Why Great Lakes?

I named this blog 'Great Lakes Real Food', because in addition to writing about food, I wanted to focus on a geographic area, specifically the region of the U.S. in which I live. Let me hasten to add that the 'Great Lakes' region also encompasses huge swaths of Canada, and I very much intend to include those areas in my explorations. So, geographically speaking, I am interested in learning about food that is grown, raised, caught, foraged, hunted, and minimally processed in small batches (canned, brewed, distilled, smoked, dried, etc.) in the huge area bounded on the west by the Duluth, MN and Thunder Bay, ONT area, all the way to the east end of Lake Ontario, and all land within a couple hundred miles of the shore of any of the five lakes.

This is a HUGE area, alot of which, especially on the Canadian side, I have never set eyes on. But it includes such great growing areas as Wisconsin, northern Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, southern Ontario, the vineyards, farms and ranches of western New York, including the beautiful Finger Lakes region.

So, combining my overly-broad definition of 'Real Food' with this huge area, what I want to do is discover, explore, sample, and when I feel like it, promote, places that anybody can travel to obtain real food, either directly from the producer, or from an outlet not far in time and distance from the producer. Where possible, I would like to meet the producer, see the fields or pastures or whatever.

My hope is that others who share my love of this huge region, as well as my interest in finding great food sources within it, will share any and all ideas they have. Until then, I'll be scratching around on my own and documenting as much as possible.

Now, I'm going out into the sunny, crisp September day to pick the few remaining apples on my tree in South Central Wisconsin, where I spend time when not in my Chicago area home.