The Cherry Hut

"Celebrating 90 Years!" - that is the proclamation on the top of the paper place mats at The Cherry Hut in Beulah, Michigan.  Their signature paper place mats have a red cardinal printed in the corner and were designed for the Cherry Hut by nature artist, Gwen Frostic.  So pretty.

My mom and I always have lunch at The Cherry Hut and this year I swayed from my usual Egg Salad sandwich and ordered the Cherry Chicken Salad.  Wow - this is the kind of chicken salad that you hope for.  Lovely white meat, a light amount of mayonnaise, fresh celery, chopped almonds, bountiful dried cherries and no herbs to affect the flavor.  It is perfect and it is the kind of chicken salad I would want at any ladies lunch.  

After a lovely lunch at this old-fashioned restaurant, we bought one of their homemade cherry pies to take home for dinner and at the counter, the manager was proud to tell us that they had sold 20,000 pies this year! How is that even possible? What an accomplishment.  I'd buy one again, that's for sure.  This is lunch in the Cherry Capital.

Decant Honey

I know that I am a little kooky sometimes, but I have had "decant honey in Beulah" on my to do list for over a year now.  Last Summer, I was in the Market Basket in Beulah and noticed this local honey display, isn't it neat?  Customers bring their own container and a salesgirl will decant "dark" or "light" honey for you.

So this year on my annual jaunt around Benzie County with my mom, I made sure to stop at Crystal Crate and Cargo (a great housewares store in Beulah) first to buy something that I could decant honey into.  No easy task, but I settled on a Salad Dressing Shaker/Measuring Cup that has a tight seal.

("action" shot - decanting honey)

And the best part is that the honey is fabulous!  I bought the light variety and I've been drizzling it on nonfat plain Greek yogurt with a sprinkling of raw almonds every morning this week - yum!