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. 

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 17th, 2007 at 10:01 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.