- Laboring Over the Stove: A Working Definition of Detroit Cuisine
June 26-28, 2008
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The food favored by Michiganders is an amalgam of global dishes, imported to the Motor
City by generations of immigrants in search of steady work.
On this tour, which begins at
the plant that produced the first Model T's, we'll examine the contents of the lunch pails carried
by the men and women who built our nation's auto industry. Highlights of this tour include
a behind-the-scenes peek at the city's top Coney joint, a baking lesson at a Mexicantown institution, Detroit Tigers
centerfielder Curtis Granderson expounding on dugout eats and - in a nod to
the first workers to settle along the banks of the Detroit River - a festive
meal of muskrat, the hirsute rodent that 19th century Catholic trappers were
permitted by the Pope to eat in place of Lenten fish.
- Drink and Democracy: A Stroll Down Kentucky's Bourbon Trail
Oct. 2-4, 2008
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Government and good drink grew up together on the American frontier, with bourbon playing
a key role in every election. The taverns that served the increasingly smooth corn whiskey,
such as Abe Lincoln's Illinois establishment that history textbooks have since reinvented as a
general store, lubricated the discussions on which democracy was built.
(And if discussion didn't
produce a favorite candidate, the jugs distributed at polling places usually did.) We'll
celebrate this joint history by visiting the nation's oldest distilleries in the company
of bourbon experts and partaking of the feasts served at local political rallies in these
last weeks before the election. In addition to a training course in bourbon appreciation,
our tour will include a cooperage visit and a sampling of bourbon cocktails created by local
mixologists in honor of the folks at the top of the ticket.
