I was able to visit the original American Spoon retail store, located in the gaslight district of Petoskey, Michigan. Are you familiar with the brand? It is a jam and jelly company that has a cult-like following. Their products are of the highest quality, their packaging is gift-worthy and, as per their website, "we still prepare fruits by hand and cook them in small copper kettle batches under the watchful eyes of our skilled cooks." Nice!
They have slowly expanded their offering to include salsas, fruit butter and condiments. What I think is really interesting, is that they have an American Spoon Food Cafe next door. My mom, aunts and I went there for lunch and it was perfect. Most of the menu items feature an American Spoon Food sauce or jam (genius!) and I was very impressed.
I love my whitefish tacos which featured their roasted tomatillo salsa. The salsa was bright and tangy and delicious.
The super cute cafe serves 24 flavors of house-made gelato. Order a cone, grab a stool and watch the vacationing world walk by.
Everyone can benefit from some time on their own. The cottage life can be a noisy life and a 30 minute walk on the beach can reset the calm and energize you for the next bit of fun.
When you are on the shore of Lake Michigan in the Leelanau peninsula, your walk might take you past a few petoskey stones, if you're lucky. The petoskey stone is a rock composed of fossilized coral and it can only be found in the upper peninsula and certain areas of the northwestern lower peninsula of Michigan. The stone has tiny circular lines of coral that are most apparent when wet. There is a even a Petoskey Stone Festival that is now in its eighth year - I bet you could find a lot of jewelry in the artist booths there.
Petoskey stones are beautiful when polished and many local artisans polish and drill them to create jewelry, a bit like a regional flag. If you recognize this as a petoskey stone (Michigan's State Stone), then you know where I come from. As a child, we rubbed petoskey stones with Vaseline to make the pattern appear and the sheen would keep the pattern visible for days.
So keep your eyes out on your beach walk. You never know when you'll find a little piece of Michigan's history.
Petoskey stones are unusual gray stones with spots that are the result of ice sheets, bedrock & coral colliding 350 million years ago and fossilizing. Sort of.
Anyway, they can only be found in the northwestern tip of Michigan's lower peninsula, which makes them a local treasure. Spend more than 15 minutes on the beach and someone will propose a "hunt" for petoskey stones. Shown here are my nieces, combing the beach for petoskey stones and looking a lot like the evolution of early man. Welcome to the Stone Age, baby.
