Garden. It’s actually a cake and candy making supply store located at the far north end of a strip mall on South Telegraph Road next to a scrapbooking shop.

The existence of this place was lost on me for three main reasons:

1. I’m embarrased to admit it but (Sigh) for the longest time I didn’t catch on to the inherent pun in the name and actually thought that it was a FLOWER shop.

2. I rarely bake and have never made my own candy so once I finally caught on what the store actually was,  I never had a reason to shop there. 

3. I never realized that they made home-made food there…

…Until a few weeks back a when co-worker of mine announced that she was going there to pick up lunch. (Okay, okay… so I didn’t actually DISCOVER the place MYSELF) I was skeptical about how good the food could be at a cake and candy supply store so I passed. Twenty minutes later she came back with a sandwich and container of bubbly, gooey ,crispy around the edges macaroni and cheese. Seeing me ogle it, she took pity on me and let me try a bite. It was delicious.  Not from a box. I started to quiz her about the place. “They make their own food there?” “What else do they make?” “Can you sit down there or is it take out only?”

So last weekend, I was looking for a place to pick up a quick lunch and was trying to avoid the usual chain fast food places. Then I remembered The Flour Garden and decided to check it out myself. 

I ended up buying a barbequed beef sandwich for my husband and a large container of chicken and sliders (that were surprisingly close the traditional hillbilly dish that my grandma used to make) for myself. But that’s not all…the owner of the store actually helped me pick out a pound of dark chocolate to add to our next batch of homebrewed beer (we’re making a chocolate stout for St. Patricks Day) AND I bought a few packets of mixed peppercorns as a small additon to my husband’s Valentine’s Day gift. He loves fresh cracked pepper.

Where else could you get all three of these things in one trip! They also make their own own chocolates and sell them there at the store.

Okay, so if I really had my act together I would have posted this information BEFORE Valentines Day for those of you looking for an alternative to the Russell Stover heart-shaped sampler.

My heartfelt apologies…Pun intended. 

A few posts ago I blogged about my desire for a local bakery. Someone responded asking if there was a local place where she could buy paczkis rather than buying them from a chain grocery store. My reply was that Monica’s Baker Boy in Monroe  probably sold them although I couldn’t confirm this. Someone else responded to my reply saying that they didn’t think they did.

Well…I saw an ad in the Monroe Evening News the other night advertising Paczki Day (Tuesday, Feb. 20) at Monica’s Baker Boy. They are $9.50 per dozen. Flavors include apple, Raspberry, Cherry, Blueberry, Lemon, Strawberry, Bavarian Cream, and Vanilla cream. They are taking orders now.

Did Monica’s Baker Boy decide to sell paczkis because of my blog or did they sell them before and we just weren’t paying attention?  I won’t flatter myself. I’m sure it’s the latter.

I apologize for the absence of posts recently. I think I’m finally rejoining the land of the living after being out for the count due to a nasty cold that hit me last Friday and has finally subsided. Needless to say I spent my weekend  frequenting this really great hang-out that was about as local as I could get…MY OWN HOME. That’s right,  just as the groundhog was venturing out of his hovel into the open cold, I decided to retreat back into mine.

However, before succumbing to in my Nyquil induced lost weekend. I did manage to get out and about on Thursday night for the first concert of the  Monroe Library System’s annual Winter Blues series. (By the way I’m also convinced that Thursday was the very last day that the weather was actually bearable to human beings. It’s finally starting to let up today!)

My husband and I decided to check out the Rev. Robert Jones in concert at the Navarre Branch library on Thursday night. We’ve been fans of his since he was the host of “Blues from the Lowlands” show on WDET, 101.9 the Public Radio Station in Detroit. In the past few years he became a Baptist minister and abruptly changed the  his show to an gospel format called “Deep River.” While I like the show in its current form, I have to admit that because of this recent about face I had become a bit skeptical. I was worried that he had become one of these musicians who becomes religious and then swears off any secular music and was afraid that his concert in Monroe would be too “churchy” and not “bluesy” enough.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.  In fact, it was refreshing to hear him address this very subject right off the bat. He did admit that more of his music was gospel now and that there were some people who absolutely COULD NOT handle his appreciation and for both  blues and sacred music. However, he was also very candid about the fact that the blues, gospel music and rock and roll were inescapably intertwined; that sacred music was always constantly shaping and reinventing secular music  and visa versa and that it was absurd to think that you could every separate the two! I appreciated  his take on this

The evening ended up being a wonderful blend of music, history  and deep spirituality. He even sang a  song about his 15 year old daugther Anisia (who was named after his grand mother) that was so beautiful it even made my husband tear up a little bit.

I’d like to say that the Blues Series is one of Monroe’s best kept secrets except that… well… it’s not a exactly a secret because it’s been around for 20 years!  Okay, okay I shouldn’t be too hard on myself for not paying it much attention at its inception. After all It was 1988…I was only 9 years old and I was probably just entering into my ”New Kids on the Block” period, so let’s just say my level of appreciation of quality music was somewhat limited back then.

However, with that said,  I’ve only discovered what a great find this is within the past few years (since I moved back to Monroe) and even then I don’t think I  truly appreciated how good it is until now.

Sadly because of my cold I wasn’t able to make it to the Acoustic Big Gig on Saturday night with the Uppity Blues Women. But I’d love to hear about hightlights from folks who were there.

One of the things that I love about blogging is the interactive nature of this medium. For example, I logged on this morning ready to post an entry about the Monroe Blues Series. However, before doing this I decided to read the new comments to my last post on “A Beginners Guide to Going Local” Here is an excerpt of one of the comments  that was posted:

…I don’t think that it would necessarily help anyone if the source of a very consumptive lifestyle simply switches from a far away source to a nearby one.

And I guess that’s why I don’t like some of the downtown redevelopments that I’ve seen. In some places you end up with trendy shops that are cool, but don’t provide basic services or quality for price. It’s just localized consumerism.

I thought that this was an excellent point and I’m glad it was added to the mix. It would bother me if the only message people felt I was conveying was buy buy buy!

I thought of this comment as an important addition to this discussion and I wanted to share it with you in case you don’t read the comments after posts.

Thanks to all of you commenters out there. Time Magazine was right, you really are the people of the year!